Guaranteed to mess with your head. Yes, the rational-minded individual understands that the world was not black and white at the turn of the last century. And yet this newly unearthed proof of concept seems oddly, disturbingly not quite right...
13 comments
Either his subjects were real good at sitting still or he used a camera with 3 lenses on. This however would posibly have lead to parallax problems (offset view from each lens). I wonder how he got round it? The photo of the boatman shows movement in the pole and water which would suggest multiple exposures form a single point, one each for RGB but the rest of the image is remarkably sharp...
mm, I was wondering about this one too :/
multiple lenses would presumably mean you'd get a similar effect to a stereoscopic image.
It says he displayed them with a projector so maybe if he had the same multiple lense contraption for displaying them it would have reversed the effects.
They might have fixed the offset for these prints somehow with a touch of p/shop wizardy.
I think its a bit more complex than simple offset, because of the way a lens works it distorts light as it passes through. For instance you know a wide angle lens stretches/distorts things more the closer they get to the edge of the field of view? All lenses obviously do this to some extent. Now if the lenses are in sligtly different positions they distort differnt parts of the image by differing amounts. Puting the images back together in Photoshop just wouldn't work..
definitely, you could presumably get the lenses quite close together for minimum offset as well if you used a persicope style set of mirrors so that the film was off to one side from the lens (if you see what I mean).
Hate to disappoint you guys on this one, but it clearly states on the website:
"A single, narrow glass plate about 3 inches wide by 9 inches long was placed vertically into the camera by Prokudin-Gorskii . He then photographed the same scene three times in a fairly rapid sequence using a red filter, a green filter and a blue filter."
Aaah.. where did you find that? link! link!
A 3 by 9 glass plate is effectively 3 negatives though, the lenses must've switched about inside the camera to point to top, middle or bottom of the plate.
Weird, I didn't think exposure times had gotten that quick by the turn of the century.
I find this description of how the cameras worked highly suspect. My guess is they're mising some important info. The camera would need to be built like a tank to move a glass plate around that quick. I doubt too that the emulsions used at the time would have been that responsive. Kids don't sit that still for more than a couple of seconds either.. I guess its the fact that the images look so good that its almost impossible to believe that they were produced with turn of the century technology, (admittedly with a little help from some late 20th century computer hardware)..
Don't you think they're incredible? I suppose I always thought that dyes would be lower quality and duller in the past so that clothes would be grey and drab etc.
It's incredible how much easier it makes it to see the subjects as living breathing people when you can see them in colour.
Wow!! These are some of the most interesting photos I've seen. How intense is that fat blokes blue jacket? It's really interesting to see normal people working in the fields/building damms etc in full colour from 100 years ago.
I reckon the fat bloke got like that because he spent too much time playing tetris on his juggernaut computer.
He couldn't even find time to shave.
I like his shoes though.
It would have been cool to live in those days, wouldn't it? Certainly no need to worry about your stylesheets looking alright in Netscape AND Internet Explorer anyway.
Err.. no you'd just have to worry about getting your hands chopped off for making the tzar look ugly in his portrait :(
I think I'm happier where I am thanks..
13 comments
Either his subjects were real good at sitting still or he used a camera with 3 lenses on. This however would posibly have lead to parallax problems (offset view from each lens). I wonder how he got round it? The photo of the boatman shows movement in the pole and water which would suggest multiple exposures form a single point, one each for RGB but the rest of the image is remarkably sharp...
Posted by Dan on 6 May 2001 at 03:29 PM
mm, I was wondering about this one too :/
multiple lenses would presumably mean you'd get a similar effect to a stereoscopic image.
It says he displayed them with a projector so maybe if he had the same multiple lense contraption for displaying them it would have reversed the effects.
They might have fixed the offset for these prints somehow with a touch of p/shop wizardy.
Posted by Anonymous on 6 May 2001 at 03:35 PM
I think its a bit more complex than simple offset, because of the way a lens works it distorts light as it passes through. For instance you know a wide angle lens stretches/distorts things more the closer they get to the edge of the field of view? All lenses obviously do this to some extent. Now if the lenses are in sligtly different positions they distort differnt parts of the image by differing amounts. Puting the images back together in Photoshop just wouldn't work..
Posted by Dan on 6 May 2001 at 03:44 PM
The more I look at it it has to be 1 exposure 3 lenses. There's not enough movement in the water and trees to have been multiple exposures..
Posted by Dan on 6 May 2001 at 04:18 PM
definitely, you could presumably get the lenses quite close together for minimum offset as well if you used a persicope style set of mirrors so that the film was off to one side from the lens (if you see what I mean).
Posted by Anonymous on 6 May 2001 at 04:29 PM
Hate to disappoint you guys on this one, but it clearly states on the website:
"A single, narrow glass plate about 3 inches wide by 9 inches long was placed vertically into the camera by Prokudin-Gorskii . He then photographed the same scene three times in a fairly rapid sequence using a red filter, a green filter and a blue filter."
Is this discussion thread dead now? :)
Posted by Jonny Ram on 9 May 2001 at 05:54 PM
Aaah.. where did you find that? link! link!
A 3 by 9 glass plate is effectively 3 negatives though, the lenses must've switched about inside the camera to point to top, middle or bottom of the plate.
Weird, I didn't think exposure times had gotten that quick by the turn of the century.
Posted by Anonymous on 10 May 2001 at 09:05 AM
I find this description of how the cameras worked highly suspect. My guess is they're mising some important info. The camera would need to be built like a tank to move a glass plate around that quick. I doubt too that the emulsions used at the time would have been that responsive. Kids don't sit that still for more than a couple of seconds either.. I guess its the fact that the images look so good that its almost impossible to believe that they were produced with turn of the century technology, (admittedly with a little help from some late 20th century computer hardware)..
Posted by Anonymous on 10 May 2001 at 09:52 AM
Don't you think they're incredible? I suppose I always thought that dyes would be lower quality and duller in the past so that clothes would be grey and drab etc.
It's incredible how much easier it makes it to see the subjects as living breathing people when you can see them in colour.
Posted by Anonymous on 6 May 2001 at 04:31 PM
Wow!! These are some of the most interesting photos I've seen. How intense is that fat blokes blue jacket? It's really interesting to see normal people working in the fields/building damms etc in full colour from 100 years ago.
Posted by Anonymous on 9 May 2001 at 02:01 PM
I reckon the fat bloke got like that because he spent too much time playing tetris on his juggernaut computer.
He couldn't even find time to shave.
I like his shoes though.
It would have been cool to live in those days, wouldn't it? Certainly no need to worry about your stylesheets looking alright in Netscape AND Internet Explorer anyway.
Posted by Jonny Ram on 9 May 2001 at 05:47 PM
Err.. no you'd just have to worry about getting your hands chopped off for making the tzar look ugly in his portrait :(
I think I'm happier where I am thanks..
Posted by Anonymous on 10 May 2001 at 08:59 AM
Anyone for potatos and porridge oh and the Siberian winter with only a few damp twigs to burn to stop your balls freezing off :)
Posted by Anonymous on 10 May 2001 at 09:56 AM
test3
Posted by Test1 on 6 Sep 2007 at 09:54 PM