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A tintype, circa 1870, of a man leaning on a hitching post.

The tintype (melainotype or ferrotype), is a photographic process invented in the United States in 1856 by Prof. Hamilton Smith of the Kenyon College in Ohio. He patented the great american tintype on February 19, 1856 and it was first called a melainotype, then ferrotype (by a rival manufacturer of the iron plates used), but the world knows them as tintypes.^[1]

The process is a wet plate process. This is a process where the photographic emulsion is contained in liquid collodion. The ambrotype was the first wet plate collodion process, invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851 and introduced in the United States by James Ambrose Cutting in 1854.

While the ambrotype remained very popular in the rest of the world, the tintype process superseded the ambrotype in the United States by the end of the Civil War and went on to become the most common photographic process until the introduction of modern gelatin based processes, and the invention of the reloadable amateur camera by the Kodak company. Ferrotypes waned in popularity by the end of the 19th century, although a few makers were still around as late as the 1950s and on some carnivals in Europe these images are still made as novelty.

The tintype was a minor improvement to the ambrotype, replacing the glass plate of the original process with a thin piece of black enameled, or japanned, iron (thus "ferro"). The new materials reduced the cost of the productions considerably, and the image, on gelatin-silver emulsion on the varnished surface, has proven to be very durable. Like the ambrotype, the image is technically negative, but, due to the black background, appears as a positive. Since the tintype 'film' was the same as the final print, most tintype images appear reversed (left-to-right) from reality. Some cameras were fitted with mirrors or a 45-degree prism to reverse and correct the image, while some photographers would photograph the reversed ferrotype to produce a properly oriented image.

Tintypes were relatively simple and fast to prepare, compared to other early photographic techniques. A photographer could prepare, shoot, develop and varnish a tintype plate in a few minutes, having it ready for a customer quickly. The earlier melainotypes were often cased, like daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, but uncased images in paper sleeves and for albums were popular from the beginning.

Ferrotyping refers to a finishing treatment applied to glossy photo paper to bring out its reflective properties. In it, newly-developed, still-wet photographic prints and enlargements which have been made on glossy paper are squegeed onto a polished metal plate called a "ferrotyping plate." When these are later peeled off the plate, they will retain a high reflective gloss.

• Wet Plate Forum Board
• A Contemporary Ferrotype - aka Tintype
  
• Brief history of the wet collodion process