William Henry Fox, although not a painter, also saw the Daguerreotype as a threat to his invention, the calotype(Talbotype). The calotype produced a negative picture on paper with the lights of the images recorded as darks and the darks as lights. A positive was made on another sheet of chemically sensitized paper, exposed to light through the negative. Talbot is given credit for discovering the "negative-positive" principle, which is the process used in modern photography.

    Compared to the Daguerreotypes, the quality of the early Calotypes was somewhat inferior, but the great advantage of the Calotype was the unlimited number of positive prints that could be made. However, paper's imperfections were a problem with the Calotype, so Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor invented a process for sensitizing a glass plate with an emulsion of silver iodide and fresh, whipped eggwhite (albumin) capable of rendering fine detail and good tone which was impossible with the calotype.