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Amazing: Russia - 100 years ago in Colour

TheReef

TheReef

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 30, 2007
1,888
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NSW, Australia.
I came across this today:
Colour (color? :p) photographs taken a century ago.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

From article:
"He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images."
Click to expand...


The quality is unbelievable for the time, it's amazing to see and think about what life was like then.
 
This is amazing stuff , especially the amount of detail he captured . The exposures must have been pretty long for each plate .
 
Is that the only person who had a color camera in those days because I've never seen color pictures dating that far back. It's unbelievable how good they look.
 
Glass negatives the 4 x 6 inches and larger capture an amazing amount of data... full plate negatives equaled full frame sensor... :)
 
The images display a high amount of chroma aberration and misregistration as if the imager has misaligned photosites. The pictures display a lot of flare, lacking micro contrast and subtle nuance in high frequency detail no doubt attributable to little or no coating on the lens. Colour fidelity is abysmal with strong emphasis on yellow and blue.
 
The images display a high amount of chroma aberration and misregistration as if the imager has misaligned photosites. The pictures display a lot of flare, lacking micro contrast and subtle nuance in high frequency detail no doubt attributable to little or no coating on the lens. Colour fidelity is abysmal with strong emphasis on yellow and blue.
Click to expand...

Maybe because these images were captured 100 years ago, and are the result of three different exposures on three different large glass plates? Pretty awesome photographs of tzarist Russia.
 
DylanLikesPorn said:
The images display a high amount of chroma aberration and misregistration as if the imager has misaligned photosites. The pictures display a lot of flare, lacking micro contrast and subtle nuance in high frequency detail no doubt attributable to little or no coating on the lens. Colour fidelity is abysmal with strong emphasis on yellow and blue.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic but actually a lot of the "CA" is really just subject movement occurring between the three exposures, which when recomposited makes colored fringes.

I saw these photos a while back but it was good to revisit. Indeed the quality is amazing, and it's equally amazing to realize that these pictures are 100 years old! Our modern perceptions of the past have been so heavily influenced by black-and-white, or "old style" colors that it is jarring to realize how similar everything really looked back then. I keep looking at these pictures and expect to see roads, cars, etc. and that the people are just actors in costumes but I'm not going to find them because these are showing the real deal...

Ruahrc
 
DylanLikesPorn said:
The images display a high amount of chroma aberration and misregistration as if the imager has misaligned photosites. The pictures display a lot of flare, lacking micro contrast and subtle nuance in high frequency detail no doubt attributable to little or no coating on the lens. Colour fidelity is abysmal with strong emphasis on yellow and blue.
Click to expand...

Again, images taken before 1910 using 3 Glass Black and white negatives with with color separation filters... not surprising that not all the images line up, especially water and plant material moving in the wind...

The images were taken in Russia some 30 years before lens were commonly treated to increase color fidelity and sharpness.
 
Those are really amazing. It's hard to believe how consumers today blow money on the latest megapixel-monster gadgets, vainly trying to make themselves better photographers of the simplest things, while photographers with cameras from 100 years ago could record history just fine.
 
It's pictures like these that really make history come alive and make the past seem more 'real'. I also find color World War I pictures absolutely fascinating. There's just something that makes black and white pictures seem removed from history and time.
 
DylanLikesPorn said:
The images display a high amount of chroma aberration and misregistration as if the imager has misaligned photosites. The pictures display a lot of flare, lacking micro contrast and subtle nuance in high frequency detail no doubt attributable to little or no coating on the lens. Colour fidelity is abysmal with strong emphasis on yellow and blue.
Click to expand...

If you are not being sarcastic, you 1) did not read the info ABOUT the image or 2) are absolutely clueless and made the most useless comment. In which case I will quote Crusty the clow: You sir, are an idiot.
These photos are absolutely stunning in detail, considering that they look, IMHO, richer than good ol' Ansels photos. Now, if Ansel would ahve used that technique.. wow....
 
snberk103 said:
Thanks for sharing the link. How many of us are going to have images that have this kind of impact on a bunch of strangers 100 years from now, eh?
Click to expand...

Best guess, anyone who can create photos of daily life that will overcome time and decay and is still reproducible in 100 years. Digital images... I don't think so, not the way we do it today. Harddrives break, paper rots. Glass and metal plates stay. since very few photographers know how to still shoot this way and have the equipment, chances dwindle :)
//F
 
DylanLikesPorn said:
The images display a high amount of chroma aberration and misregistration as if the imager has misaligned photosites. The pictures display a lot of flare, lacking micro contrast and subtle nuance in high frequency detail no doubt attributable to little or no coating on the lens. Colour fidelity is abysmal with strong emphasis on yellow and blue.
Click to expand...

He must have left his nano-coated VR lens in his horse-drawn cart.
 
Thank you for the great link. Wonderful insight to life in pre-Communist Russia. It kind of reminds me of the work of Albert Kahn and his team of photographers.
 
Those photos are simply stunning, I'm impressed how good they came out considering they're essentially 3 different long exposures...
 
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