Live data from Hacker News

Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

boredpanda.com

11–20 of 212 posts

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#11
post #2

Great find. Thanks for posting. I love it when photos from this era occasionally emerge showing people acting naturally. We're so used to seeing the vast majority of Victorian photographs showing dour-faced people sitting or standing stiffly to attention, that it's sometimes difficult to believe they had human emotions, just like us.

It’s great. I also love video footage from that era as well, capturing the ordinary bustle of the streets. It’s fun when it’s local and you can point to familiar places. One of my favourites is Victoria and Vancouver BC around 1900[0]. [0] https://youtu.be/Jp1qWV5OZec

Here’s one from 1895, upscaled to 4k60 and colourized: https://youtu.be/EqbOhqXHL7E

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The change in "hat culture" is pretty incredible though. That's a LOT of hats!

As a balding man with a round head I wish hats other than Baseball caps were acceptable.

As nothing in particular I wish braces were acceptable! They make so much more sense than tightening a belt laterally to defy gravity by friction.

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The change in "hat culture" is pretty incredible though. That's a LOT of hats!

As a balding man with a round head I wish hats other than Baseball caps were acceptable.

you can start a new trend

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#16
The last photo of the man being affectionate with his young daughter is surprising to me. All my life, I've thought that men born before 1950, like my father, just didn't do that sort of thing. And yet here is a man born a hundred years earlier doing just that.

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#18

This is the first time I've felt like the people in old photos aren't aliens.

The change in "hat culture" is pretty incredible though. That's a LOT of hats!

They also seem to enjoy tipping their hats or lifting them momentarily as a greeting or hello.

Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)

#19
I'm the family's unofficial archivist so I inherited a bunch of 8mm reels from the 1950s and most of the camcorder tapes.

This candid pictures remind me of those 1950s reels.

Since film cameras were new back then, almost everyone in the videos ignored the cameras and carried on with their normal activities. Just normal real life. Those videos are very natural.

As the decades pass, people start reacting to the video cameras differently. Videos from the 1980s and 1990s are full of "say hello to the camera scenes" when people unnaturally turn to the camera and say hello to it or make faces to it.

In the 2010s, cameras become smaller people start showing their best sides when the camera is nearby, like an automatic instagram pose style reflex.

Post reply on HN