To be sure it cannot be denied but that this necessary article of utility in the photographic art has undergone a sad deterioration in quality owing to the increasing demand and great reduction in price—the plates of the present day being by no means so heavily coated with silver as formerly—but the complaint alluded to is not predicated so much upon the thinness of silver as upon a mysterious something which has conferred upon the plates the epithet of not good.
That this complaint is in a great measure groundless appears evident from the fact that while, with the same brand of plates one operator can work successfully, another encounters the greatest difficulty; while one is able to produce beautifully clear and altogether satisfactory results, the other labors under the troublesome annoyance of innumerable specks, large dark insensitive patches and brown map-like portions, together with divers other blemishes, sufficient to prevent him from obtaining anything like a tolerable impression.
From this wide difference in the results of the two operators using identically the same article, it is but reasonable to conclude that the complaint is founded in error; while the inference is no more than just, that the fault may be traced to a want of practical skill on the part of the complaining operator himself; rather than to the inferior quality of the plates.
The question, then, whether the plates are unfit for use, or whether those who pronounce them so understand how to use them, appears to be satisfactorily answered. It therefore becomes a matter worthy of investigation, to ascertain what superior judgment and skill one operator possesses over another which enable him to work successfully a quality of plate, pronounced by the other entirely useless.
Suppose we make a critical examination of one of the repudiated plates. From its external appearance we have little hesitation in pronouncing it to be French; indeed, this presumption is strongly corroborated by the fact that it is ornamented upon one of its corners with a brand to designate the manufactory from which it emanated.
Upon close inspection we cannot fail to notice a striking peculiarity upon the surface; the roughness is very remarkable; the planishing hammer has left amazingly visible indications of its busy work. One would suppose the manufacturer intended the surface of the plate to represent the undulations of the sea, instead of that smooth and level character so strongly recommended by M. Daguerre.