Restoring a Photograph from the 1870s

How do you go about doing that, anyway? Top Dog Imaging gives an interesting step-by-step.

From the piece...

"Tintype" is a misnomer as tintypes were typically iron sheets that were coated with black paint or baked enamel that were then brushed over with a light-sensitive emulsion. The tintype process came about in the mid 1850s. During the Civil War, itinerant professional photographers visited encampments and took pictures of the troops. The soldiers sent these pictures home to their loved ones. The advantages of tintypes over other photographic processes (daguerreotypes and ambrotypes) of that era are that they were inexpensive to produce and the plates were relatively easy to process. In a sense, tintypes democratized photography. The process remained popular until the advent of celluloid roll film and the Kodak camera.

Because tintypes were once common, they often show up today at curio shops, flea markets, and on occasion, auctions.