Genealogy Chat

Hi Lesley This site might prove helpful. It has lots of interesting links: http://theoldentimes[.]com/photolinks.html. I found Andrew Morris' site "19th Century Photography" of help. He has a section on Dating, which shows how to identify the period when photos were taken by clothing styles. There are also links describing the various photographic processes, etc. Hope it helps. Merry Christmas and God Bless you, Lynne x

my slant on the sepia process is this: sepia toning (as mentioned above) replaces the silver oxide part of a photo that is likely to deteriorate with a more stable pigment, gold & platinum is even more stable. it makes the photo last longer. the cost of the paper isnt a factor in the use of sepia prints - a standard sepia toned image can only be achieved once a silver oxide print has been developed. but the cost of the extra process is a factor it is an additional process, an additional expense and as such was often used when prints were expensive special purchases - i.e. commissioned portraits. the arrival of mass photography, the kodak brownie, meant that snaps were likely to be needed of whole rolls of film and at increasingly cheap prices as more took it up. the toning process got left out. it is still the case that a commissioned work will be toned, and on archival paper (low acidity) almost every exhibited photo will be printed and toned to remove the unstable silver. the only difference now is that the warm brown has connotations of quaint oldness, so prints are more often toned with platinum or gold rich and crisp blacks with more life to them than the plain old silver oxide most of us are familiar with. It is a frightening moment when you first tone a photo, watching the image disolve away completely in the bleach, always slightly doubting that it will reappear when you dip it in the toner. the word sepia originaly refered to a pigment extracted from squid ink, used for textiles, inks and paints. in photography it just denotes a toned image with a brownish appearance similar to the sepia dyestuff.

You might find this site useful: http://www.rogerco.freeserve.co.uk/index.htm Despite googling history of photography I can't find any actual mention of sepia prints at all! nell

As far as I know black and white came in to its own at the begining of the last cent (1900s) but like most things it was slow to take over totaley and some pics were still Sepia at the end of WW1. The reson was cost the new paper was exspensive so untill costs cought up with needs that is how things were.

Hi does anyone know what eara photo's were in sepia as aposed to black and white.?