Development history of wet printing photography

People want not only clear images and detailed shadow lines like those taken by Daguerre method, but also many photos printed cheaply and quickly like Carlo method. So someone put forward the idea of using transparent film base instead of paper base to make negative film.

2. "Egg White Glass" Photography

In the19th century, only glass can be used to make transparent films. However, how can photosensitive drugs be attached to the glass? People began to look for a kind of transparent adhesive, which can not only stick photosensitive chemical materials on the glass plate, but also stand the development and fixing washing. The first thing people think of is to use egg white as adhesive.

1847, Nipps's nephew, Saint Victor, first obtained the patent right of "egg white glass" photography. However, the photosensitive drugs mixed in egg white are very limited, and the exposure time is about 5 to 15 minutes, which is not suitable for taking pictures. However, it is very suitable for making "egg white photographic paper", and also suitable for developing photos and making slides.

3. collodion (wet version) photography

185 1 year, a sculptor in London, England (Fredrick Scott Archer1813–1857) found that nitrocellulose was dissolved in ether and alcohol collodion, and then potassium iodide was dissolved in collodion and immediately coated on clean glass. Collodion should be used immediately after preparation and will not be exposed to light after drying, so this photography method is called "wet printing". Although the wet plate method is troublesome to operate, its cost is only one twelfth of that of the silver plate method, the exposure speed is faster than that of the silver plate method, and the image definition is higher, so that a large number of photos can be printed on the glass negative.

This technique combines the sensitivity of Daguerre's method with the convenience of Carlo's method, and it has dominated the photography field for more than 30 years (1850- 1880). During this period, portrait photography developed rapidly. 19 in the 1970s, the wet printing method of collodion met the competition of glass dry printing, and 1880 was replaced by the industrial production of dry printing in silver bromide.