Restoring a tintype.
For families with photographs from the 1860s through 1890s — usually a great-grandparent or great-great-grandparent. The chemistry, the care, and what restoration can realistically do.
Tintypes were the disposable Polaroid of their day. A photograph made directly on a thin sheet of iron, coated with a wet collodion emulsion, developed in a few minutes, handed to the customer for a shilling or two. They were the photograph studios' workhorse from roughly 1855 to the 1890s.
If you have a Victorian family photograph that feels heavier than it should — like a piece of biscuit tin — it's probably a tintype.
What we can do.
- Scan it at archival resolution. Tintypes need a flatbed scanner, not a phone — the iron sheet reflects light unevenly, and we use polarising filters at the studio.
- Restore the digital image. Once scanned, the restoration work is the same as any other 19th-century photograph — descratch, contrast recovery, removal of mirror-image scratches, tonal balance.
- Convert to colour. Hand-tinted tintypes were common at the time (a little pink on the cheeks, a touch of gold on a watch chain). Modern colourisation works well on tintypes because the underlying tonal information is good.
- Print and frame at any size up to roughly A2 without significant quality loss.
What we can't do.
- Repair the original tintype itself. That's conservation, not restoration — different specialism. If the tintype is actively flaking or shedding emulsion, we'll point you toward a professional conservator (the National Conservation Service or a local specialist) before any handling.
- Recover detail that isn't there. Tintypes from the 1860s have a particular softness — the wet collodion process wasn't capable of sharp detail. We can sharpen perceptually, but we can't invent texture that the original emulsion never captured.
- Identify the subject. A surprisingly common request. Tintype portraits often have no inscription. Some family-history specialists can work from clothing and hairstyle to date the photograph; we generally know to within a decade. For positive identification, we'd point you toward the Society of Genealogists or your county records office.
If you'd like to send us one.
Tintypes must come to the studio by post — phone scans don't work well. We send a Royal Mail Special Delivery kit with archival sleeves and rigid card protection (£10 surcharge over a Single Photograph for the extra packaging). The original comes back to you by Royal Mail Special Delivery the same way.
We scan, then return the original first, before any restoration work begins on the digital file. You have the artefact back in your hands within a week of the original arriving at the studio.
For tintypes, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, or other Victorian-era photograph formats, please write to us first at hello@keptandkin.com before posting. We'll send the right kit.