What Is Tintype Photography?

A tintype is a 19th-century photographic process that creates a one-of-a-kind image directly on a metal plate using the historic wet plate collodion process. Unlike modern photography, each tintype is a unique physical photograph created by hand.

Each tintype begins by hand-coating a metal plate with collodion and bathing it in silver nitrate, making the surface sensitive to light. While still wet, the plate is loaded into the camera and exposed, then immediately developed, washed, dried, and carefully varnished.

This historic tintype photography process creates a handmade photograph entirely through chemistry, light, and silver, no film, no digital files, and no two tintypes exactly alike.