Before & After: Foster

[Patrick H]

Very nice work, Mike. I actually like the picture with the stain on his tunic, but what the heck? That's just me. It's sort of a conversation point, though--as was said, perhaps spilled breakfast or whatever.

 

[sflickinger]

Beautiful work, as always. It looks like the general had a piercing stare. Blue or gray eyes?

 

[Mike Serpa]

Very nice work, Mike. I actually like the picture with the stain on his tunic, but what the heck? That's just me. It's sort of a conversation point, though--as was said, perhaps spilled breakfast or whatever.

Thanks. I think whatever it is belongs there. I don't want to tell @FarawayFriend I disagree with her!

Beautiful work, as always. It looks like the general had a piercing stare. Blue or gray eyes?

Thank you! I don't know what color are his eyes. Maybe @Zuzah or @civilwarincolor knows?

 

[Northern Light]

Nice work , Mike! If it was a picture of me, it would have been toothpaste!

 

[Mike Serpa]

Nice work , Mike! If it was a picture of me, it would have been toothpaste!

Thanks. I hate when that happens.

 

[Zuzah]

Thanks. I think whatever it is belongs there. I don't want to tell @FarawayFriend I disagree with her!


Thank you! I don't know what color are his eyes. Maybe @Zuzah or @civilwarincolor knows?

My best guess is baby-blue eyes, something akin to this - http://www.missceleb.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/alexis-bledel.jpg

 

[civilwarincolor]

Thank you! I don't know what color are his eyes. Maybe @Zuzah or @civilwarincolor knows?

My best guess is baby-blue eyes, something akin to this - http://www.missceleb.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/alexis-bledel.jpg

Unfortunately he does not seem to be well known enough that I was able to find anything on his eye color either. I would agree with Zuzah though, they would be VERY pale.

 

[FarawayFriend]

Thanks. I think whatever it is belongs there. I don't want to tell @FarawayFriend I disagree with her

Now that comes from being kind!
Your work is extremely well done, as if there had never been a stain and the general would be pleased that his little sloppiness is finally removed... but we actually don't disagree that the stain is what adds "life" to the photo, just because it is not picture perfect!!

 

[jack1492]

Looks good. Normal to have different shadows and shades on the coat from light.

 

[jack1492]

I am often amazed at how clear some of those 1860s photos are.

 

[civilwarincolor]

I am often amazed at how clear some of those 1860s photos are.

The clarity and quality of the images of this era are due to the limitations of photography in those days. There was not the ability to take "snapshots" with any action or motion as even in the brightest sun it still took at lease 4-5 seconds to get any photograph. This was because the light sensitivity of the collodion was fairly low because all of those elements were very small and tightly packed together.

Later film cameras used light sensitive "film" that was less densely packed and therefore could allow for faster and faster exposure times. This also means that the quality goes down as the exposure time goes down. I remember when I first started shooting film that I decided to use ISO 1600 because it would allow me to shoot in very dark conditions. When I had the images printed (35 mm) even at 4 x 6" they are grainy and lack definition. I began moving down the scale and would shot print film at ISO 100 and slide film (my preference) at ISO 25. The ISO 25 required me to carry a tripod a lot more often, even in daylight. The results are terrific though. I have a number of 20 x 30" prints on my wall taken at ISO 25 that are very clear and would have been a mess at ISO 1600.

The estimate of ISO for wet plate cameras during the Civil War was 5! This means that since image quality goes up the smaller the ISO is that for the same size are of a 35 mm a CW image is 5 times sharper than the sharpest standard 35 mm slide film. To give you some comparison with a digital camera and/or phone the typical lowest ISO available is 100. I do have one digital camera that will go to 80 and a few professional models go as low as 50. While we have seen the megapixel size of images go way up in the last few years the CCD chip that is light sensitive has not on most consumer models. This is the equivalent of taking a small negative and blowing up the print well beyond any reasonable size. This is also the reason that the cost between consumer model cameras and professional ones is so different. The size of the chip (i.e. quality of final image) is larger and better in the professional camera than it is in the consumer models.

The other limitation of the day also meant that the negative had to be the size of the final print (no enlargements during the Civil War) which meant that compared to 35 mm that was standard for so many years the size difference is enormous. To give you some idea a 35 mm slide has approximately 1 1/3" square inches of space. I downloaded the image of General Foster and cropped out the white border that the LOC adds and the size of the resulting negative that this image was made from has nearly 8 1/2 square inches of space! If you wanted to use a large format camera (such as an 8 x 10) that a few CW photographers used the resulting image would be 80 square inches!!!

A few years ago I was attending the Center for Civil War Photography's image of war seminar and the curator for the LOC's Civil War images was in attendance. During one presentation it was stated that the grain size of the photo sensitive element on collodian film was so small that it could be observed at the atomic level. This means that for images that have a lot of detail or are of a very distant subject may be able to be scanned one day at a super high resolution and still be able to have the quality and level of detail on a very small distant part of the image that we have with with the full image today.

 

[FarawayFriend]

The other limitation of the day also meant that the negative had to be the size of the final print (no enlargements during the Civil War) which meant that compared to 35 mm that was standard for so many years the size difference is enormous.

When I took lessons in photography and processing negatives more years ago than I'd like to think about we had a saying "more negative is positive" . Seems this here is proof of that!

 

[civilwarincolor]

"more negative is positive"

That's a great quote!

 

[jack1492]

By the way, that process of coloring all of those old CW photos is really neat and advances the scene to a more lifelike view. Makes them more realistic and much more as if you were viewing it when it happened. (If that makes sense).

 

[civilwarincolor]

By the way, that process of coloring all of those old CW photos is really neat and advances the scene to a more lifelike view. Makes them more realistic and much more as if you were viewing it when it happened. (If that makes sense).

That's why I do what I do!