Early Photographic Processes

Beer & Albumen Process

Discovery

Process

Result

In Edinburgh 

Declining Use  - 1877

In his regular article Notes from the North, published in the British Journal of Photography in 1877, John Nicol showed the declining use of the beer and albumen process In Edinburgh.  Nicol wrote:

"Edinburgh Photographic Society has inaugurated the outdoor work of the season by a early and successful excursion as will have been seen from the usual report in a former number."

"What I wish specially to notice, is the fact that Edinburgh, hitherto the stronghold of the beer-and-albumen process, has been unable to resist the encroachment of the gradually-strengthening emulsion tide. and that on the occasion referred to, instead of a few plates by the now popular process as a kind of tentative experiment, emulsion was the rule, and even the long-loved beer-and-albumen the exception."

"But there is still a screw loose somewhere, or our northern Sun treats us to a but a stingy share of his favours."

"Several of the members having faith in the three or four minutes' exposure or even shorter, which are said to give good results south of the Tweed, are mourning sadly over under-exposure, while others have been very successful in their efforts - notably the energetic and successful Secretary, who shows as a result of his six plates as perfect negatives as I have ever seen, and that notwithstanding - or perhaps more correctly, as he puts it, in consequence of - exposures varying from fifteen to forty minutes, and that , too, with an emulsion adjusted so as to contain only the faintest trace of free bromide."

[BJP:  4 May 1877; p.211]

Three weeks after the article above was published, John Nicol wrote a further 'Notes from the North' article for the BJP.  Looking back on the second Outdoor Meeting of Edinburgh Photographic Society, Nicol began his article:

"Towards the close of my last batch of 'Notes' I intimated that the 'beer and albumen'  -  to which our Edinburgh workers had so long adhered and with which most good work had been done - was gradually being displaced by the more popular emulsion process."

"This is as it should be, because , although the old favourite is capable of giving negatives of the most exquisite delicacy, the emulsion possesses many qualities that, coeteris paribus, ought to give it a very delicate performance".

"At the last outdoor meeting of the Edinburgh Photographic Society, there were seven cameras, and with one single exception, all were using emulsion plates, the exceptional artist still clinging to beer and albumen, although he, too, has intimated his intention of giving in, thoroughly satisfied from the results of that excursion that equally perfect negatives may be obtained with much simpler manipulation.

[BJP:  25 May 1877; p.248]