Collodion: Tintype Camera
Wet plate portraits since 1851
Only for iPhone
$2.99 · Designed for iPhone. Not verified for macOS.
iPhone
Shoot like it's 1851. Blue-sensitive plates turn lips black and skin to porcelain. One price, no subscription, nothing leaves your phone.
Collodion sees light the way a glass plate did in 1851.
The wet-plate process was blue-sensitive and blind to red. Lips go dark. Skin turns to porcelain. Freckles come forward. Blue skies burn to white. Collodion reproduces that spectral response, not a sepia filter on top of a modern photo, so your plates look like they were pulled from a darkroom tent, not a preset.
THREE PLATES
• Tintype — warm silver on black iron. The classic.
• Silver — a clean studio plate. Cool and sharp.
• Ambrotype — collodion on dark glass. Milky and soft.
A REAL CAMERA
• The plate look is live in the viewfinder, so you compose in 1851.
• Tap the shutter, hold still, and watch the plate develop.
• Petzval fall-off: the plate is sharp at the center and softens toward the edges, the way an 1850s portrait lens drew.
• Exposure, grain and edge softness dials. Nothing else to learn.
• Front and rear cameras. Import any photo from your library and develop it as a plate.
HONEST
• One price. No subscription, no account, no sign-in.
• No analytics, no tracking, no network. Your photos never leave your iPhone.
• Saves full-resolution plates to Photos. Shares anywhere.
Collodion is for portraits of people you love, made the way portraits were first made.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Collodion now speaks Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Every plate name, dial and message is translated.
Also in 1.1: the saved plate and the viewfinder share one processing chain, so what you see is exactly what you get.
The developer, 建慧 朱, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- 建慧 朱
- Size
- 1.6 MB
- Category
- Photo & Video
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
English and 7 more
- English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Scott Zhu
