The science of making a daguerreotype

Colin Harding, our Curator of Photographs & Photographic Technology, explains the scientific process of making a daguerreotype, one of the earliest photographic processes. Part of a series for the 2015 exhibition Revelations: Experiments in Photography. www.scienceandmediamuseum.org...

[@Alan1970B]

A few inaccuracies in the video -15 to 20 minutes for exposure to Iodine fumes would have been far too long, the amount of amount of iodine in the fuming box would have be impossibly small to not pas through the first cycle of the colour spectrum. Most period accounts of iodine exposure times talk of 45 secs to a couple of minutes. Also the gold chloride solution is placed on the plate before it is heated, otherwise terrible staining would occur. The plate is levelled first on the stand with the solution applied, so it does not run off and leave a portion of the plate exposed, as when the plate is heated it will burn blue where there is no solution.

[@tennisguyky]

So the daguerreotype was kind of a 19th century Polaroid, a one off direct positive image.

[@barrymoore4470]

Precisely. The Polaroid was a kind of popular revival of the direct-positive method of photography.

[@Alan1970B]

Indeed the future of photography lay with negative-positive reproduction but that was one ASPECT (and he was not the first to use it - Niépce did also) of Talbots "process" - the Calotype and that was a commercial failure. Another aspect that was crucial to his process was latent image development, Talbots process prior to using that was printing-out in camera, even less commercially viable. In 1839 a year before he used latent image development in his own process Talbot purchased a copy of the daguerreotype patent which was first publication to detail latent image development. Talbot's process also used the use of Sodium Thiosulphate as a fixer which he got from Herschel. The future of photography lay in the accumulation of work by many pioneers of photography, not just Talbot's "process". Why this video of the daguerreotype process needs a qualification that Talbot's process was more important speaks to the inferiority complex of Talbot biased photo historians.

[@TheStockwell]

A friend of mine is helping me on the road to making daguerreotypes. According to him, photography is absolutely a French invention but the British attitude is, "Daguerre and Niepce invented the photographic process. So did Fox Talbot, but after they already had."
Makes sense to me. 😕

[@barrymoore4470]

There were a few late daguerreotypist holdouts in the nineteenth century, such as Thomas Easterly, active in St. Louis, Missouri well into the 1860s. At least two uses of the daguerreotype process are attested in the 1870s, and there a few instances of the process being used or demonstrated by the close of the century as a curiosity. And of course today there is a distinct niche community of modern daguerreotypists and connoisseurs. It is doubtful that the process was ever completely extinguished subsequent to its development and public announcement.

[@pptoni064]

Pretty interesting video

[@muzummilkhan7713]

I came here after seeing a daguerreotype camera in Dr stone manga

[@mocosoDev]

Hahahaha this is amazing, I came here after watching the 2nd episode of the third season of Dr. Stone. This is what Dr.Stone is able to do, wake's up the curiosity of the people.

[@BAstudios5]

Is the daguerreotype a panchromatic process, a panchromatic process, or something else?

[@nurlatifahmohdnor8939]

chin = da-gu