Sort each process by what it yields at the end of an exposure.
Groups: A unique positive image · A negative made to be printed from · A positive made directly on paper without a negative
- Bayard's 1839 process
- Gelatin dry plate, 1871
- Daguerreotype
- Ambrotype, a collodion plate backed with black to read as a positive
- Talbot's calotype
Hints
- Ask in each case whether a second print could be made without rephotographing.
- The ambrotype is a negative that has been made to look like a positive.
Show the answer
A unique positive image: Daguerreotype, Ambrotype, a collodion plate backed with black to read as a positive
A negative made to be printed from: Talbot's calotype, Gelatin dry plate, 1871
A positive made directly on paper without a negative: Bayard's 1839 process
The ambrotype is the instructive case: physically it is an under-exposed collodion negative, and backing it with black velvet makes the eye read it as a positive. It shows that "negative" and "positive" describe how a plate is used and viewed, not only what is on it.
Practise The Birth of Photography and Its First Theory
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Photography I is free to start.
More questions on The Birth of Photography and Its First Theory
- Arrange these events in the invention of photography in chronological order.
- The daguerreotype was sharper than the calotype and dominated the market for a decade, yet the calotype's…
- Which are true of the daguerreotype?
- Complete the account of the invention and its theory.
- Niépce reported that the view from his window at Le Gras required an exposure measured in hours. How many…
- Match each theorist to the term they contributed.
- John Herschel identified hyposulphite of soda as a fixer and gave photography the terms negative and positive.
- Arrange the steps of Talbot's negative-positive process in the order they are carried out.
- Peirce classified the photograph as an index because light physically imprints the subject onto chemistry,…