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ScottPhotoCo
20-Aug-2013, 17:33
What's the best way to determine the type of photographic printing used for a particular image? I have been reviewing a lot of historical images and there is a certain look and feel that shows in some of them that REALLY makes me want to find out and learn the process. I'm guessing it's some type of Platinum and Palladium or Albumen print but I honestly don't know anything about these types of prints. Where can I begin?

Scanning these prints doesn't begin to show what I'm seeing so I'm a bit stuck sharing images here but they are rich tonally with incredible detail and such smooth transitions between tones that it is amazing to me. I have attached 2 scans for reference but they don't do the actual prints any justice at all.

100601
100602

Thanks in advance!


Tim
www.ScottPhoto.co

Vaughn
20-Aug-2013, 21:01
Assuming they are on paper:

First thing to determine is if they have an emulsion or not. Platinum, van dyke, cyanotype, salt, etc, are liquids brushed onto the paper and soak a little ways into the paper.. So if the image is in the paper rather than on the paper, it is one of these types of processes.

Silver gelatin, carbon, albumen are processes that contain the light sensitive chemicals in an emulsion that sits on top of the paper. Not carbon -- carbon does not fade or darken like the top image has.

ScottPhotoCo
21-Aug-2013, 08:52
Assuming they are on paper:

First thing to determine is if they have an emulsion or not. Platinum, van dyke, cyanotype, salt, etc, are liquids brushed onto the paper and soak a little ways into the paper.. So if the image is in the paper rather than on the paper, it is one of these types of processes.

Silver gelatin, carbon, albumen are processes that contain the light sensitive chemicals in an emulsion that sits on top of the paper. Not carbon -- carbon does not fade or darken like the top image has.


Thanks Vaughn!

These both are on paper but I'm not sure how to tell if they're on or in the paper. Please forgive my lack of knowledge, I am new at this part. :)

The only other potentially identifying element perhaps is a slight shine to parts of the image. I assume that this means the presence of silver? On the image of the couple it is most prominent around the edges where it looks like it was shielded by a frame or something? And on the child's portrait, if you angle it slightly you can see the metallic looking shine in some areas. Does this help?


Tim
www.ScottPhoto.co

ridax
21-Aug-2013, 15:20
Of course no one can be positively sure just looking at jpegs but still I'd bet ten to one on those being Matt Collodion POP, perhaps Platinum toned.

Most of the 100-year-old collodion prints look like new today as collodion is a much better image protector then gelatin (to say nothing of albumen which is a problem in itself) but alas those fascinating prints have poor chances to be seen in another 100 years as nitrocellulose is notorious for its inability to last more then about 150 years at best. Then, those emulsions just turn into a mess of tiny flakes that fall off the paper.

Gelatin POP prints do not behave like that but the images on those fade a lot faster...

ScottPhotoCo
21-Aug-2013, 17:23
Of course no one can be positively sure just looking at jpegs but still I'd bet ten to one on those being Matt Collodion POP, perhaps Platinum toned.

Most of the 100-year-old collodion prints look like new today as collodion is a much better image protector then gelatin (to say nothing of albumen which is a problem in itself) but alas those fascinating prints have poor chances to be seen in another 100 years as nitrocellulose is notorious for its inability to last more then about 150 years at best. Then, those emulsions just turn into a mess of tiny flakes that fall off the paper.

Gelatin POP prints do not behave like that but the images on those fade a lot faster...

Ok, this is pretty fascinating and definitely a process I hadn't heard of previously. I need to look deeper into this. Thanks for the information!


Tim
www.ScottPhoto.co

Andrew O'Neill
21-Aug-2013, 18:37
Do you know when they were printed? They could very well just be gelatin silver contacts. Can you see if the emulsion has lifted slightly from the paper?

ScottPhotoCo
22-Aug-2013, 12:25
Do you know when they were printed? They could very well just be gelatin silver contacts. Can you see if the emulsion has lifted slightly from the paper?

Andrew,

There is no lifting at all on any of the images. If I had to hazard a guess of when they were printed, sometime between 1910-1930? But that is a total guess.

ridax
22-Aug-2013, 14:23
Yes I also can't exclude the possibility of these prints being gelatin though I still believe more likely its collodion. Anyway, I'm pretty sure further online speculation would not bring any definite answer. Go ahead, test them. Take a needle or an old-fashioned pen and with those, put tiny droplets of liquids onto the prints' corners. Acetone will dissolve collodion but not any other known photo print binder. Water will swell gelatin but not collodion.

Reports appreciated.

SergeiR
22-Aug-2013, 17:10
I have quite a few like that in my family album (late 1800s, early 1900s) and they all are silver prints, to be honest. Paper ranges in them quite a bit, from very weird textured one(then again i remember printing on ancient stock of something similar when i was about 13 years old in 80s) to just flat one. All quick thick , some are mounted, some arent. But all of ours that were survived were made in Russia pre-/post- revolution. Other sides of my family didn't get to keep theirs, so i dont know if process was much different for Poland, France and Sweden back then.

redbird
22-Aug-2013, 17:55
This may well help you...
http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/atlas.html
there's quite a bit of info about historical processes in the preservation community. If this isn't in depth enough there is is book on historical photographic processes here
https://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.org/resources/publications
scroll down to identification and care of photographic processes.
Hope this helps.
M

ridax
25-Aug-2013, 02:35
OK, I looked at the pictures again, and I think I'd better retract my bet before anybody calls it ;). As these prints are not mounted, they are most certainly not collodion but gelatin (if only they weren't torn off the original mounts years after they were made - which seems unlikely). And if the prints are gelatin then there are very little chances they are POP as gelatin POP prints almost never were so neutral in tone. Besides, old gelatin POP prints usually exhibit a lot more fading. So perhaps they were printed on the relatively modern-style gaslight paper. In this case, duplicating the look isn't hard at all. Buy some Kodak AZO (expired is OK), and you are pretty ready do make your own contact prints of the very same quality.


I have quite a few like that in my family album (late 1800s, early 1900s)... But all of ours that were survived were made in Russia pre-/post- revolution... so I don't know if process was much different for Poland, France and Sweden back then.

The processes used were pretty the same throughout the continent those days. It's really hard to tell a 100-year-old print made in Tobolsk from the one made in Bern except by the words on the mount. My 1908 Iohim catalog includes exactly 101 pages devoted to all possible light sensitive materials by British, French, Belgian, German, etc., etc., as well as domestic manufacturers, available for shipment to any buyer in any part of the Russian Empire.

What fascinates me though are the late 1800s photographic prints you posses there. No matter how precious they were as family artifacts, I'd probably sell those to be free to never work again in my life.... assuming they are really of 1800s, not 1890s. :)))

Light Guru
25-Aug-2013, 06:28
What fascinates me though are the late 1800s photographic prints you posses there. No matter how precious they were as family artifacts, I'd probably sell those to be free to never work again in my life.... assuming they are really of 1800s, not 1890s. :)))

The photos posted do not look like late 1800s they look 1900s. Simply looking at style of the mans suit shirt and tie tell me it's 1900s

Even if they were from the 1800s your not going to make enough from selling them to never have to work again. You would be lucky to make enough to pay for lunch. Portrait photos from the 1800s are not worth a lot of money unless the person in the photo is supper famous.

ridax
25-Aug-2013, 07:21
Even if they were from the 1800s your not going to make enough from selling them to never have to work again. You would be lucky to make enough to pay for lunch. Portrait photos from the 1800s are not worth a lot of money unless the person in the photo is supper famous.

Really? I thought there weren’t a single photo known not only of 1800s but even 1810s... That's why my humble opinion was, if anybody proved having a photo from before 1810, he/she was doing to be a pretty rich person very soon. Weren't they?
:))))

cowanw
25-Aug-2013, 14:07
Are there really such things as collodion prints. The only collodion prints I have heard of are tintypes or ambrotypes. Perhaps you mean albumin prints? These have a glossy finish and are usually on fairly thin paper if not mounted. The reference to some shone on these prints may be silver mirroring
http://archivesandspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/forms-of-photographic-degradation-silver-mirroring/
If so there is your answer.

Sevo
25-Aug-2013, 15:04
Are there really such things as collodion prints. The only collodion prints I have heard of are tintypes or ambrotypes. Perhaps you mean albumin prints?

I strongly suppose so - albumen paper was the regular companion to collodion plates. Even if somebody should at some time have made wet collodion prints (or even a dry collodion paper) these would be fairly obvious by being on top of a lacquered paper base - no known collodion process would work directly on a absorbent paper base.

As the shown pictures clearly are from the early 20th century, and quite obviously no works of pictorialist art, we can rule out exotic or hand-made processes. The prints will be either on gelatin or albumen factory made dry paper - positively the former if enlarged, perhaps the latter if regular ("visit card") size and toned (or faded) brown, either-or, with a strong bias towards lantern speed gelatin if the pictures are as black as depicted, for anything in between.

Jon Shiu
25-Aug-2013, 15:36
Take a look at photos called Aristotype:
http://notesonphotographs.org/index.php?title=Osterman,_Mark._%22Collodio-Chloride_Printing_Out_Paper_(Aristotype)%22

here's an example of a photo pasted into a 1893 Photo Almanac I have

100854100855
Jon


Are there really such things as collodion prints. The only collodion prints I have heard of are tintypes or ambrotypes. Perhaps you mean albumin prints? These have a glossy finish and are usually on fairly thin paper if not mounted. The reference to some shone on these prints may be silver mirroring
http://archivesandspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/forms-of-photographic-degradation-silver-mirroring/
If so there is your answer.

Robert Oliver
25-Aug-2013, 18:09
Tim, good meeting you yesterday. Hard to tell on a scanned jpg, but sure looks a lot like the contact prints I found.

Amazing tones. Super smooth.

Emulsion on mine almost looks sprayed on. No brush marks at all. Definitely platinum looking.

I think mine are late 1930's or 1940's based on the rest of the negs in the set.

100861100863

Light Guru
25-Aug-2013, 18:48
Really? I thought there weren’t a single photo known not only of 1800s but even 1810s... That's why my humble opinion was, if anybody proved having a photo from before 1810, he/she was doing to be a pretty rich person very soon. Weren't they?
:))))

You said 1800s that term can refers to the entire century. You didn't specify pre 1826 when the oldest known photo was taken.

ScottPhotoCo
25-Aug-2013, 21:50
Tim, good meeting you yesterday. Hard to tell on a scanned jpg, but sure looks a lot like the contact prints I found.

Amazing tones. Super smooth.

Emulsion on mine almost looks sprayed on. No brush marks at all. Definitely platinum looking.

I think mine are late 1930's or 1940's based on the rest of the negs in the set.

100861100863

Good to meet you too Robert.

That photo, at least online, looks the closest to what I have than pretty much anything else I've seen. Are you fairly sure it's platinum?

Tim
www.ScottPhoto.co

Robert Oliver
25-Aug-2013, 22:12
Not 100%...

seems to have more of a silvery sheen to it at angles than what I recall platinum looks like, but I don't have any known platinum prints to compare to.

Upon further investigation... a couple of the other envelopes that match the one with those prints are marked 1962. They are for sure contact prints and have the negative with them. I think the wardrobes match the late 50's and early 60's in mine.


Good to meet you too Robert.

That photo, at least online, looks the closest to what I have than pretty much anything else I've seen. Are you fairly sure it's platinum?

Tim
www.ScottPhoto.co

ridax
25-Aug-2013, 22:20
Silver collodion emulsion printing out paper was the mainstream positive process totally dominating the market throughout the world for nearly half a century, from the last decades of the 19th century up to the first couple of decades of the 20th century. So sorry for being rude but calling collodion POP 'exotic' or questioning its mere existence, as well as confusing it with wet collodion, just sounds ridiculously ignorant. The most quick and basic research in photo history reveals that at once.

(BTW the term 'Aristotype' can often be misleading. In America the word was adopted as a name for silver-collodion POP but in Europe it was used for silver-gelatin POP, so one has to double check any text mentioning the word for its origin before making any conclusions.)

The pictures posted above by Jon Shiu are of a print on glossy POP that (judging by the jpegs only) may be either collodion or gelatin. But for the glossy version, collodion emulsion can be pretty easily recognized by its slight rainbow effect in the surface reflections under fluorescent light, never seen on any other type of prints. The effect may be rather hard to observe for the first time, but once you know what to look for, noticing it becomes surprisingly easy. For matte papers its way more difficult, and the acetone test I described earlier is about the only one that gives really positive results.

Collodion emulsion was coated on a very thin baryta stock, and the prints were always mounted. In general, collodion prints are almost never faded (like gelatin ones may be, and albumens always are). Silver mirroring (aka bronzing) is also not a thing to be seen in collodion prints. Instead, the collodion prints emulsion is often scratched/abraded. It also may have tiny cracks in it. A few of those vintage prints are already all cracks and flakes. Perhaps none of the collodion prints will survive another century - which is a great pity for me as this process is the most admirable for yours truly. :(

The pictures posted by Robert Oliver are definitely silver gelatin DOP, perhaps on chloride or chlorobromide paper, toned or just processed in a warm-tone developer.

The OP's are probably on a finer-grained silver chloride DOP ('gaslight').

The are no albumen prints shown in this thread so far.

ridax
25-Aug-2013, 22:36
True Platinum prints aren't too hard to recognize (its a bit harder for platinum-toned silver ones) as Platinum prints have no baryta layer, and the image is not on the paper but in the paper fibers themselves. That's pretty clearly seen under a loupe. But the same is true for other types of salted paper prints, including silver ones. To tell silver from platinum, one has to apply a droplet of bleach to the print. Metallic silver image would disappear in ferricianide. Silver sulfide and silver selenide ones would not, but those would be bleached by dichromate or permanganate. Platinum and Palladium would not be affected by any of the above.

As for the Robert Oliver's prints above, the bluish sheen in those is very characteristic of silver. With platinum, the sheen would be quite different in its color.

ridax
25-Aug-2013, 23:42
...a couple of the other envelopes that match the one with those prints are marked 1962. They are for sure contact prints and have the negative with them.

Robert, get rid if these badly yellowed envelopes. They are of cheap paper made from low-grade cellulose derived from wood, and definitely contain lignin and a lot of other bad stuff besides the cellulose itself. Those aren't good neighbors for your prints and negatives. Buy some archival storage materials and put your photos into those.

Sevo
26-Aug-2013, 00:23
Silver collodion emulsion printing out paper was the mainstream positive process totally dominating the market throughout the world for nearly half a century, from the last decades of the 19th century up to the first couple of decades of the 20th century.

I'd like some solid evidence for that, please - books, brands, makers. From a European perspective it does not sound as it it was anything more than exotic, and acetone testing through a couple of rejects does not turn up a single example.

While I can find a few written references to collodion paper (including one brand name "Rembrandt-Papier"), in German and British literature from the early 20th century, they seem to quote the same source (a single maker?). The vast majority of period descriptions, brand and product listings concern albumen dry "print out" papers, with gelatin "lantern speed" slowly taking over. The books on photo history I have at hand don't mention it at all, or list it among other inventions that never grew relevant, like arrowroot, agar and other plant-based gel substrates, while they dedicate dozens of pages to albumen, gelatin and the fine art processes. Which does not really sound like "the mainstream process dominating the world".

Sevo
26-Aug-2013, 01:53
I googled one reference to it being a somwehat common process between 1870 and 1890: http://notesonphotographs.org/index.php?title=Collodion_Process#Collodion_Positives. And looking up the names I can find a few more backgrounds in period literature.

But I don't know how accurate that text may be regarding the US situation. It positively is wrong in assuming that collodion papers were significantly popular in Germany until the 1930s. This presumably is due to a error about names and identitites. The first successful collodion paper brand in Germany back in the 1870s was "Aristo", by Obernetter. The brand name was used by chemicals giant Bayer from 1887 (when they took over Obernetter around or after its founder's death) up until the 20s, when they merged with Agfa. But the name had already gone over to their massively successful gelatin paper in the 1880s, to the point that it eventually became the generic term for gelatin print-out paper in Germany. That is, the "Aristo" still popular in the thirties was not collodion, but the generic term for gelatin print-out papers of all brands, which obviously made up the bulk of paper used in Germany up until the end of the contact copy age.

The earlier Bayer (Obernetter) collodion paper seems to have continued as "Amerikanisches Aristo Papier" with a shrinking market share at least until the late 1890s (when the "Technischer Katalog" lists them as a supplier), but by 1908 only Kurz and Schering ("Zelloidinpapier", "Satrap-Papier") seem to have been left as major makers - and references to these fade after WWI. The fact that Americans considered it a German peculiarity while the Germans called it "American" rather sounds as if it had been considered exotic either side of the pond, after a few years of popularity.

ridax
26-Aug-2013, 03:51
I'd like some solid evidence for that, please - books, brands, makers. From a European perspective it does not sound as it it was anything more than exotic

My 1913 Gevaert publication meticulously describing all the papers they produced those days on its 156 pages, lists 4 different collodion POPs, 3 gelatin POPs, and one albumen. (It also lists 2 sorts of DOP bromide enlarging papers, 2 sorts of DOP chlorobromide 'gaslight' papers, and one platinum paper.)

A number of period photography tutorials I have here, from early 1900s and up to 1918, all state collodion papers were the most common and most widely used. They all start their chapters on printing with descriptions of collodion POP papers and the particular toner formulae best adapted for those.

The 1908 Iohim sales catalog I mentioned earlier lists 7 collodion POPs (by 5 different manufacturers), 3 gelatin POPs, 7 gelatin DOPs (total, i.e. the bromide, the chloride, and the chlorobromide ones - both enlarging and contact, combined), 4 platinum papers and 1 cyanotype paper.

The number of brands does not always correspond to the volume of production of course. But in this case, the volume of collodion paper consumed was even greater in relation to all other photo paper types then the number of brands suggests. My personal interest makes me visit antiquarian shops and flee markets looking for interesting photos, and of that period, I'd say at least 70% to 80% of the surviving prints are collodion POP. (There might be more of the other types actually produced but of those, a far greater share is already faded too badly to be kept by ordinary people with no particular interests in history.)

But yes - in the 1930s, and perhaps even in the 1920s already, collodion papers were indeed about extinct while gelatin POP was still used a lot.

That's all about the continental Europe, from Belgium and France to Austria-Hungary and Germany and to Russia (up to Kamchatka). The situation might have been somewhat different in America, as well as in GB, too; at list Ilford seemed to concentrate their efforts on gelatin papers.... though I actually add this only because I never researched the situation there myself. Indeed, this publication states it was pretty the same all over the Globe ("collodion photographs were the dominant medium used by commercial portrait photographers at the turn of the century." "For many years, caretakers of photograph collections and photograph conservators have mistakenly identified matte collodion prints as platinum prints. James Reilly (1986) finally acknowledged the wide use of this process over approximately three decades, from 1890 to 1920, in his book Care and Identification of 19th-Century Photographic Prints." "In 1907, we learn that "probably 75% of the printing paper used by American professional photographers is Aristo-Platino," a matte collodio-chloride paper." Etc., etc., ...):

http://aic.stanford.edu/jaic/articles/jaic38-02-002.html

Sevo
26-Aug-2013, 05:16
My personal interest makes me visit antiquarian shops and flee markets looking for interesting photos, and of that period, I'd say at least 70% to 80% of the surviving prints are collodion POP.

By test? That is, do the images actually wash off with a acetone swab (some solubility would also be expected from albumen, but nowhere as dramatic as with collodion)? None of my examples do - but then, I haven't tested any of the bigger, better prints. I'll have to try some more, beyond visit card size - I have a couple with cracking that don't soften in water, where I thought it might be due to hardened gelatin, but if collodion paper was widespread into the WWI years, that might be another explanation.

Does Gevaert mean that you are Belgian? Situations and introduction dates might differ quite a lot by country, even more so in places with one dominant maker.

ridax
26-Aug-2013, 07:56
By test? That is, do the images actually wash off with a acetone swab (some solubility would also be expected from albumen, but nowhere as dramatic as with collodion)? None of my examples do - but then, I haven't tested any of the bigger, better prints. I'll have to try some more, beyond visit card size - I have a couple with cracking that don't soften in water, where I thought it might be due to hardened gelatin, but if collodion paper was widespread into the WWI years, that might be another explanation.

Does Gevaert mean that you are Belgian? Situations and introduction dates might differ quite a lot by country, even more so in places with one dominant maker.

Yes those emulsions are very easy to wash off with acetone. But fortunately at least with glossy prints, no destructive tests are actually needed as the slightly rainbow reflections under fluorescent light are very characteristic, and no other type of print exhibit those. This is really the way to identify glossy collodion POP without any damage to it. You even don't have to buy a print before you are allowed to perform a test like that. BTW I actually don't know why those rainbows show up... but they do, and under fluorescent light only.

BTW if I remember correctly, old books say when a dry collodion print is to be put though any additional wet processing, the emulsion has to be softened with alcohol before any water solutions can be applied to it. But I never tried this myself, and I don't know how strong an alcohol is still safe though.

No I am not Belgian. I am Russian, and the books I mentioned above are all in Russian. But still my 1913 Gevaert publication is really by Gevaert & Co, though it was printed in Moscow, and the 1908 Iohim catalog is actually some 680 full pages of authentic manufacturers' instructions for all the plates, films, papers, lenses, cameras, tripods, and all the rest nice things listed for sale. The vast majority of those are German BTW. The so-called 'civilized world' was pretty united until 1914... I can still buy vintage photo portraits of Russians taken and printed in Switzerland and Germany and France in the local flee market any day, and domestic prints on any European sort of paper are also pretty common here. American papers and films are present in my 1908 catalog, too.

Here are some of the European manufacturers that offered collodion POP in 1908 (sorry there may be my spelling mistakes included as I just transcribed the names back from Russian):

Kurz ( "***" brand)
Christensen
Gevaert
Koh-i-noor
Schering

And... sorry but I was apparently mistaken saying collodion prints were always mounted. Rereading that 1908 catalog, I've just came across a couple of collodion POPs coated on double-weight paper stock, with manufacturer's assurance those might be safely left unmounted. So I'm not sure I do not own more of the vintage collodion prints that I thought... guess I should take a better look at the unmounted ones, too.

That makes the OP's original question pretty hard to answer without special tests BTW...

But as for really big prints, I doubt there were many collodion ones among them. Generally, collodion emulsion is not flexible, and in fact, all the period books strongly advise against carrying sheets of collodion paper in hands while printing as the collodion layer could crack if accidentally bent slightly, bending of the paper due to its own weight being dangerous enough, too. Those tutorials insist that to carry a sheet of such paper, one should put it onto a book or something similarly hard and carry the paper on that improvised tray only. So while CDVs and cabinet cards of the period are mostly collodion, big prints are usually not. At least I am sure I've not seen any larger then full-plate or perhaps 8x10" at most.

Jon Shiu
26-Aug-2013, 09:35
To update: I looked for a description of the BP Aristotype paper that is in the 1893 book and I found an ad:
"BP Aristotype Paper
A gelatin paper that gives results equal to Collodion, and is much easier to handle.
No Curling, Cracking nor Frilling under any Circumstance
Gives rich and transparent shadows, fine half-tones, pure whites and permanent prints."


Take a look at photos called Aristotype:
http://notesonphotographs.org/index.php?title=Osterman,_Mark._%22Collodio-Chloride_Printing_Out_Paper_(Aristotype)%22

here's an example of a photo pasted into a 1893 Photo Almanac I have

100854100855
Jon

Sevo
26-Aug-2013, 10:12
To update: I looked for a description of the BP Aristotype paper that is in the 1893 book and I found an ad:
"BP Aristotype Paper
A gelatin paper that gives results equal to Collodion, and is much easier to handle.


That is one of the major issues researching old technologies - the technology frequently moved on while the brands were retained. The more I read up on it, the more I am convinced that gelatin must already have had nearly displaced the older print materials in the mass market by 1900 at least in Germany, even though the major brand names continued - within a mere decade after its introduction the brand name of the first mass marketed collodion paper, Aristo, had already moved on to gelatin, and established itself so firmly that it became a synonym for gelatin paper. Later there seems to have been a resurgence of albumen and collodion in the pre WWI years, apparently prompted by them being more able to imitate the surfaces of the then popular pictorialist art print (oil, platinum etc.) prints, but it is hard to estimate to what extent, and after WWI that fashion had evaporated.

ScottPhotoCo
26-Aug-2013, 10:16
Wow! This thread has evolved to be much more educational than I had imagined. Thank you all for sharing your knowledge and perspective. One of the reasons that I love this forum is the willingness of the members to share their knowledge. Thank you all. I love this stuff. :)

ridax
26-Aug-2013, 11:41
To update: I looked for a description of the BP Aristotype paper that is in the 1893 book and I found an ad:
"BP Aristotype Paper
A gelatin paper that gives results equal to Collodion..."

That explains the lack of highlight details. I actually had a feeling the print looked more like gelatin POP (a bit faded in the highlights) but hesitated to state that because it was an American one. That made me ask myself, could it be printed like that from the start, for some aesthetic reasons? And in fact, I thought yes, that was possible, too...

ridax
27-Aug-2013, 00:20
That is one of the major issues researching old technologies - the technology frequently moved on while the brands were retained. The more I read up on it, the more I am convinced that gelatin must already have had nearly displaced the older print materials in the mass market by 1900 at least in Germany, even though the major brand names continued - within a mere decade after its introduction the brand name of the first mass marketed collodion paper, Aristo, had already moved on to gelatin, and established itself so firmly that it became a synonym for gelatin paper. Later there seems to have been a resurgence of albumen and collodion in the pre WWI years, apparently prompted by them being more able to imitate the surfaces of the then popular pictorialist art print (oil, platinum etc.) prints, but it is hard to estimate to what extent, and after WWI that fashion had evaporated.

I'm sure that was not the case. First, all the 1908 and 1913 collodion papers I listed in this thread were really collodions, not gelatins with the same names. Yes brand names were (and are) often confusing but I don't rely on them. I assume a paper was collodion only when collodion was clearly specified by the manufacturer. Second, collodion prints of the period are abundant throughout the world (check e-bay).

And last but not least: compared to collodion, gelatin was not an advanced technology for POP. In fact, gelatin and collodion POP came virtually simultaneously, and both held their places until the 1920s.

I've checked my old books once more.

Vogel, 1918: "Collodion paper is the most widespread of all printing papers now." "Aristotype [= gelatin POP] paper is rather popular, especially among amateurs."

Gevaert, 1913: "Gevaert Aristo [gelatin POP], due to the simplicity of working with it, is the paper most suitable for amateur beginners and is therefore the most admired by those." "DOP papers... were almost never used in good photo studios... because no previously available DOP could replace the truly established matte collodion paper that so well deserves its reputation, as bromide papers made too dull and grayish prints, and of cold tones, too." Next, Dr. Livinius Gevaert goes on vigorously pushing his new DOP papers to the professional market, stating that the enormous efforts of his brilliant team of scientists made possible for the prints on his new DOPs to be no worse then any collodion prints!

See the trend? The easy to handle Gelatin POP was for amateurs. The faster printing and much faster drying, superior in tones and finer in detail rendition, and pretty robust at high temperature Collodion POP was for pros. When the extra-fast printing DOPs gained enough in quality to be acceptable for pros, collodion POP died out. And the amateurish gelatin POP outlived its superior collodion cousin for several decades.

So if you are mostly interested in amateur vintage photography, you may indeed have very few collodion prints in your collection. And as I am fond of those visit and cabinet cards, I have lots of collodion prints here.