The importance of Daguerreotypes as examples of one of the earliest forms of photography and their unique material characteristics make their conservation and preservation timely subjects. Currently recommended cleaning methods are unsatisfactory because they result in irreparable alteration of the Daguerreian micro-structure, which is responsible for the image and its characteristic appearance. A new method, physical sputter cleaning, was evaluated and found to be a gentle, effective method for the removal of silver sulfide tarnish films from both colored and non-colored Daguerreotypes without substantially altering their microstructure or appearance. Furthermore, details of the microstructure as a function of different experimental sputtering parameters are discussed.