Cartes de Visite Card Film Plate Digitisation

Professional digitisation scanning services. Creating high resolution digital formats for long term preservation.  Working with museums, historical archival companies, corporations and private clients, we can cater for small units to bulk large orders in the many 1000's.  

Cartes de visite take their name from French “calling cards,” which they were supposedly meant to replace. 

Measuring 4.5 by 2.5 inches, there were the same size as calling cards but were seldom used as such. Though the process was patented by Andre Adolphe Disderi in Paris in 1854, it did not become popular until 1859. Cartes de visite were usually produced as albumen prints from wet collodion negatives, but most paper print processes could also be used. 

A special camera with multiple lenses - as few as four, or more than eight - and a movable plate holder was used to make as many images as possible on a single plate. A contact print was then made, and the individual photographs were cut apart and mounted onto cards. 

When interest in this small format began to wane, studios introduced larger formats, including cabinet (4.5 x 6.5 inches) and boudoir (5.25 x 8.5 inches). The popularity of card photographs as a format continued into the 20th century, with gelatin and collodion print papers eventually replacing albumen. The backing card stock was often decorated, and people often wrote identifying information directly on the card.