Photo of Mozart's widow found

I saw all this in the morning on the BBC news site, and thought that if the daguerreotype , which this paper print is a copy of, was really taken in 1840... man that was cutting edge technology at the time as the daguerreotype process was only a year old at the time.
 
It's amazing that a 160+ year old photo looks this good. Almost too good to be true.

What looks strange is that there is no subject motion at all. I was under the impression that exposures of that era were at least several seconds, and I have seen examples of subject motion (hands, shoulders, etc.) of very early photos.
 
dmr said:
It's amazing that a 160+ year old photo looks this good. Almost too good to be true.

What looks strange is that there is no subject motion at all. I was under the impression that exposures of that era were at least several seconds, and I have seen examples of subject motion (hands, shoulders, etc.) of very early photos.
Click to expand...

I was amazed at that too, if it really was taken in 1840.
portraits became more common with the faster Woolcott mirror lens later on , and a faster yet with addition of other chemicals to the sensitizing iodine fumes and even faster a bit later with Voigtlanders Petzval lens equipped tube camera.
 
What's amazing about Daguerreotypes is that they're as good as any B&W medium ever invented. It's as if the first Edison phonograph had been a high-end stereo. The pure silver surface, polished to a mirror like finish, was capable of capturing almost infinite detail. Although, the process was so impracticle that it was obsolete even as it was invented. Almost all old photos you see, such as those from the civil war era, are of the wet-plate process.

dmr said:
It's amazing that a 160+ year old photo looks this good. Almost too good to be true.

What looks strange is that there is no subject motion at all. I was under the impression that exposures of that era were at least several seconds, and I have seen examples of subject motion (hands, shoulders, etc.) of very early photos.
Click to expand...
 
dmr said:
What looks strange is that there is no subject motion at all. I was under the impression that exposures of that era were at least several seconds, and I have seen examples of subject motion (hands, shoulders, etc.) of very early photos.
Click to expand...

It's a small web image that may have been manipulated :) I have some images that look sharp at small sizes, but soon as you print them on 4x6 or larger, you can see the blur. Make sense?

By the way, this is neat!
Jano
 
Nick is right about the quality of the daguerrotypes -- in addition, they have a three-dimensionality I don't think has been reproduced since. Remarkable! Seems to me there is at least one guy who does this process; I think he frequents Civil War reenactments here in the U.S. And if I'm not mistaken, he was employed by the makers of "Cold Mountain" to take daguerrotypes of Nicole Kidman and Jude Law.
 
Mozart lived from 1756 to 1791. His widow must have carried on for quite a while after that. Somehow this seems a little hard to believe time-wise. Isn't it true that the first photos, done in France, were sometime around 1849 or so?

The first American President that there is an actual photo of is reported to be Andrew Jackson, and by then he was quite old and long after his Presidency.
 
the first practical daguerreotypes were done in 1839
it is also the year that M. Daguerre announced the process to the world.
 
Or the first computer being a MacBook pro. I've had the same thought. If you have seen one close up they are astounding. Is anyone making them today? They would be boggling with a modern lens.
 
Interesting that the photo is referred to as "a print", I was under the impression that daguerrotypes were unique positive images, no printing involved.
 
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