The tintype photographic process is based on the earlier ambrotype process, with an iron substrate instead of glass (tin is not involved). Black paint beneath the emulsion causes the negative image to appear positive. Tin-types were less expensive than dageurreotypes and more robust than ambrotypes. Multiple copies could produced simultaneously using cameras with arrays of 2, 4, 12 or more lenses. The pictures were then separated with tinsnips.

Images from the same plate were not quite identical copies since the position of each lens was slightly different, which produced stereoviews as a by-product. Such images were sometimes mounted side by side to form a stereoview. This example may have actually been intended as a stereoview from the start.