Pin sharp images achieved by early plate cameras.

[GreensandsParticipant @greensands]

<li style=”text-align: left;”>I recently had the opportunity of inspecting some family portrait photographs taken by professional high street  photographer around the turn of the last century ca 1900 and was struck by the pin sharp clarity of what had been achieved. I have always understood that this was attributed to the high quality of the lenses used in the large format plate cameras of the time but I have since been told that picture quality was in fact more the result of the chemistry behind the manufacture of the glass negatives which I find surprising. Can anyone throw any further light on the subject?

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Well, a huge amount of effort went into improving photographic chemistry during the 19th century.   The sensitivity of the emulsion was greatly increased, so exposures could be completed faster,  greatly reducing blurring due to movement.    Another big improvement was reduced grain size, important because the grains determine the maximum resolution of a photo.   Early photographic chemistry produced rather large grains, making it necessary to use large photographic plates.    Circa 1900 a lot of photographers were still using old-fashioned large plate cameras, even though 20 years of research had covered the plates with ever improved fine-grain emulsions.   The combination of fine grain on a large plate produces excellent results, but isn’t cheap or convenient.

Next step was to put fine-grain emulsion on to small format film, first box camera size, later 35mm.   Resolution considerably suffered because popular cameras are more about portability and economy than high-resolution.  Thus even today product photographers are still liable to use old-fashioned large-format cameras, albeit capturing the image on a high-resolution digital plate rather than film.

The improvement that startles me is  smart-phone cameras.  On the face of it, their small lenses and sensors shouldn’t perform anything like as well as they do.   I suspect it’s because modern electronics are fast enough to do automatically optimise the shot, and then apply advanced image processing to the result.   I’m pretty sure my daughter’s smart phone takes several rapid shots per still, and then frame stacks them.   The output is a combination of the best of each shot, with no help from the photographer!  However it works her smart phone gives my Canon DSLR more than a run for it’s money!

Dave

 

 

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

It’s only part of the answer, but:

The information-content on a photographic plate is enormous

MichaelG.

[bernard towersParticipant @bernardtowers37738]

Dot forget the image the phone takes is not what you saw but an electronic estimate heavily software manipulated to what it thinks you should see. My images are digital but not manipulated, old fashioned but honest.

[Author]

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