This equipment was more than just a camera, which itself was often a large, accordioned box with a lens on one end, plus the glass or copper plates used to take the image. Most permanent photography studios were located in major cities, but photographers with out-of-town clients would haul their equipment outside city limits in horse-drawn wagons.
Once the sheet was exposed to light during the taking of the picture, the photographer used a mercury vapor to bring out the image, and then set it with salt.īecause the film process used highly toxic and often dangerous chemicals, photographs were almost exclusively taken by professionals until the twentieth century.
For daguerreotype images, popular between 18, the photographer put a sheet of copper, coated with silver and exposed to iodine vapor, into the camera. Early film development processes, like tintypes and daguerreotypes, relied on potentially dangerous chemical interactions that were best handled in a controlled environment. Early cameras were cumbersome, costly, and often required specialist knowledge of the devices and developing chemicals to use them correctly.
