Paper negative

Today paper negatives are used mostly black and white and created with pinhole type cameras. These are cameras that are essentially a dark box with a pinhole on one side that serves as the lens.

Print made from a paper negative that was brushed with silver iodide and other chemicals and exposed in the camera - a process patented by Fox Talbot in 1841.

Much of this work involved the use of solarized prints as paper negatives, so that the final prints showed the texture of the paper negatives and had figures with black outlines.

In 1885 they could present a new improved paper negative film which was called the "American Film". The light sensitive layer of that film was made of gelatine.

It is probably apparent that a positive image (reversing the reversal of the subject, in this case) can be made by sandwiching the paper negative with another piece of photo-sensitive paper; now the negative-paper serves the place of the object; ...

The calotype, introduced in 1841; a negative-positive process using a paper negative. The ambrotype, introduced in 1854; a negative image on glass, with a black paper backing.

In 1835, Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot created the first paper negative. Nine years later in 1844, Talbot patented the Calotype.

See also: Negative, Camera, Photograph, Film, Photography