A second collodion spin-off method was the ferrotype, first described by French photographer Adolphe Alexandre Martin in 1853. The name ferrotype (in Latin ferrum is iron) was originally used by Robert Hunt in the mid-1840s for a paper negative process (Energiatype) that utilized an iron-compound developer. Basically an ambrotype made on a thin piece of sheet iron instead of glass, the ferrotype was an enameled black or brown-black plate that was coated with collodion and sensitized just before exposure. The process was patented in February 1856 by Hamilton L. Smith (b. 1819), who assigned his patent rights to his collaborator Peter Neff. The patent only covered how to produce what Neff advertised as melainotypes. Neff attempted to exploit the process’s commercial potential by building a tinplate factory, sending out teachers to instruct daguerreotype operators in the new method, and giving away a 53-page manual, The Melainotype Process, Complete. Tintypes, as they were known in America, were made in a variety of sizes, the most common being 2 1/4 x 3 1/2 inches (the same size as the carte de visite), and were often hand-colored. The name, tintype, evolved from popular usage. The tintype never achieved a high level of market influence, but it did find a niche and outlasted all the wet-plate processes (a dry tintype process was introduced in 1891). It was used by itinerant and street photographers until it was replaced by the Polaroid process in the 1950s. [2|4|4|881]Additional examples:
 
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LL/24363 LL/32255 LL/9081 
LL/30977 LL/30978 LL/24358 

Tintypes were the visual currency of soldiers and their families during the American Civil War because they were lightwight, durable, and cheap, with little "gem" sized tintypes, taken with a multilens camera, being sold in multiples for 25 cents. Many tintypists were unskilled in other photographic processes, and occupied the lowest rung on the photographic ladder. In fact, big city studio photographers considered tintypes to be low-class pictures practiced by "cheapjacks" who were only interested in making quick money, who knew nothing about photography, and whose deceitful practices diminished the profession’s reputation. Those who specialized in the process often traveled from town to town, working on the street, out of a wagon, or in a rented room, using a modified camera that doubled as a tiny darkroom and allowed all the processing to take place inside the camera. Such cameras had slotted bottoms to hold canisters of developer and fixer for processing. After fixing, the plate was given a quick rinse in a bucket of water, waved through the air to speed drying, and handed to the customer. It was considered an instant process since it could be done in about a minute. The tintype was never as popular in Europe, where it was used almost exclusively by street and seaside photographers. Like most daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, tintypes are generally unsigned works. Its practitioners are the largely forgotten and unnamed photographers we know today as "anonymous" or "unknown photographer." [2|4|4|883]Additional examples:
 
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The tintype’s image did not jump out at the viewer but lay flat as if it were rolled onto the tin surface. The tintype’s tonal range appeared uniform because its black backing absorbed a great deal of light, and it did not possess the mirrorlike sheen of the daguerreotype or the glass depth of the ambrotype to enhance contrast. However, what the tintype lacked in aesthetic qualities it made up in social significance: Citizens could have their likeness recorded for less than 25 cents, further democratizing the process of commemoration. The tintype’s universal affordability also spoke to the nineteenth-century American notion that societal position was not solely predetermined by one’s birth status, visually denoting the American Dream of possible upward mobility. Democracy not only gave the industrial classes a taste for the arts and letters, it also brought a technological spirit to the arts. [2|4|4|884]Additional examples:
 
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LL/11070 LL/24366 LL/13258 
LL/29770 LL/24361 LL/10833 
LL/24292 LL/6929 LL/9069 
LL/9072 LL/4353 LL/2757 

The tintype’s lower price, its practitioners’ lack of formal artistic training, and its immediacy reduced the specialness surrounding the act of having a picture made. Pictures became less serious, more spur-of-the-moment affairs. The idea of casual pictures for amusement became popular with tintypes and was further encouraged when tintypists introduced humorous background scenes of painted canvas with cutouts through which sitters could insert their heads. People’s "camera attitude" shifted as they played and acted informally for the camera. This type of unpremeditated silliness and lack of respect had seldom been previously pictured. Discounting any technical limitations due to long exposures, smiles had been considered inappropriate for an occasion that was seen as making a social statement about the sitter. The spontaneous tintype spirit of picturing the vernacular was the precursor of the snapshot sensibility, which can also be observed in photobooth portraits. [2|4|4|885]Additional examples:
 
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The third spin-off from collodion was the carte de visite, or visiting card. A number of photographers claimed credit for introducing the carte de visite, but the idea was patented by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (1819–1889) and introduced to the public in Paris in 1854. [2|4|5|887]Additional examples:
 
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The concept of using photographs on documents such as licenses, passports, permits, and visiting cards was proposed by Louis Dodero of Marseilles in 1851. The carte de visite, or carte, was a 2 1/4 x 3 1/2-inch photograph, usually a full or bust-length portrait, mounted on a 2 1/2 x 4-inch paper card. A number of exposures were made with a multilens camera on a single collodion wet-plate and were contact-printed onto albumen paper. Individual exposures were cut apart and mounted on cards. The multilens, referred to as tubes, could be individually uncovered (there were no shutters), making possible a variety of poses on a single plate. The intent was to take the time and expense needed to make one print and divide it by many prints, reducing the cost of each unit. Numbers were the deciding factors; the more cartes people had made, the greater the photographer’s profit. Enhanced savings were also realized since retouching was not needed, as many defects were not noticeable in the small prints, and the processing procedures could still be performed by unskilled labor. Daguerreotypists like Abraham Bogardus initially dismissed the carte. Bogardus recalled his first impressions of the carte as "a little thing; a man standing by a fluted column, full length, the head about twice the size of the head of a pin. I laughed at that, little thinking I should at a day not far distant be making them at the rate of a thousand a day." [2|4|5|888]Additional examples:
 
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After a slow start the carte became a hit in May 1859 when legend has it that Napoleon III, leading his army out of Paris on a military campaign against Austria, stopped to have a publicity portrait made at Disdéri’s studio. It proved a successful public relations tactic for both men as people flocked to have their carte made at the same place as the emperor. Disdéri became a celebrity and was appointed Court Photographer. In 1860 Disdéri redecorated his studio, the "Palace of Photography," in the ornate Second Empire style with portraits of della Porta, Niépce, Daguerre, and Talbot along with allegorical statues signifying Chemistry, Painting, Physics, and Sculpture. The Apotheosis of Light was painted on the ceiling. By 1861 Disdéri was reported to be the richest photographer in the world, eventually opening branch studios in London, Madrid, and Toulon. His Paris studio had a staff of 90, could make thousands of prints a day, and promised 48-hour delivery. [2|4|5|889]Additional examples:
 
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The carte did not become chic in England until August 1860, when John Jabez Edwin Mayall (1813–1901), who learned daguerreotypy working in a Philadelphia gallery and returned home to become one of London’s most elegant studio photographers, published his Royal Album, consisting of fourteen carte portraits of the royal family. Hundreds of thousands of cartes of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were sold, leading to an explosion of celebrity photographs. Photographers courted personalities to sit for them, often paying a fee to the sitter and/or royalties based on sales. The practice of collecting and exchanging photographs and placing them in embellished, manufactured albums began with the Royal Album cartes. Mayall’s carte business reportedly generated more income than any other English photographer’s, with his studio turning out a half million cartes a year. Mayall also patented the Ivorytype in 1855, a method in which a photographic image was printed on artificial ivory that had been sensitized with either albumen or collodion. This imitation effect was popular as it played off the association of ivory as a valuable object reserved for the power elite. [2|4|5|891]Additional examples:
 
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The royal family itself was keen on photography. Queen Victoria was said to have over one hundred photo albums, many arranged and inscribed by Prince Albert. The Queen enjoyed giving and sending photographs. The royal family not only consented to the sale of their cartes but commissioned numerous portraits, collected contemporary photographs, were patrons of The Photographic Society, and even had a darkroom installed at Windsor Castle for their private use, increasing interest in photography and giving it status and credibility. [2|4|5|892]Additional examples:
 
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YouTube id: cNynbJmJrYc

The carte was a formula picture; no particular effort was made to reveal the sitter’s character. Even though posing equipment was still required, shorter exposure times allowed more naturalistic styles to evolve, and people appeared less rigid and stern. In various poses controlled by the photographer, from vignetted heads whose undefined edges merged into the background to full-length images, the sitter could look either directly at the camera or gaze off to one side. The backgrounds could be neutral, or they could be elaborate painted settings. Most scenes included props, such as fancy upholstered chairs, balustrades, columns, drapery, and furniture. People often wore clothes or held objects that revealed their status or their aspirations. Cartes were personal, hand-held portraits made to be preserved in albums and stir memories: "This is what I look like, this is what I do, this is who I am." [2|4|5|893]Additional examples:
 
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Cartes of royalty, actors, politicians, and people in the news were widely circulated. In 1861, the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad Co. issued identity cartes for their season-ticket holders. Abraham Lincoln credited his election to his Cooper Union speech and to his carte made by Mathew Brady. Stage figures, such as Maggie Mitchell with her trademark mischievous gamine/ urchin role, became cult personalities in the United States through the publicity supplied by their cartes. Besides celebrities there was a market among the educated for cartes of authors, such as Charles Dickens, George Sand, and Victor Hugo. In addition, leaders of reform movements, including the American abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe, were in demand. [2|4|5|895]Additional examples:
 
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Cartes catered to the armchair traveler with views of moated castles and foreign lands, to the sophisticated with works of art, to the believers of "Manifest Destiny" with bare-breasted natives who could be both ogled and looked down on, and to the morose with "freaks of nature" like a person with no arms who could write with his feet. Cartes provided the realistic images the public now expected at affordable prices and furthered the picturing of more diverse subjects. [2|4|5|896]Additional examples:
 
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LL/10901 LL/94 LL/13265 
LL/11363 

Typically, the front of the carte had the photographer’s name imprinted below the image, and for celebrity and other public portraits, which most cartes were not, a caption and statement of copyright were added. Many of the backsides carried advertising logos that generally included the photographer’s and/or publisher’s name and address. Additional notes reminded the public that copies of the carte could be reordered, with pronouncements such as: "Negatives preserved, Duplicates can be had at any time." [2|4|5|897]Additional examples:
 
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LL/11976 

Some of the cartes that are most interesting as social documents were peddled as fundraisers. One carte of three small children stated that: [2|4|5|898]

As cartes were not deemed inviolable objects, the public joined the titling process, adding inscriptions to the backside, or verso, of the cartes, anticipating the role that snapshots and postcards have often served. A carte of a dapper young man asked: "Please acknowledge the receipt of this by returning one of yours. J. Crane." A middle-aged man thought his image was worth many cartes: "Aunt Susan, you must be sure and send me some of all of you as soon as you can. Me." Others provided factual information about the sitter: "Ma when 16." Still others offered commentary: "The arch traitor Jeff Davis." A woman in a long dress, holding a straw hat, wondered whether it was really possible to be known through one’s carte. On the verso she wrote: "Do you know me?" A piercing example of the reality of war can be seen in a Civil War portrait album that contains brief penciled comments recording each person’s name and what happened to him: "killed at . . . , wounded at . . . , lost leg, died of wound, eye shot out at . . . , lost arm." A portrait of four soldiers in uniform, with devil-may-care looks, was inscribed: "All killed in battle." [2|4|5|902]

The carte fad peaked about 1866, and as the fad began to decline photographers such as Edward Wilson bemoaned the change and searched for something else to reinvigorate declining sales: [2|4|6|904]

The answer to this dilemma came in the cabinet photograph, essentially an enlarged carte designed for portrait work. The name predates photography and may refer to the fifteenth and sixteenth century Augsburg cabinets that were produced for well-to-do bourgeois to hold collectible items or the small cabinet canvases made by the Dutch and Flemish painters for merchants’ houses. The cabinet card format was introduced in 1862 by Marion & Co. of London with the publication of a series of 6 3/4 x 4 1/2-inch views by G. W. Wilson. The format gained popularity when F. R. Window’s London studio applied it to making portraits in 1865–1866. The increased image size showed more detail and was considered more aesthetically gratifying than the smaller carte. In the United States, the carte did not yield ground until the early 1870s. However, as time passed the cabinet swept the portrait field, and photographic suppliers began to make new card mounts and albums as the collecting mania that had faded with the carte craze began anew. [2|4|6|906]Additional examples:
 
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LL/12988