Advantages and disadvantages of solar etching method of Nieps

The advantage of sunlight etching method is that it can directly capture and fix images, but the disadvantages are high operation difficulty, long exposure time and inaccurate color tone.

Sunlight etching, also known as sunlight photography, Nipps painted a mixture of pewter and asphalt on a lead-tin alloy plate to make a photosensitive metal plate. He put it in the camera, then exposed it to the window for 8 hours in his attic with sunlight and the original lens, and then washed off the white asphalt mixture without exposure and hardening with lavender oil to expose the dark black of the metal plate, thus obtaining the positive image of the scenery outside the window.

The Origin of Solar Etching

Nipps and Daguerre were the earliest collaborators in photographic research. Both of them tried to find a way to record images, but their motives were different and their achievements in photography were different. Nipps's attempt to study printing involves the exploration of photography. His earliest "solar etching method" with Jewish asphalt as developing material is an image formed by using the principle that substances harden under ultraviolet radiation.

The research scope of Nieps almost spans the two image series of silver salt and pigment in today's photography technology. Although he didn't see the day when photography was released, he didn't even know what photography was, just wanted to find a way to record it manually.

But the imaging method he studied was discovered and developed by later generations. For example, his principle of hardening substances with ultraviolet rays developed into etching plate-making process and dichromate pigment process after more than half a century. These technologies eventually evolved into the development process of offset printing and various dichromate pigments today.