Calotypes vs. Daguerreotypes

Talbot & the calotype: To create a photogenic drawing, Talbot first coated a sheet of drawing paper with the chemical compound silver chloride and put it in a camera obscura. He exposed the paper by letting light hit it and produced an image of the scene with the tones reversed (much like today when you shoot a roll of film, you get a negative image). He then placed the negative against another coated sheet of paper to produce a positive image. (think of this when you are making a contact sheet. you start out with a celluloid negative and you put it against photo sensitive paper to create a direct positive. Except talbot was using paper for both process.)

Daguere & the daguerreotype: The image is exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. In later developments bromine and chlorine vapors were also used, resulting in shorter exposure times. The daguerreotype is a negative image, but the mirrored surface of the metal plate reflects the image and makes it appear positive in the proper light. Thus, daguerreotype is a direct photographic process without the capacity for duplication.

Daguere started his work on the development of the Daguerreotype with Niepce but made the more important breakthroughs after Niepce's death (probably why they are not called the dagniepcetypes or niepdagtypes)

The main differences are that calotypes are negatives that are later printed as positives on paper and that daguerreotypes are negative images on mirrored surfaces that reflect a positive looking image.

While Daguerre had monetary funding and go ahead from the French Academy of Sciences, his competitor Talbot had to look towards his own private funding to push his methods. The French looked at their invention as free to the world (though Daguerre did register a patent in Britain for it making it "free to the world" everywhere but Britain, and this slowing down the advancements of photographic processes by there being only a small handfull of people who could legally make daguerreotypes in the whole country.) Since Talbot not only lacked the funding of Daguerre but also his financial status, he looked to making his investment money from working on his photographic finds back by patening his method and charging anyone who wanted to use them (though he lated waived the fees for amateurs using the calotype system for recreational purposes)

While we know why Talbot took out his patent and charged money for for a license, once can only make an educated guess as to why Daguerre would want to restrict the use of "his" invention in the same country that a competitor of his was equally as destined to make it to the history books.

At first Talbot had a lot of trouble figuring out how to properly fix his images (think of when you are developing film or photos and you use "fixer" to keep it from fading and become permanent) giving another reason to the already unique daguerreotypes to become much more popular. However, while the Daguerreotypes were at first much more popular, their years of practical production didn't really make it past the late 1800s (there are still people making them for artistic purposes) Talbot's invention and negative to positive process was much more influential to further developments in the photography industry and holds much more relevancy to anyone still working with film / traditional printing.



This is Talbot's "The Open Door" from 1843. This print was highly admired by the British press for it's high tonal qualities. A lot has been written about this photo, here is a little excerpt on the Metropolitan Museum's website



Here is an example of a pretty famous daguerreotype. This is the first known photographic image of the moon. It was taken by John Whipple in 1851.

Here is a cool website called the Dag Lab that goes into further explanation of the process of making Daguerreotypes.

The Getty Museum site has some interesting videos as well.

I know it's kind of hard to imagine how a daguerreotype can look so different from the conventional paper prints we are used to seeing and that jpegs on the internet don't quiet do it justice which is why I will be bringing in some original daguerreotype examples to our next class.