Behind The Scenes at Rachel’s Tintype Session

female model posing in a winter jacket

The weather forecast was for unseasonably warm temperatures so we set up some tintype sessions. While it was warm (especially for the end of January) there was still a chilly wind. But somehow Rachel managed to hold back the shivering long enough to hold still for a set of tintype photos. We also managed to capture a nice set of digital photos. So let’s go behind the scenes at Rachel’s tintype session.

Here we see a comparison shot of a tintype and a digital of the same pose. Remember, the tintype is not a filter or a digital manipulation. It is a 5x7in image on metal made directly in the camera. The image is pure silver metal. Other differences include:

  • Tonal shifts. Collodion, the photographic medium in tintypes, is sensitive to different colors of light than digital sensors. A tintype will show blues as almost white and reds & oranges as black. 
  • Subtle differences in the face and body shape because the focal length of the lenses are different. Focal Length Impact is a well known factor in photography – see my link for more visuals
  • The tintype image is reversed! Left is right and right is left. Tintypes are actually negatives so everything is backwards.
  • Image resolution. The digital is from a Canon R5 camera with a 45 megapixel sensor. The 5×7 tintype has dramatically more resolution – maybe as much as 1000 or 2000 megapixels. The images is formed from atoms of silver metal so even a microscope would not show “grain”.
female model in winter coat
tintype of a female model in a winter coat

Our next set of photos uses different treatments of the same picture. The joy of digital is you can do unlimited photo manipulation. Here I used different color look up (LUT) files to change the look of the photo. LUTs are an essential part of color grading for movies and I love to use then for still photos. The Matrix “green” cast is an example of a LUT – each scene in the Matrix has a consistent look and feel.  

My last grading was all black and white. I like tintypes because of their visual quality and tonality. You can achieve a similar quality with digital files.

I hope you enjoyed our look behind the scenes at Rachel’s tintype session. You can see her tintypes on my 19th century photography page SunandSilver.photo 

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Here are all of Rachel’s behind the scenes pictures – enjoy!

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