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Curious about Daguerreotype photos? I was. Jonathan takes you on a tour on what goes in to this old and fantastic photographic art - "The Daguerreotype was the first patented photographic process. Patented by Daguerre in 1839 after ripping off substantial portions of the technology from Joseph-Nicephore Niepce in the 1820s and 1830s, the Daguerreotype was heralded at the time as an amazing invention. The Daguerreotype remained popular for only a short time (25 years or so at the most) because it was (and remains) expensive, irreproducible, and tricky to make in the first place. Why did a technology that had so much going against it stick around for so long? Daguerreotypes are beautiful in the way that diamonds are beautiful. Precious and rare is the Daguerreotype. Silver + iodine + light + UV = photograph." - Link.
Related:
Daguerreotype photographs - Link.
Imaging archives - Link.
A good discussion of Daguerreotype making the actual "old fashioned way" http://www.daguerre.org/resource/process/remin.html
As you may note the orignal process used fuming bromine (incredibly lethal) as well as iodine to sensitize the plate and fuming mercury (incredibly toxic) to develop.
As a holographer who has dealt with fuming bromine bleaches I can attest to the efficacy and incredible danger of the original process.
What would be really neat would be to do some non-toxic Lippman Photography:
http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/lippmann.html
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