Russia in color, a century ago
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Russia in color, a century ago
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Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#2Surprisingly good quality, considering his method. You get the best sense of his method when it goes a bit wrong, in photo 27:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c...
My favorite picture is #15, the cathedral: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c...
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#3What amazes me the most is how good the quality is. These photos are better than those from my smartphone, and they're over a century old!
I do wonder how well he was able to view his own photos.
One thing that struck me was how much "nature" there is. The cities seems quite a bit smaller and more contained than they do today.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#4What amazes me the most is how good the quality is. These photos are better than those from my smartphone, and they're over a century old! I do wonder how well he was able to view his own photos. One thing that struck me was how much "nature" there is. The cities seems quite a bit smaller and more contained than they do today.
I'm sure he was able to view them well using a projector. Displays like that were the initial purpose of photography like this. Positives of these would have overlapped to make up the same images you see here.
By the way, I think it's sort of a shame to even compare smartphone digital photos to film photography. Of course they look better.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#5What amazes me the most is how good the quality is. These photos are better than those from my smartphone, and they're over a century old! I do wonder how well he was able to view his own photos. One thing that struck me was how much "nature" there is. The cities seems quite a bit smaller and more contained than they do today.
I'm sure he was able to view them well using a projector. Displays like that were the initial purpose of photography like this. Positives of these would have overlapped to make up the same images you see here. By the way, I think it's sort of a shame to even compare smartphone digital photos to film photography. Of course they look better.
> Of course they look better.
Why?
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#6Surprisingly good quality, considering his method. You get the best sense of his method when it goes a bit wrong, in photo 27: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c... My favorite picture is #15, the cathedral: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c...
What's most interesting to me, personally, is the water in these photos. Because the water is constantly moving, capturing the filtered images repeatedly won't work -- you end up capturing different images for RGB. That's what gives you that really neat rainbow effect; it looks like oil in a rainpuddle.
Edit: You can see some of this in photo 18 where the stems of the flowers were presumably moving very slightly: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c...
Edit #2: I just realized that I've used the same exact "effect" in demo code. I had a function in a shader that would generate a pixel color given a time value; I ran it three times for each pixel with a slightly different time value and then grabbed an R/G/B from each of them. You ended up with the same exact rainbow effect that was subtle when motion was limited and extreme when high speed motion was occurring. Not that that adds a ton to this thread, but I got a kick out of it.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#7What amazes me the most is how good the quality is. These photos are better than those from my smartphone, and they're over a century old! I do wonder how well he was able to view his own photos. One thing that struck me was how much "nature" there is. The cities seems quite a bit smaller and more contained than they do today.
I'm sure he was able to view them well using a projector. Displays like that were the initial purpose of photography like this. Positives of these would have overlapped to make up the same images you see here. By the way, I think it's sort of a shame to even compare smartphone digital photos to film photography. Of course they look better.
Do you happen to have any insight into the processing of the film? I'm very curious as to how you'd process the plates into the specific colors needed for this to get anything close to life-like representations. I imagine these representations of the photos were taken from the raw negatives.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#8No one is smiling. Not even the kids. Maybe the woman in #20 is, who knows? I know in general 'old time' photos didn't have people smiling much - very posed pictures and stoic expressions. I wonder if they had any idea how much this would color our impression of them 100+ years later?
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#9No one is smiling. Not even the kids. Maybe the woman in #20 is, who knows? I know in general 'old time' photos didn't have people smiling much - very posed pictures and stoic expressions. I wonder if they had any idea how much this would color our impression of them 100+ years later?
It's very difficult to hold a smile very, very precisely. Any movement would've meant the colors would smudge. Not necessarily the reason why they're not smiling, but it's a possibility, I believe.
Re: Russia in color, a century ago
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure he was able to view them well using a projector. Displays like that were the initial purpose of photography like this. Positives of these would have overlapped to make up the same images you see here. By the way, I think it's sort of a shame to even compare smartphone digital photos to film photography. Of course they look better.
> Of course they look better. Why?
Because film captures details in molecules while a CCD sensor in your digital camera uses picture elements much, much, much larger than molecules.
Or, because it's analog. It's very similar to sound recordings. Whether magnetic or not (say, in vinyl) the resolution of the captured signal can approach the molecular. Digital has a discreet resolution limited by the capturing equipment; for example, CDs reproduce the volume in a sound recording only 44,100 times per second. But a magnetic tape has a resolution limited only by the number of molecules passing the recording head every second (the more [i.e. the faster the tape], the better.)