This may be the oldest surviving photo of a human

"Today, when almost everyone has a phone camera in their pocket and more than 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, Daguerre's milestone seems quaint. In 2014, he might have just snapped a selfie."

For some reason, this makes me feel sad. :(
 
Thanks for posting... seven minutes of exposure, I wonder how long the person was standing in the same position to register on the plate.

Ironic that you can read in books or learn in YouTube tutorials exactly what happened in Daguerre's image - use a really long exposure to make passing people "invisible". Only he didn't need ND filters to make it happen in broad daylight. :)
 
"...Daguerre's milestone seems quaint. In 2014, he might have just snapped a selfie."

Except that some 200+ years of development of photography, including Daguerre's own work, actually contributed to the existence of said device which snaps selfies. I'm impressed by the image, but not particularly by the author of the article.
 
Ah... Hot news from 1838, for those who have never read any photographic history before. Yes, of course it's interesting; yes, we all have to learn about it somewhere and sometime; but I can't help feeling that the somewhat breathless style of statement and restatement espoused by the author is a little over the top, to say nothing of short on literary skill.

Cheers,

R.
 
A seven minute exposure. And I used to complain because Kodachrome was ASA 25. (A little before MY time, it was ASA 12.) "Mama don't take my Kodachrome aw-aaaaay."
 
Hi,

I might as well drag in Brian Coe's book "Colour Photography" with the subtitle "The First Hundred Years 1840-1940"...

It was published in the late 70's and copies still appear from time to time.

BTW, from 1840 they coloured them by hand and paint but Maxwell's 1860's pictures came along very soon (after 28 pages of early history).

Regards, David
 
Coe's book is a great resource.

Maxwell's color image demonstration completed the childhood of photography. There have been vast refinements since then, but nothing completely new since, except possibly the introduction of electronic capture.
 
Dwig said:
Coe's book is a great resource.

Maxwell's color image demonstration completed the childhood of photography. There have been vast refinements since then, but nothing completely new since, except possibly the introduction of electronic capture.
Click to expand...

And the theory behind it is older than photography. Amazing what is there waiting to be used, even nowadays.

Regards, David
 
The entertaining thing about Maxwell's pics is that he was using non-colour-sensitized plates, i.e. sensitive only to blue, violet and UV light. Who else knows knows how he managed to record green and red? It's in the literature...

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
The entertaining thing about Maxwell's pics is that he was using non-colour-sensitized plates, i.e. sensitive only to blue, violet and UV light. Who else knows knows how he managed to record green and red? It's in the literature...

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...

It's quite interesting how his inaccurate experiment accidentally seemed to work.

In actuality, his final image is a false-color image. The "red" isn't what it would seem to be.
 
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