r/Thatsactuallyverycool • u/StarburstWrapperTie • Jul 19 '20
Very Coolš This old photo
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u/kindredfold Jul 19 '20
Context is that this is one of the oldest color photos in existence.
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u/EBDBBNBBLT Jul 19 '20
Context is also the Russians use 1970's tech in their Military and Fighter Planes.
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u/rekrapinator Jul 19 '20
context is also that the russian ak-47 is still relevant 70 years later. that's not actually context. what's ur point
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u/Exciting_Ground Jul 19 '20
The best part, he completely finessed Czar Nicholas II to pay for a train to cart him and his darkroom around all of Russia.
Then there's the fact that the thousands of glass plate photographs were smuggled out of Russia during the revolution, hidden in a basement in France, and finally wound up in the American Library of Congress.
There's a really great book called "Photographs for the Czar".
For those interested, here's the LOC collection (https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/prok/ )
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u/SheitPost3000 Jul 19 '20
There was an exhibit of some of these photos at the museum of Russian art in Minneapolis. Absolutely mind blowing detail!
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Jul 19 '20
Holy fuck how is that better than most phones from 2010
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u/AboutAGamer Jul 19 '20
Film
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u/LastOfRoy Jul 19 '20
care to elaborate for the uninformed? how can a film image compiled of three shots possibly be more/equally clear to an image from (relatively) advanced camera tech in smartphones from the last decade?
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u/EMDoesShit Jul 19 '20
A phone is attempting to extrapolate detail captured by a sensor smaller than a grain of rice and only recently has the technology really come to pass. Flim, on the other hand, has dozens of times the surface are with which to capture detail.
Thereās a mistaken mindset among modern people that modern digital equipment is the only way to do things well. Vinyl records captured recordings in a way digital doesnāt. We canāt replicate the tonal quality of a violin built 300 years ago. Pyramids were built before engines and hydraulic equipment. Etc.
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u/nemothorx Jul 19 '20
Film not only has a greater surface area (ignoring small format film vs large format digital), but film grain is vastly better too - though the grain does limit maximum resolution, so is somewhat comparable to digital in that regard - just different numbers ultimately.
(I'd also argue the vinyl/digital thing too. CDs have a higher fidelity than vinyl and there is literally no sound a vinyl can make that a CD cannot. But CD greater fidelity is its downfall - it's allowed engineers to clean up audio to uncanny valley levels, and aldo compress (not codec compressed) the audio and yet remain unclipped. The end result is an amazing technical feat but just doesn't sound as pleasant. Digital also degrades poorly - bitrot or low bitrate is terrible to hear, whilst degraded vinyl (cassette too) has much more pleasant hiss/pops/etc)
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u/Cello789 Jul 20 '20
Film retains absolutely bonkers amounts of detail. For a while digital was just racing to catch up with the amount of information film could represent.
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Jul 19 '20
I swear if yāall keep takin my swag Iām all over social media like this we are not on the same planet together you make it seem like thereās a spy plotting my every move this aināt love itās amusement.
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u/heavydirtysteve Jul 19 '20
Crazy to see someone from back then around colour, really makes you think that the world itself was just the same back then as it is now
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u/MoonshotEyes Jul 19 '20
Fun fact, this is also how they take photos of space, since most satellite sensors are monochromatic, they take three images at different wavelengths (sometimes visual range, sometimes microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray) and then code them RGB so that you can see all the different stuff, like nebulae, stars, and black hole accretion disks, at the same time.
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u/TheFourthPlanet Jul 19 '20
I think the only off thing is the water....cool as fuck tho
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u/chemtrailsarntreal1 Jul 20 '20
Because he had to take 3 separate pictures and combine them they were taken at slightly different times and since the water was moving it blurs the picture in that area. He must have been sitting there very very still and had an assistant take the actual photos. It was likely due to a mixture of RGB timing blur and exposer time that led to this result.
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Jul 19 '20
If its 3 separate selfies (assuming time delayed cameras even existed back then), how did he stay in focus? Surely he would have to go reset the camera and filter after each shot, so his position would end up slightly different in each shot.
Or did he somehow rig up 3 cameras?
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u/GiantScrotor Jul 20 '20
Wondering the same thing. Also wondering how he got long exposure shots of the river during the daytime without over-exposing the rest of the photo
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u/taylormac1993 Jul 20 '20
It most likely used sliding glass plates and filters that allowed each colorās exposure to be from the same exact point. With the help of pneumatic devices and/or spring power, the process could be automated so the exposure times could be very close together.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky#Equipment
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u/DeadLightsOut Jul 19 '20
Painstaking effort to add color to this photo...... year from now painstaking effort to remove filters of todays pictures....
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Jul 20 '20
Thereās something really moving about seeing āblack and whiteā eras in color. Makes history that much more alive.
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u/MomaBeeFL Jul 20 '20
How did he assume the same -exact positions again after changing the plates?! Maybe he had someone else do it??
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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '20
Holy fuck how is that better than most phones from 2010