I wonder if that’s what causes the effect I’ve often noticed in old portraits - the faces often look almost airbrushed - very smooth and flawless with no visible texture, when you might expect old-timey people to be more weather-beaten and gnarled than people today.
Perhaps it’s a combination of slight motion blur and lack of depth of field.
Computers can be trained mimic the human mind, by taking a snap shot of data, and making various ad hoc connections, and then use the connections to identify patterns in similar data.
Basically, we’ve all scene thousands of pictures of old cars. We know what a Model T looks like. We know what a 1950’s car looks like. When you see an unidentified car, your mind combines thousands of subtle clues subconsciously to estimate its age. Same goes with photos, etc.
I think it’s been photoshopped–you can see artifacts around the time stamps, and the user names are in the wrong font for the period.
Old thread, but interesting topics.
With photographs - I have heard that between: a) having to hold still for a long exposure (so adopting a pose and facial expression you can hold for a while); and b) the fact that the “language of photos” was new and therefore more formal, both led to the distinct look of Daguerreotypes, etc.
Because I am a complete guitar geek, it is worth mentioning that there is HUGE market in “Relic’ing” new guitars to look old. Which of course speaks to the fact that old guitars have a certain worn-in something that is pretty obvious when you see one and then pick it up and play it. Idiots will often refer to old guitars as having “Mojo” - okay, whatever - but a great old guitar will often look played in.
Anyway, relic’d guitars can command a premium, and the craftspeople that do the relic’ing get a reputation. There was a guy who did work for Gibson, Tom Murphy, who did stuff like put fake nitocellulose-finish crazing cracks on a guitar by taking a razor blade and cutting them in one by one. Art forgery has nothing on this guy…
Had you turned this idea into a website ten years ago, you would have been a billionaire.
For things like cars, aircraft and other vehicles, typically the materials, shapes and styles are what makes them look old or new. Plastics vs metal, streamlining, curved vs flat glass, greater precision with things like seams or welds, better ergonomics, better safety features.
Typically, as mechanical things evolve over time, their workings become more complex as more features are added. But their shape and functionality becomes simpler as they are made easier to use and maintain and manufactures remove erroneous features in favor of improved performance (ie crazy fins and whatnot).
Rust and corrosion!
Two things:
on physical objects like watches and leather they develop a film known as “patina” that some people really like. It is heard to replicate and often people are cautioned against cleaning for dear of ruining it.
this question reminds me of the Deep Space 9 episode:
Where they digitally inserted the DS9 crew into one of the more famous TOS episodes. It is quite well done (IMHO) and I have often wondered what it is about that color scheme that just screams “original Star Trek”. I don’t think I could do it at all, and I don’t even know what it is called, but even when looking at a single frame you can sometimes say “looks like a Star Trek episode” (even without it being a scifi scene) or “hmmm looks like early 80s detective show”.
I look through old year books and think - even if I cut my hair differently - and had these clothes - they just seem different. I doubt that is the case of course, but my brain feels that way.
This has me really thinking deep, I fix and restore some antiques as a part of my buisness. I just “know” how old most of the stuff is I work on by sight. Experience is a huge part, but styling, materials, and workmanship all show through to me. It all adds up.
Think of how you can pretty much guess a persons age without seeing the face right away. Hair, clothes and posture are all subtle clues.
Hard to articulate, I think we all do it instintually.
Okay, so the consensus seems to be that we are picking up on clues at a nearly subconcious level (patina, seam width, curves, styling, having vast exposure to similar items associated with a time period). And that all makes sense. I guess what tantalizes me about this question is the almost subconcious decision making that we are doing.
So I wonder if all those cues could be fooled. Could someone construct a police style line up of objects, selecting several modern items that were designed to evoke that “old” feeling and just one actual antique and throw off our perceptions? Or are we such good ‘cold readers’ of age that people would test very well in identifying the antique even if they couldn’t quantify why they chose the one they did.
Antiques Roadshow has that covered. Interesting how many fakes are out there.
Not all old photos have to look so tight-lipped.
Here is one of my favorites (which I have linked to before):
The Jersey Shore circa 1905. “On the beach, Atlantic City.”
Check out the expressions all throughout that photo. Except for the clothing, most of them could pass for modern folks just having a good time.
Now that we have digital photography, I think it will be interesting to compare “today’s” photos to contemporary photos in a hundred years, knowing that the color won’t fade, etc. How will us “turn of the century” folks compare?
One thing I’ve noticed about hairstyles from the first half of the 20th century is that hair products have changed. A perm used to create much “harder” curls, and the hair gel of the forties and fifties was nothing like it is today. I’ve noticed the difference in shows that are set in earlier times - even when the stylists recreate the same hairdo, the texture of the hair looks softer. Old-time perms made hair look and feel almost crispy.
Orthodontia and tooth whitening have also contributed to making modern actors look a lot different than the people they sometimes play. When I’m watching a movie set in the Old West, say, seeing a grizzled prospector open his mouth to reveal a set of perfectly straight, gleaming white teeth yanks me right out of the scene.
So it can be done, at least with photographs. Here is a great set of picts of actors taken with a tintype camera. Very impressive. If these were unknown/unfamous people I think these could be passed off as antique photographs.
That is so cool!
I watched the behind-the-scenes video and it makes me want to go out and get a tintype setup…
She said that the film has an ISO of between 0 and 1 :eek:. This means that in order to be able to take photographs with reasonable exposure times she must come up with an additional 7 stops of light above what would be sufficient for an ordinary DSLR operating at ISO100.
She did this using flash, and it is clear that her flash setup is far more blinding than most in order to get those additional 7 stops of light–the models often visibly flinch when the light goes off. Somehow I doubt my little speedlites can produce anywhere near the required amount of light.
But it looks like it would be great fun for the model as well as the photographer.
Get a neck clamp to hold them still and a longer exposure time is doable.
Huh. I already posted about that.
:dubious:
Threads can look pretty antiquated after just 13 years. But only to folks who pay attention to the OP’s post date.
And yet she is hand-holding the camera. How fast were the lenses and how fast were the shutters in those antique cameras? Maybe the flash is so brief that it doesn’t matter what the shutter speed is.
