One thing that has interested me, besides film or wet-plate collodion, is what Fox Talbot's pictures may of looked like. Henry Fox-Talbot invented the first repeatable process for making pictures in 1835. The Frenchman Daguerre invented his own process in 1841 and that was based on using a metal plate instead of a sensitised piece of paper.
So, loading up some dark-slides with Ilford printing paper I went out with my MPP 5x4 inch camera. Printing paper does not contain any ISO (film speed) so I had to guess. I shot three plates for each scene, with 10, 20 and forty seconds exposure. The 20 second exposure worked, and I developed the prints in Ilford print developer for one minute at 20 deg C. When the paper was developed they were negatives, so I scanned the prints then inverted the curve using Photoshop.
A success, and I am really happy with the pictures. I now have a feeling how a Fox-Talbot Calotype picture may of looked. Not fantastic, but in the early 1800's the results would have been monumental - just as big as the day when the digital camera arrived.
MPP 5x4 inch. Ilford Multigrade Paper and Ilford Developer. Epson Expression Scanner.