Couldn't find a single obese person in the photos. Really goes to show how the modern living has destroyed our health
Or maybe the photographer simply didn't take pictures of obese people, for whatever reason.
Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
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Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#172Great 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.
What confuses me: These are good photos! Many are sharp, well lit. And they were made from a pocket camera of people who didn't specifically stand still for the photo. Why on earth did they have people stand like grim statues for those staged photographs? I thought it was because exposure times were extreme with those early cameras but this kinda proves it wasn't? 1890s, those must be among the first photographs, eve…
You will notice that most of the photopgraphs have been made in direct sunlight. So he could have used high aperture and short shutter time. Most likely it was a fixed-aperture and shutter setup, since he could hardly have adjusted anything while shooting covertly. Still, not all of the photos are sharp, some do have motion blur, and some have grain, perhaps from pushing during development (i.e. correcting slightly underexposed shots).
But the technical basis was definitely on top of the game at the time, under the given conditions.
Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's usually, "the fine article," but yours works, too.
No it's not usually "the fine article". That is just a euphemism. TFA originates from RTFM, which stands for "read the fucking manual". And it is "fucking" and not "fine", because people would be frustrated by noobs not reading manuals.
RTFM was always, "read the fucking manual."
In my experience, this is the first time I have seen TFA as anything other than "the fine article."
YMMV.
Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#174Couldn't find a single obese person in the photos. Really goes to show how the modern living has destroyed our health
He just didn't photograph them.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2317764
Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
> early summer That seems quite specific. How do you tell? From what I see it's probably not winter (lack of snow), not autumn (lack of leaves on the ground). But that still leaves a pretty long time period with a bigger range of temperatures.
Summers are pretty short in that part of the world.
Depends on what you mean by 'short'. I think you're probably thinking of much further north in Norway. Summers in Oslo are usually from May or June to August. Sometimes there's 20+ C in March, sometimes it's 5 C in May. Night frost usually sets in around late October/early November, with snow usually arriving in November or December. Snow is usually gone by or during March.
Apparently the average temperature in 1890 was 1.3 C colder than it is now.
Source: Born and living in Oslo.
Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#176Cool! Living in Oslo reckognize a lot of these places. Many buildings have not changed. Street layout is very similar. A lot of downtown Oslo got built around that era. I see Henrik Ibsen is there. He was probably not hard to capture. He walked down to the Grand Hotel every day like clockwork.
Really weird to see Karl Johan without Nationaltheatret. It got built a few years later.
Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#177Somewhat unrelated question that I could probably Google, but I figured it's more interesting to hear your take. Why do people on old pictures look like they're from a completely different era? They look like they're from the 1800s. Is it the camera, the clothing or did they actually look slightly different from us? Or perhaps it's just an illusion? Realistically I wouldn't expect humans' appearance to change that mu…
I suspect a large part of it is caused by facial expressions and how the people pose. Having your picture taken was very serious business, so no smiles were allowed. Show your most serious, regal pose. If you look at the "Happiest man in China" photo, it doesn't look like an old photo - it looks like a modern photo of somebody dressed up in old time clothes. There is no hard evidence, but many people believe that the…
Originally shutter speeds were very, very long (and that lasted decades for more budget equipment), so smiling was generally a bad idea as people couldn't hold their smiles for so long and would just be blurred weirdly.
That probably influenced how people thought photos should be posed for, even when shorter and more reasonable shutter speeds were the norm.
Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#178Couldn't find a single obese person in the photos. Really goes to show how the modern living has destroyed our health
You don't usually see many obese people in Oslo these days either. There's certainly a higher average weight now than in these photos, but US-style excessive obesity is rare in Norway.
Edit: As of 2019, apparently 3 % of Norwegians are obese (BMI >= 35), while a whooping 30 % are bulky or somewhat fat with a BMI of 27-35. Obviously with the shortcomings inherent in BMI, e.g. not accounting for low fat percentage etc. Too bad the data don't go any higher, it would be interesting to see how many are excessively obese, i.e. BMI of, say, 150 or more.
Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
The disturbing thing for me is that I noticed that special atmosphere/patina in 70s photos when I was a teenager in the 90s, but now I can see something analogous in pictures from the 90s.
The same thing will exist for people in 2010/2030 because of computational photography filters/algos.
I think it will have much more to do with the lack of HDR of today's photos.
Generally it's a shame that real HDR photos (not merged exposures, but "Dolby Vision for photos") ain't the norm yet.
Re: Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious - I noted the lack of cars and traffic in the old photos. There is none in Street view either! Many times in Street view for London, it is difficult to see the actual street behind the traffic...
That street in particular has been closed for all traffic except buses and trams (and necessary service cars I guess, like the parked van on street view). On [1] you can see Stortingsgata labeled in blue as "kolletivgate" (collective street). As the graphic shows most streets at the very core of the city have been closed to general traffic, the bluish streets are mostly only public transportation and the pinkish stre…
kollektivgate = public transport only. I don't think 'collective' is used in the same way in English?