Microphotograph

For photographs of microscopic subjects, see Photomicrograph.

Microphotographs are photographs shrunk to microscopic scale.^[2] Microphotography is the art of making such images. Applications of microphotography include espionage such as in the Hollow Nickel Case, where they are known as microfilm.

A 1 mm diameter microphotograph, c. 1858^[1]

Using the daguerreotype process, John Benjamin Dancer was one of the first to produce microphotographs, in 1839.^[3] He achieved a reduction ratio of 160:1. Dancer perfected his reduction procedures with Frederick Scott Archer's wet collodion process, developed in 1850–51, but he dismissed his decades-long work on microphotographs as a personal hobby, and did not document his procedures. The idea that microphotography could be no more than a novelty was an opinion shared by the 1858 Dictionary of Photography, which called the process "somewhat trifling and childish."^[4]

Novelty viewing devices such as Stanhopes were once a popular way to carry and view microphotographs.^[2]

See also

• Macro photography
• Microprinting