News

August 26, 2014

How to make a tintype

A tintype starts with an alchemical processes that is best hand made by the photographer. Wet plate collodion tintypes and ambrotypes are particular in their creation and like cooking, it is best that the chef be very familiar with their ingredients. This is why we make all of our own chemicals and do as much as we can from scratch. Keeping the process in house helps us to keep control of the results so that each little wet plate collodion 'cookie' comes out just as sweet as the last!

Here is a video of our tintype photographer, Jen Jansen creating a tintype portrait of musician Marc Ford. The portrait was used for his full length record release Holy Ghost

July 21, 2014

A little wet plate collodion history.

What is wet plate collodion photography? Here is a little definition from Wikipedia,

The collodion process is an early photographic process, invented by Frederick Scott Archer. It was introduced in the 1850s and by the end of that decade it had almost entirely replaced the first practical photographic process, the daguerreotype. During the 1880s the collodion process, in turn, was largely replaced by gelatin dry plates—glass plates with a photographic emulsion of silver halides suspended in gelatin. The dry gelatin emulsion was not only more convenient but could be made much more sensitive, greatly reducing exposure times.
"Collodion process" is usually taken to be synonymous with the "collodion wet plate process", a very inconvenient form which required the photographic material to be coated, sensitized, exposed and developed within the span of about fifteen minutes, necessitating a portable darkroom for use in the field. Although collodion was normally used in this wet form, the material could also be used in humid ("preserved") or dry form, but at the cost of greatly increased exposure time, making these forms unsuitable for the usual work of most professional photographers—portraiture. Their use was therefore confined to landscape photography and other special applications where minutes-long exposure times were tolerable.
Collodion processes were capable of recording microscopically fine detail, so their use for some special purposes continued long after the advent of the gelatin dry plate. The collodion process is said to have been invented, almost simultaneously, by Fredrick Scott Archer and Gustave Le Gray in about 1850. During the subsequent decades of its popularity, many photographers and experimenters refined or varied the process.

June 10, 2014

Celebrating a 10 Year Anniversary

The historic origins of wedding anniversaries date back to the Roman Empire, when husbands crowned their wives with a silver wreath on their twenty-fifth anniversary, and a gold wreath on the fiftieth. (from wikipedia)

Here at Digital Tintypes we are happy to create special anniversary gifts for any special occasion! The traditional gift to celebrate a tenth anniversary is the gift of tin. We create beautiful tintypes from any digital image. Upload your favorite photograph and create a tintype for your anniversary. A tintype is a one of a kind gift your loved one will treasure!

See the anniversary gift set here

June 06, 2014

Children's Tintypes in studio or on location

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8x10 tintype captured in camera at our Bucktown studio.

June 05, 2014

Children's tintype

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We take sittings by appointment for anyone visiting Chicago.

June 02, 2014

Making a tintype from the Hipstamatic tintype app

We just love the hipstamatic tintype app available for the iPhone. It isn't like sitting for a tintype, but it does allow for some fun instant images with an interesting filter effect. Why not make those hipstamatic tintypes into tintype you can hold in your hand? Here are some tintypes we created from the hipstamatic app.

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