Developing 120-year-old photos found in a time capsule [video]
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There's a follow up where they colorize the first cat photo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eblNBqTD58
And link to the author's site: https://mathieustern.darkroom.com/collections/the-cat
I think $96 USD is a lot for a print. I’d pay that much for a limited, numbered, run of photos that he’d developed in the same way as in the video, directly from the glass plate. But not for a scanned print.
Sell five hundred real ones for $96 USD a piece.
And then sell unlimited prints for like $20 USD each or something.
I clearly remember reading a blog where the person did built a little wooden box, padded the inside of the box with aluminum foil, then put a DSLR camera on a tripod. He'd then place one of these "glass" photo on the box, take a picture with the DSLR, then move on to the next "glass" photo. And then do some processing in whatever software (and the result was great).
If I recall correctly I read that these old glass photos now after 100+ years begin to fade and those that aren't developed are soon going to be lost.
What you describe is the process of inverting a negative image into a positive. (Black to white and vice versa.) Also very important because as you say, the images can fade over time.
My dad collected old cameras, the pinhole ones would work but were a complete pain for anything that wasn't a still-life, for a Daguerreotype you had to sit still for a very long time but it did work if you were patient enough. The lens based cameras did a better job, and also could make Daguerreotypes in a much shorter time.
Making these is not without danger: you sensitize the copper silver coated plate (which you apply using silver nitrate) with iodine and you develop it using - no kidding - mercury vapors. I wonder if the very large bottle of Mercury that he had is still sitting in the basement there. I also remember playing with the iodine crystals that had migrated through the double walls of glass that they were supposedly contained in...
Also, because the maximum f-number was generally around f4-f8 for lenses from that period, it's not really true that these lenses were much bigger than modern 'full frame' lenses. There are plenty of old lenses that have a diameter of just a few centimeters. Here is an example: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1256001801/vintage-19th-cent...
I've sat for hours for pictures in low light.
The next step which will get you 95% of the way to a great print is to go into Photoshop or similar and do a negative on the image, then, and this is the key, set the black point and white point. Somewhere in your app should be a tool where you can pick the darkest and brightest parts of the scan and it will re-set the levels and the photo will look immaculate. [You can do this on any faded photo, B+W or color] Add a little sharpening and Bob's your uncle.
How did these come to be in your hands, and are you interested in the lives of you great-granparents^3 or does it not matter?
What's interesting is that 120-year-old image formats, in the form of a photographic negative, can still be read today. Can we feel confident that an Apple HEIC sitting inside an iPhone can be read 120 years from now?
That's why every year I take 50 or so photos and get them printed and bound in a photobook. (There are many vendors that do this, and it's not that expensive.)
As long as we are still on the same technological path, then yes, we can be confident.
Chemistry and lenses are a form a technology, such as required by developing and printing photographs.
They couldn't be sure that when they invented Photography that people 120 years in the future would be able to work with the negatives. Certainly people could view prints if they hadnt faded into nothing, but developing or projecting prints from negatives requires a certain level of technology.
Many negatives from the early days of film and photography have just disintegrated and are gone forever. Yes, modern prints are more durable, but they don't last forever. Old processes for analog and digital technologies are often rediscovered.
I'm optimistic :-)
Having said that, digital archive projects are tremendously important to preserving our history.
The photos are trivial to copy though and will likely be preserved, if the owner chooses to do so, by being replicated across multiple storage devices over time.
Thats madness... :-)
Sometimes things get lost and destroyed, and thats OK.
Nothing is certain.
Sure historians will know, which is a bit of what antique collectors are. But in 120 years? People won't have a clue what Apple was.
In the course of 100+ years, Apple is not important. It had about 15 years of groundbreaking change, now it has none.
And to be fair on that, the computing market is fairly mature now. Their latest AR gambit seems interesting, but it hardly revolutionary.
Look at Rolex watches. They were the pinnacle of innovation in their sector, and a must have for anyone even mildly well to do. Sort of like Apple. They're basically gone now.
if you do find undeveloped exposures, the emulsion is likely very degraded. film or glass plate is likely standard silver and may still be easily developed at home with any standard black and white process, but most historic color film chemistry has been lost. your local lab should be able to identify it for you and explain your options.
Out of two "younger" films the color one had all it's black replaced by blue and the other one was pushed 3 stops and turned out fine. The "oldest" film was completely blank.
(Of course you will loose the color and get only a black and white picture.)
In a pinch, you can mix lukewarm coffee with a generous helping of baking soda for developer, and sea water for fixer.
(Not tap water nor lake water.)
baking soda seems like a poor choice, i've heard borax and soda ash (carbonate rather than bicarbonate) more commonly recommended. maybe it would work in a pinch but baking soda is significantly less basic and might produce gas during the reaction which seems problematic.
but sea water for fixer, that's interesting, never considered that one. is it really ionic enough? i guess i could boil down a reduction
edit: chatgpt seems to think i'd need to concentrate it to saturation and at that point i might as well just use table salt. do you have any experience with this? how does the negative hold up over time?
So super market table salt may or may not work.
I put a picture in a saturated solution of cheap horse salt for 24 hours in a soda bottle.
Worked fine!
Re baking soda, it stops fizzling after a minute, and you just have to compensate with more baking soda and/or longer development time.
Re C22 film, it can be developed in C41 chemicals if at room temperature. Increase development time to … more.
And a lot of that is now digitized, and kept by cinema lovers worldwide.
We've always had to guess before, wonder, go by (comparatively) rare paintings, which may or may not have artistic changes.
Even language has become more static, more uniform, starting with wide spread printed works, then radio, TV, now internet.
If I look at works 100 years back, many of them could gave been written today. 150 years? Change becomes more rapid.
Take the film out, keep a bit of tape or rubber band at hand so it won’t unroll, you want to keep the wind pretty tight.
Then either send it to a lab or develop yourself!
Put a nice color film for your next roll, the juxtaposition of “modern” color film in such an old camera is fun.
Shoot in bright daylight. High noon or at least some sun.
These shutters are almost indestructible. The cameras certainly are nice shelf queens, too.
One of the easiest photographic printing mediums. Generally quite stable too.
Go back to Reddit.