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HankronI think Scott & Jimmy's project would be a worthwhile project. My opinion is that a big database is not neccesary, in part as true populations will never be identified and pop reports would be deceptive and misued. As there will neccesarilly be great gaps in information and pricing, subjective opinion and brief summaries are neccesary.
My feeling is that there should be a listing of known 19th century Major League Baseball photographers. Each listing would consist of a brief overview of his photos that are known to exist. This includes subject, type, era, etc. A commemnt on known rarity, pricing, etc is fine. Obviously, some photographer's listings would be brief as perhaps only one known photo of his is known.
When most collectors find a photographer's stamp on the back of the photo, they simply want to know if anyone has heard of him and if he well known. When I tell a collector that George Burke was the official photographer for the Chicago Cubs and many of his images were used to make the Goudey cards, the collector will say, "That's good to know, I'm glad I asked."
Sometimes, they simply want to hear, "Yeah, I've heard of him before. He's well known amongst collectors. It will give a premium in price to have his stamp on back."
In short, I think a listing a known photographers is a fine idea, but I think a straight statistical database would be misleading and misread.