History of Photography

[vandevanterSH]

This doesn't belong here (there is no "History of Photography section") but this is a link to some incredible color photos taken ~100 years ago in Czarist Russia...This is a project of the Library of Congress...The color photographic technique is quite interesting.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214585

(Please delete thread if this is not appropriate)

Steve

[Wim van Velzen]

Thanks for the link - some very beautiful work there and amazing colors for the age!

[Misirlou]

Wow. Newsweek got right on that story. The Library of Congress put those on their own web site about 8 years ago.

Great stuff though.

[vandevanterSH]

The Library of Congress put those on their own web site about 8 years ago.
*****
Yea...several hours after posting, I realized that "Newly Released......" was a mis-statement...however I don't think this interesting collection has been widely publicized.  For those interested in the technique used to capture and then 100 yrs later to digitize these photos, here is a link to the Library of Congress....

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html

The ability to expose three plates, especially of people, with "slow" plate emulsion and get crisp images is amazing..or I am just easily amazed..:>)

Steve

[DarkPenguin]

As an aside flickr has a ton of library and museums posting to their flickr commons.  Some amazing stuff there.

www.flickr.com/commons

[vandevanterSH]

An aside on the aside :>)....Here is the link to the Library of Congress Photo Collection...about 1.2 million images..

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html

[Misirlou]

The Library of Congress put those on their own web site about 8 years ago.
*****
Yea...several hours after posting, I realized that "Newly Released......" was a mis-statement...however I don't think this interesting collection has been widely publicized.  For those interested in the technique used to capture and then 100 yrs later to digitize these photos, here is a link to the Library of Congress....

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html

The ability to expose three plates, especially of people, with "slow" plate emulsion and get crisp images is amazing..or I am just easily amazed..:>)

Steve

I remember reading up on that photographer when the exhibit first opened. At the time, I wondered if maybe he shot them by dropping a holder with 3 in-line plates through the back of the camera relatively quickly. I think that's how multiple prints of the same portrait snapshot were made before the negative/paper printing processes matured. You'd still have to make separate exposures, but it minimized the movement of the camera that you'd get from pulling and pushing the plates through one at a time in their own holders. If you look at the shots with moving water, it just seems incredible that he could have done three decent exposures in such rapid succession.

I'd be surprised if there wasn't someone here on LL with voluminous knowledge of those old techniques.

[DaFu]

The ability to expose three plates, especially of people, with "slow" plate emulsion and get crisp images is amazing..or I am just easily amazed.

Somewhere on the LOC site there's a description of the process. He built his own camera that took three filtered exposures at once. He also built a projector to display them for his talks.

Someone had the brilliant idea of using Photoshop/image processing to combine scans of the three negatives and provide us all with these fascinating images.

Dave

[vandevanterSH]

Somewhere on the LOC site there's a description of the process. He built his own camera that took three filtered exposures at once. He also built a projector to display them for his talks.

Someone had the brilliant idea of using Photoshop/image processing to combine scans of the three negatives and provide us all with these fascinating images.

Dave

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html