Albumen prints outnumber any other type of photographic positive made during the nineteenth century. They have a sepia color and slightly glossy surface.
The albumen print, also called albumen silver print, was invented in 1850 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, and was the first commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative.
A monochrome albumen print from a Stillfried & Andersen album; negative exposed between 1862 and 1885
A hand-coloured print from the same negative, hand-coloured by Stillfried & Andersen between 1875 and 1885 ...
Because many photographers were intentionally not washing well or were messing with the fixing bath when processing albumen prints, everyone hears that bad processing is the root of all deterioration.
In a few short years film will be a specialty item carried only by a few Internet companies that cater to photographers exploring historic processes such as platinum and albumen prints.
So too, the brown-and-white albumen print, the muted tones of the calotype and even the murky image of tintypes.
Horror of horrors, I've heard that the latest Nikon software can't even read the NEFs from older cameras and that you need to load older software to read them. Just like raw eggs, unless you process it into something like an egg-albumen print or a ...
 See also: Camera, Time, Image, Photography, Prints
  
|
RSS
