Photographs on glass

[Darlingtonian]

Does anybody know when glass photographs started and finished please?

[Darlingtonian]

Blooming heck Cazza.....I did it!!!!!...only took about four hours!!

I think this is the same girl as the child in the picture above (*) .....what do you think?

It was hard to scan a glass photograph and be able to see something


Moderator Comment:
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,204918.0.html

[PrueM]

Hi Darlingtonian,
Photos on glass (commonly called Ambrotypes) were invented in the mid 1850s and were popular until the mid 1860s.  this makes it relatively easy to date them!
Prue

[Darlingtonian]

Great Prue......because I have a few on glass....sorry...Ambrotype..thanks

[john_w]

Ambrotype is an american term for what were more comonly  called wet collodion negatives in the UK.

Ambrotypes were indeed short lived, but glass negatives with more modern lightsensitive emulsions were in use for many years after that.
Astronomical phography used glass plates well into the 1950s. A great many photographers in pursuit of the ultimate in definition were coating their own glass plates well in to the 1960's. Peter Sellars for one.

There is still a significant interest in large format film photography, with many users posting here
http://photo.net/bboard/forum?topic_id=1547

[lburt]

I have a photo on glass that has been removed from it's original case.  I can just barely make out that there is a man in the picture, and there are some scratches to the black coating on the back of the glass.  Can this picture be saved?  Would this be an ambrotype?

[chinakay]

Hi lburt. Maybe, and yes it would.

Possibly the physical photo can be saved, and if you can't find any information online or at Rootschat, your best bet would be contacting PrueM, one of the moderators. She is a professional conservator and may be able to give you some advice.

I think your best bet would be digital restoration, as long as there's enough of an image to work with. Scratches can be removed to a certain degree, but if an image is terribly faded or scratched the restorers are just guessing at the image.

Scan the photo at 300-600 dpi and post it...see Cazza's scanning tutorial at the top of the board if you're not sure how to do this. I am not a restorer, but there are many very talented people here who can give it a try.

You should start a new topic and post the image there, as this is a very old thread and some restorers don't revisit old ones.

Cheers,
China

[lburt]

Thanks China