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Russia in color, a century ago

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Re: Russia in color, a century ago

#41

Post by vhf »

daeken wrote: post #6
Adlai wrote: post #2

Surprisingly 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: htt…

>Because the water is constantly moving, capturing the filtered images repeatedly won't work -- you end up capturing different images for RGB.

You're right, of course. But don't forget that the shutter speed was very low on these images. It would have harmed if the shutter speed was high : short exposure time of quickly moving water would have given very different water images for RGB. When exposing longer, motion blur makes the water seem to flow, becoming soft and blurry.

Re: Russia in color, a century ago

#42

Post by keiferski »

thematt wrote: post #38
keiferski wrote: post #37

Just think: in 50-100 years, the phrase "100 years ago" won't mean that much, in terms of technology.

Really? Why do you suppose? In 50-100 years, I can easily see us having a permanent presence on another planet, fully automated vehicles and a Terminator like military comprised completely of robots. That world (if true), technologically, would look amazingly different than how we live today.

Okay, maybe a better word choice would have been "certain" technologies. Seeing photographs of the 50s in 2050 won't seem all that amazing.

Re: Russia in color, a century ago

#44

Post by derekp7 »

photorized wrote: post #30

Looking at these feels like time travel.

It's funny, I got the exact same impression. Normally when you think of the past, you think of black & white, or faded color. But if you took a ride in a time machine, of course the past would look as vibrant as anything you currently see. As a side note, I've noticed that when TV programs show a film clip from 30 years ago (say the early 80's), such as old sporting event clips, they add a false color fade to make the clip look old -- even though most of the film clips (and any non-film based storage) from that time would not have suffered such degradation.

Re: Russia in color, a century ago

#45

Post by sjwright »

delinka wrote: post #10
derleth wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 vo…

You say "only 44,100 times per second" as if it were somehow deficient. It's not, assuming the purpose of the sampling is to be heard by a human ear.

In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to make a legitimate, evidence-based argument justifying a significantly higher rate, for consumer music distribution purposes.

http://drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

Re: Russia in color, a century ago

#46

Post by sjwright »

sukuriant wrote: post #29
delinka wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vo…

We're actually approaching, if not have passed, the resolution of standard film with some higher end SLRs [1, 2]; at least in a total-usable-pixels perspective; but of course at the sub-pixel level, we're still very far off with only 14 bits per channel. There's also the question of how the total pixels are arranged, since each bit of the sensor is only absorbing one color, etc; but in time, at least as far as resolu…

Ask any working professional photographer and they'll tell you we passed the practical resolution of film (35mm vs 35mm) years ago, and with the insanely low noise levels, we passed the dynamic range potential years ago too.

With the latest cameras in hand, you can capture sharper and cleaner photographs than the best 35mm film could ever manage, and you can do it with a tiny fraction of the light (1/16th the amount, or 4 stops, or 100 ISO film What you're seeing with the latest crop of pro cameras are 35mm sensors that are competitive with the best medium format film.

Re: Russia in color, a century ago

#48

Post by vsviridov »

leak wrote: post #47

Looking at their faces, no one seems happy. Not a single smile in any photo including those of kids. Kinda depressing.

Well, they have to maintain their pose and expression for 3 consecutive shots.

If you look at old daguerreotypes people have really weird expressions in them as well, because they had to be still for long time.

Re: Russia in color, a century ago

#49

Post by kalleboo »

delinka wrote: post #10
derleth wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 vo…

If film captures details at a molecular level, why are my old 400 ASA APS snaps so much grainier and lower-detailed than my cell phone snaps?

Re: Russia in color, a century ago

#50

Post by bane »

twelvechairs wrote: post #15

Note that those shown are all heavily restored (also cropped) versions of the originals. They are all from the Library of Congress collection (~1900 of the ~3500 he made). An example of an unrestored version for comparison is at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/prok/item/prk20000025... .

Anybody know an easy place to download the entire batch? The LoC page makes getting them in bulk a bit of a pain.
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