The Birth of Photography: Drawing With Light (and silver iodide)
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- Опубліковано 28 тра 2024
- Cameras. How do they work?
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00:00 Intro
00:32 Camera Obscura
05:37 Conception of photography
06:37 The Daguerreotype process
10:19 Examining a daguerreotype
12:04 The strange viewing properties of the daguerreotype
14:44 The Ambrotype
17:20 The Tintype
19:10 Eastman Kodak and the path to mass-adoption
22:05 120 film format
24:25 A 120 format camera's quirks and features
27:44 Loading it with film
30:52 Using the camera
33:31 Unloading the camera
35:25 Bloopers - Наука та технологія
![[柴犬ASMR]曼玉Manyu&小白Bai 毛发护理Spa asmr](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0TsXQ7z2Dh4/mqdefault.jpg)
It just occurred to me that Agfa-Ansco's designation of 120 as B-2 could simply derive from Brownie No. 2.
"Reasons"
I am offended by the text on screen at 19:09. You totally missed the opportunity for "Dog-guerrotype."
Since community subtitles are no longer a thing, is there any way I can still make subtitles for your videos?
... really need to stop reading the comments before watching the video...
As a german analog photographer, never heard B2 before, learned something I guess. Thanks for that
“Oldest not-book object I’ve held”
Rocks: “Am I a joke to you?”
** oldest not-book human-made object
@@TechnologyConnections Have you never been in any ancient or medieval building?
@@mrmimeisfunny Humans didn't make the rock. they shaped it. Big difference
@@mrmimeisfunny Have you held an ancient building before?
@@baconcatbug “It’s a stone Luigi, you didn’t make it.”
32:40 “Latent image of vaporization.” That was perfect.
That got me. Along with the deadpan hold.
I almost had to stop watching at that point. 🤣
Oh shit, I didn't even get that until you pointed it out xD
I didn't get it at all, can you explain?
@@Bretil Latent heat is the energy that's required to bring water from a liquid to vapor so from 100°C liquid to 100°C Vapor.
14:50 "not to be confused with the nick-collodion process" man I was having a shitty day, and now I'm grinning from ear to ear, thanks Alec!
Well, nickelodeons were kind of photography too :)
@@minacapella8319
That's wright we used to put a coin in and start cranking but, it was "moving pictures" as they used to call it.
these dad jokes are getting absurd
I dont know if they still have them but at Disney World they had a entire arcade that was all of these old timey Nickelodeon machines..they were all free!
29:45 "making sure the flaps are retracted and locked, like any good pilot" absolutely love this guy, such a dry sense of humour he could actually be British!
That Daguerreotype you have is a treasure. The detail on it is amazing and it seems to be a pleasant family photo. A beautiful piece of history.
“Through the magic of buying two of them, I have **one** of them right here!*
In my experience a great many of the "daguerreotypes" sold on ebay are in fact ambrotypes. Both are wonderful processes but daguerreotypes are rarer.
Biggest plot-twist of the century
One of the best catchphrases on this show XD
that damn inflation...
My dad's entire life
"possibly hipster reasons" just entered into my vocabulary
@@contradictorycrow4327 I think you said this for "possibly hipster reasons" 🤣
Perhaps a one, two beat to process the jokes, that I have a chance to quickly expel air out of my nose in amusement.
Comedy is all about time.....ing....
All of those words were almost definitely part of your vocabulary already. I think you mean, that phrase just became part of your lexicon.
man with impact font meme pfp in 2021 discovers using "hipster" as an adjective
this dude is gonna flip when he learns about tiktoks in ten years
*impossibly
I absolutely love the running bits on this channel, particularly "throught the magic of buying X of them".
My favorite version of that is
"Through the magic of buying way too much f***ing dishwasher detergent we can do a number of tests and make some comparisons"
I replayed the dishwashing detergent one like 20 times 🤣
"Early attempts at making dry plates resulted in very insensitive plates which were quite rude..." LOL!!!
This is the only joke I got, I'm too dumb for this.
Oh my, FINALLY somebody shows daguerreotype from several angles! I can't believe how difficult it is to find a video like that! Thank you so much!
This guy🤯 videos and he keeps blowing my mind he should be a national treasure or working at as a museum curator , then again, who knows maybe he is a museum curator
I’ve known how pinhole cameras work for ages, but this explanation is the first time I’ve really understood *why* they work that way. The “move your head and the view changes” lead in was truly eye opening.
Trust me, this NOT how it works. I've watch Buzzfeed and studied the arts of Social Justice. A camera is like this functions on distilled racism. The white man designed the optical laws of nature to make brown people look bad.
sounds like someone needs a vaccine booster...
@@StuninRub interesting flavor of trolling you have there, is that your own recipe or did you find it on 8chan?
@@StuninRub Don't worry! Someone will re-write history to make it all about "people of color".
I know! Had the same moments.
“Through the magic of buying two of them, I have one.” This joke will never get old.
I'm a photographer who has read/studied this stuff for decades. You made one of the better and more accessible summaries I've ever heard. Probably just the best, honestly. This is what I'm going to use whenever I wanna introduce people to real photography.
Playing the long game with “latent image of vaporization….”
Love it
this
I half expected a tumbleweed to cross the screen...
His jokes are so advanced I need to read other people's comments with quotes before understanding them. I did get it though, without checking the answer=P
I audibly gasped and then guffawed at this one.
Oh my... just now it hit me like a truck 🙈
5:23 "ray tracing was really slow"
Some things never change.
we need dlss
@@jsteezus Yours for only 2500$ where available. Which is increasingly becoming a problem... Com'on Brandon.
mfrs: Look at all the cool looking stuff.
gamers: turns everything off for framerates
technically the process he described is contour tracing.
REALLY slow for me - don't understand it at all...
Always impressed by the clarity of your shots of things like the daguerreotype. There's an inherent paradox in getting your hands on something you just have to see with your own eyes, and then capturing its subtleties in a video, but you always succeed to the point where it feels like we're in the room with you. S-tier content.
11:20 I've always been amazed at the detail in a well cared for daguerreotype image. Just beautiful. I've been a keen photographer for many years and have a basic knowledge of the history of the craft. I'm really enjoying your history lesson, though. Thank you.
'Darkening the Blue' sounds like an amazing pop fusion jazz album, that I now want to hear.
My favorite Jazz Fusion band is *Casiopea* .
They were big in Japan in the early 80's, even getting radio airtime on stations in the USA.
and when they are asked why use that name, their answer:
"for possibly hipster reason"
I'll keep that in mind if I ever record fusion jazz
possibly a lost Chuck Shuldiner project demo
These comments are really doing it for me, and I haven't even watched the video yet
fusion rules (listen to some Cynic dudes!)
18:44 "Very insensitive plates, which were quite rude"
I love deadpan humour.
My instant reaction to that was 😑
I wonder how many takes that line took to get right.
Louis Daguerre had a invention & business connection with Nicéphore Niépce, the man who is credited with the 1st photograph in the late 1820's. It was called the latent image back then because the word Photography was not invented until the late 1830's.
Louis Daguerre & Nicéphore Niépce shared the same optics/lens maker (Charles Chevalier) who after learning about Louis' ambitions with trying to create a successful latent image, connected him with Louis Daguerre.
There are postal letters between the two, & Nicéphore Niépce's process with the latent image played an encouraging role in Louis Daguerre's Daguerrerotype.
Wow, this really takes me back! My first camera was a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, which was just a slightly more modern version of the Brownie in the video. (Technically it was my younger brother's camera but I used it a lot.)
I believe _"appropriated"_ is the word you did not use...😊
@@Allan_aka_RocKITEman LOL!
_"Making sure the flaps are retracted and locked like any good pilot"_
You're killing it today!
Wait I don’t get this one
@@nickb20
Planes also use flaps, they’re the extending bits that increase lift for take off and landing. You retract them for cruise, since they have a lot of drag.
Same can be said for my long-johns.
speaking of death, the baby in the picture was probably dead at the time the picture was taken. Photographs were very expensive back then and it made little sense to take a picture of a baby you see every day. There is some blur around the arm, but that could have been the mother.
@@christo930 Although nothing to do with my comment, I thought the movement was from the mother, you can see one of her hands is blurred (but that could just be the baby making it so).
Maybe you're right.
Insensitive plates were quite rude.... I love it lol
Somehow I missed the joke until now. So sad and brilliant.
Oooh, that's what he meant=P
You think you love it until you meet one of them and it opens its insensitive platey mouth...
Is good to see with captions
[uncomfortable stare]
Inread this right as he said it.
This video made me look at an old post-war camera my great-grandmother used to own. It's been sitting on a shelf at my place as a display piece for years, but during this video I had a closer look at and figured out how to fold the lens in, and that it takes 120 film and has the same dials and peepholes the brownie camera does. (it's that telescoping paper kind of lens, and it's been in the unfolded position ever since I found it 20 years ago) I just ordered some 120 film for it, and I'm excited to try it out!
Bellows is the word you're lookin for
Even though the daguerrotype is basically a mirror, its incredible that the images are so detailed and lifelike even with the flaws inherent of the process. Makes me appreciate them more than modern day pics, even if its just a little.
Absolutely LOVE the effort you put into the "latent image of vaporization" joke. Bravo 👏😂
I haven't seen a set up that long for a chemistry joke since high school
i could tell it was a joke but didn't get it. could someone explain?
@@staticfanatic it's a chemistry joke based on the latent heat of vaporization, which is a physical characteristic of a substance that is defined as the heat required to change one mole of liquid at its boiling point under standard atmospheric pressure. i.e. when you bring something to a boil, you have to give it more heat than what is just needed to raise the temperature like you would before. Extra energy is needed to convert the substance from a liquid to a gas.
@@staticfanatic yup, what MrDoctor said, and then the image that's imprinted on the film before getting developed is a "latent image." Plus, the photo he took was of actual vaporization lol
@@stephenwilkens3101 Really, its a masterful pun.
32:40 "On the film, we now have a latent image of vaporization"
Wow, just wow.
the pause length was analogous to the pun size
...
the latent heat of vaporization or evaporation
English isn't my first language so while I love this guy's puns, I think this is the first one that I didn't get
@@penepleto1210 I'm not sure I fully understood it either :P
Observation #1: I'm detecting, with approval, a fair amount of "Airplane!" type humor. Observation #2: Not calling it the Flarble may look a missed opportunity on the surface. Then again, you just know that name would have been genericized to the point that all facial tissues are Kleenex, copy machines are Xerox and photographic devices are Flarbles. And much like Google has become a verb, people would say "flarble me!" when they wanted a picture taken. Eastman-Kodak was one step ahead and knew what was coming. (Well, except for digital photography. They blew it there.)
I'm pretty sure, Mr. Eastman was dead by the time digital photography was becoming practicable, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong...
wait... worlds collide. no #DRUMBEATS????
do people say "Kodak me"? or are you suggesting that kodak didn't genericize because it's not as fun to say as "flarble"?
Okay, how about "a flarble moment"?
Kodak actually invented the digital camera, but you are correct in that they thought it was a pointless technology...or they sat on it because film sales made bank. The jury's still out on that.
It always makes me happy to watch the bloopers at the end. I can relax knowing that my struggle with words is shared with others.
Alec pulled me into his vortex with topics I found interesting. Next thing I know I'm learning about dishwashers, lanterns and now photography.
I never know what the next random topic will be, but I'll be here.
Honestly. we NEED more channels educating us on the most random shit.
Don't forget the toaster! :D
Or the coffee maker.
Most interesting channel on UA-cam, hands down
He got me interested in dishwasher soap 😮
I love how you take the mechanics of a technology and really go hands on with it. Not just a diagram and "here's how it works in theory" but "here's this thing and I'm gonna use it". I like that very much!
Through the magic process of buying two of them!
He perfectly captures the essence of a PBS show in my opinion and I love it
11:05 The resolution/fidelity of the daguerreotype is absolutely incredible! I guess that's because you can fit A LOT of silver molecules within the small plate!
17:30 I need to know more about that wheeled contraption in the middle!
19:10 Love the dog portrait! The fact that someone in the early days of photography over a century ago wanted a portrait of their dog just as pet lovers do today is fantastic!
31:56 Why would you choose those as your subjects?...
32:38 ...That's why, LOL
17:30 Another commenter posted that it's called a Rudge Rotary Tricycle and that reproductions are still being made.
@@A_nony_mous thank you!
31:43 Truly, the magic of having two of them prevails.
As a truck driver I notice this camera effect off and on when I keep my sleeper dark and have a tiny hole in my mid curtain when they are closed. I can see trucks and people moving in front of my truck on my back sleeper wall during bright daylight. 👍🏻
thank you for your service, my fellow essential worker!
If trucks were around before cameras, just imagine, you could have invented the camera! The guy who invented the TV (also featured heavily on this channel) was a farmer who was inspired by the plow pattern of a field to create the side-to-side electron gun movement.
😎🖖🏼
now that you mention it, I think i've seen something like that too, and never noticed.
It was so cool seeing it for the first time in my truck
"a latent image of vaporization" got me. the dedication to your extremely silly jokes is equally admirable and infuriating
Yup. His kids will enjoy the best Dad jokes ever.
That long set up to that joke was totally worth it
I didn't get that joke, can somebody explain for me?
@@kutsen39 It's referring to the chemistry/physics concept "latent heat of vaporization", the energy you must put into a quantity of liquid (like water) in order for it to completely vaporize (steam).
ohhhh ok i get it now
As a hobbyist photographer who became so enamored with the Wet Collodion process that I actually took the time to learn it, this is the Technology Connections video I've needed! One minor note: since the collodion and silver nitrate are applied to the plate independently and not combined, it's called a 'suspension'. 'Emulsion' would refer to an amalgam of the two combined (which IS actually a thing in Aristotype/Collodio-Chloride printing).
-Nick-Collodion
The tongue gag had me in tears I had to pause it. Jesus. Your dry humour is amazing.
19:10 what a good boy. hes sitting so still. i'm glad we got a picture of that sweet dog
Looks like a Brittany Spaniel to me. Still good dogs!
Dog-errotype.
"nick collodion"
I'm dying
have you seen a doctor yet
@@toiletpapermerchant9310 it's too late, i died from laughter
@@toiletpapermerchant9310 I was looking for a man who got that joke, yoh have earned my respect and admiration
@@lekiflomaster5013 Ok, ok... I'm gonna ask... What was the joke?
And I'm gonna hope that the excuse of me being from Europe will holdout! :)
@@purpleldv966 aaah yeah, we have a TV channel called nickelodeon, all the kids from like the 80s to now have and still watch it
It is kind of nice to think that mother and her child, now long gone, are commemorated by this video.
This man owns 2 of everything and cares about every last object in his collection
As with many of the commenters, I would love to applaud to the latent image of vaporization joke. However, my favorite moment was the audio quirk where the noise of the shutter ended the audio being from the outdoor scene, and returned it to the indoor scene.
Absolutely masterful.
32:33
When I took photography in college, the professor turned the photo lab into a Camera Obscura that we sat in for the first lesson where he explained how SLR cameras work. That was one of the coolest classes I ever took.
Somewhere I have a photo book written by a guy who turned his VW Microbus van into a giant camera obscura by lightproofing the interior and putting a pinhole on one side of the van. Basically a giant camera on wheels. He'd drive it to a location and park it with the pinhole side facing the subject, pin a large sheet of photo paper on the back wall, and open the pinhole to expose it.
When I was a physics student we did a course on taking, developing and printing black and white photographs. This would have been sometime in the 1985-1988 timeframe, so this course probably didn't last much longer outside a few dedicated degrees.
I teach photography and I still do this with my students in 2021!
17:30 That is called a Rudge Rotary Tricycle. They make reproductions of them today. Quite unique.
I’m so glad you mentioned the ability of that camera to expose the same frame of film multiple times! When you first explained the shutter mechanism, I immediately got to thinking about how you could take some really dynamic and/or creepy shots with movement between exposures on the same frame (for example, of people dancing).
Hh
Oh my god the subtle jokes throughout this video are hilarious. 24:11 “the arguably *nicer* 6 by 9 cm size” killed me
I'm surprised that I missed that one.
I agree, he delivers this dry humor very well.
It works so well because 6x9 shots are really nice, almost 4x5 quality.
how does he make these jokes without laughing LOL
That Nickelodeon joke.... o.m.g.
13:47 when it clicked in my brain how the degarreotype was sort of a negative and I could see that the black hair of the subject was, in fact, just a perfectly reflective mirror reflecting a dark object, I literally gasped and pauses the video. I’ve been staring at it now for almost 5 minutes, amazed at how it just clicked and now I can see it. What a fascinating method of photography
As a modern tintype photographer this was a fantastic summary! Fun additional info viewers may find interesting: Tintypes in particular take about 1.5 hours from coating the plate to drying the varnish. Exposure times are usually 2-10 seconds with natural light or about 6000w/s of strobe at 3-5 ft is usually enough for a good exposure. Because it’s a UV sensitive process so colors appear differently such as reds getting much darker, blues getting much lighter (wood looks black, blue jeans look almost white, freckles look very distinct, blue eyes look almost completely white). Tattoos often almost disappear or sometimes so disappear because they’re under the layers of skin that reject UV light. It’s a laborious process that takes a ton of skill,practice, and tons of patience to get consistent long term results. Those that do it well have probably spent hundreds of thousands of hours practicing and studying! It’s such a fun and almost magical process to experience first hand if you ever find the opportunity.
I spent 35 wonderful years teaching teens about photography. I also spent 24 years teaching old people (adults) about photography. This eventually developed into digital imaging on both levels. If you were around earlier I would assign your UA-cam presentations as lessons to watch. They are really fun to view
This man is a master at teaching us topics we never realized we needed to know about! 😊🐕🐕🐾🐾
You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. And probably a wizard, too. Cheers.
With that hair? Yes. No doubt.
he's even one of the best wizards on the internet
Anyone else feel chronosonder looking at old photographs? Even separated by hundreds of years, these people had lives as vivid and complex as your own with lost dreams, ambitions, pains, and stories.
Hi! Professional photographer here.... this is the best video on the internet.
Thank you so much for this!!!
Now I can send this video to people when they call 120 "120mm" and not 120.
"*not to be confused with Nick collodion*"
Ah, I see what you did there...
They really need to find a way to bring You Can't Do That on Television again.
@@Ichijoe2112 I wonder how much money various toy companies made selling "slime"..
@Les And it even has a very direct connection to photography and later, motion pictures. But that's a subject for a whole new series of videos.
@Les Yes, and coincidentally back then it was also called "Pinwheel"
I still find it amazing that humans worked out how to record an image before they worked out how to record a sound.
I think it's because audio is invisible. Seriously. How to record an acoustic waveform that can't be seen? How do we capture and store and recall something invisible? It took some time to make that happen.
This is deep stuff. We're visual beings.
But then we stuck with the chemical stuff for a century. Took us a while to get images stored electrically.
@@MrTridac Video since the 1930's was always electronic AFAIK? :) Maybe video camera tubes were capable of pictures of the similar quality as 16mm and 35mm film, but with the standards for broadcast television set as they were, there was no point to hypothetically record at higher line counts? I dunno. In the field, film was used instead of videotape for recording television serials well into the 1970's or 1980's IIRC (you'd see the difference when the protagonists went from studio to location), so I don't know if recording on location with video was impractical.
@@TassieLorenzo you could record on location shoots with video equipment that was not film cameras the if you was that those cameras were very much not small things so if you wanted to be able to bring the camera with you to record a walking actor then good luck have fun. Verizon 8 mm or 16 mm film camera was quite small and hand portable pretty much even a 35 mm camera would be pretty portable
I took a college semseter of this and this video series told me everything and more in less time and way less money! Thank you!
Alec, here's a challenge for you: Find the most boring subject you can think of (but please, as international as possible), make a 10 minutes video about it - and your goal is to actually make it interesting for us. My prediction is that nobody will be disappointed. You're one of the wittiest people I follow on here.
An apartment I stayed in for a few months had a window that created a camera obscura effect when the blinds were closed and covered by a blackout curtain. This made it so I could see the image of people putting their garbage in the bin around noontime when I was trying to sleep for my night shift job. It was pretty cool, but because it wasn't a camera obscura proper, it was very distorted. I could still tell what it was though.
At my great-grandfathers house there was a keyhole near perfectly positioned between a window and a wall behind it. On sunny days in the afternoon you had a nice image of treetops swaying in the wind, projected on the wall.
Thank you for reminding me of that.
makes me wonder how many ghost sightings were/are actually caused by this phenomenon
@@MrTaxiRob Wow, that’s a pretty good observation.
interesting to note that this also happens on walls behind bushes on sunny days. You know all those dappled dots of light? They're actually images of the sun created by hundreds of pin-holes between the leaves. You don't notice normally because the sun is round and so its image is just a circle, but during an eclipse you see lots of crescents instead!
@@d2factotum I’ve noticed that during a couple of eclipses. It’s wild!
Very nicely described, but let’s not forget Fox Talbot the inventor of the negative to positive process in 1839. Daguerre got there first with announcing a useable process, but Talbot with his Calotype was more like the ‘film’ we know now - allowing you to make multiple prints from one negative (be it a paper negative). But you may be coming this in the next film. Loving your work! VERY excited you’re covering photography things!
"an ancient imaging thing that's very old"... this is the sort of detailed commentary I come here for
'“Latent image of vaporization." mad respect for how much setup went into this joke lol
I sadly do not understand this joke
@@jonathangunt8107 He has referenced over many of his past videos the latent heat cycle for how HVAC works, so "latent x" has become a bit of an inside joke. He doubled down on it here by taking a literal picture of water being vaporized which makes it a meta joke as well.
Watch his videos on how AC and heat pumps work for more info.
@@Kamel419 thanks
"photographically smooth jazz" I swear, watching shit with the subtitles on all these years has allowed me to stumble upon some lil comedic gems of text
Sometimes they are just too perfect
Please don’t be offended that I keep falling asleep during your videos. Not to say that they’re boring, but that your voice and cadence are so freaking relaxing.
Please accept the relative compliment that I keep coming back to actually see the video.
I have a pinhole camera from my grandfather. It's a wooden box with a hole and a plate holder for 9x12 dry plates. But even better I have a camera from the 1920s for the same dry plates. I bought some modern dry plates from the US and shot a few - it's such an exciting process to have the image develop in the trays at your fingertips.
I also managed to find actual plates from the 1910s which might still work. Now I am waiting for the summer to expose them and do some photography with it.
I was wondering if you'd ever cover some of this stuff, it's really neat to see as a collodion hobbyist and occasional daguerreotypist. Just a few small notes about daguerreotypes:
1. You don't actually *need* to develop a daguerreotype to create an image. The silver halides will eventually produce an image if you expose them long enough, but the big problem with that, aside from exposure time, is that the sensitized plate actually turns *black* in the exposed areas, which means that you would end up with a negative image that could only be viewed as such by reflecting a white background in the plate. The beauty of mercury development is that not only does it bring out a latent image that wasn't visible to the naked eye, but it replaces the darkened silver halides with a white amalgamation of mercury and silver, which is the reason you're able to view the plate as a positive.
2. Generally a sixth plate daguerreotype wouldn't be one sensitized plate cut up into six pieces (although there were some cameras that could project multiple identical images onto a single plate to be cut up later), it was just a popular plate size about 1/6th of a full plate, which is a size that Daguerre somewhat arbitrarily picked to give an edge to the French lens-making industry (the blanks required to make a lens that would cover that size were more readily available in France than England). In practice a whole plate was extraordinarily expensive (even today it would cost me a little under $200 to get a clad silver plate in that size) so they were rarely used. The first successful Daguerreotype portraits were made with mirror cameras that could only create a clean image about the size of a 1/6th plate, so between that momentum and the fact that they were just a much more affordable size it ended up becoming the most common portrait size.
3. The replacement of daguerrotypes with collodion photographs has less to do with the ease of viewing and a lot more to do with the practicality and expense of creating a Daguerreotype. Collodion allows much faster exposure times which helps with portraiture, but most importantly it's much, much less expensive. To make a daguerreotype you need an entire plate clad in metallic silver. To make an ambrotype or tintype you use a silver nitrate bath which can be reused for a great many plates before replenishing, because only an infinitesimal amount of silver actually makes it onto the much cheaper substrate.
It's also worth mentioning that collodion allowed the creation of glass negatives, which could be printed to make as many identical copies as you want
For anyone interested in the origins of photography, Mike Robinson's dissertation on the development of the daguerreotype process is really fascinating: centurydarkroom.com/s/Robinson_Dissertation_TMAD_sm-lsmh.pdf
I was waiting for someone to talk about Mike here! The guy is a walking talking encyclopedia. When folks say that if someone can replicate a Southworth and Hawes, it’s him; they aren’t kidding!
Thanks for the clarifications, this is super interesting!
Thank you, just wanted to let you know I read your entire comment. Quite interesting!
I asked Mike if he ever used Becquerel development. - He pulled a face! As others have said, he's a modern master.
My favorite thing about this channel is how quickly Alec pulls me in and keeps me interested in things I've often never thought about.
I still think about that toaster video to this day.
Not only that, but how he can still be entertaining even on subjects that I'm already very acquainted with, like photography. I literally knew ALL of this, but the way it's presented was just fantastic.
I went a step further and now have a Sunbeam Radiant Control toaster on my kitchen counter. It's just as much of a joy to use as you can imagine.
Just wait until you see the movie "Mortal Engines" and you get 16 min 20 sec.
His video on retroreflectors has literally changed how I look at road signs, street markers and other high visibility reflectors, and until I saw that, I'd never given them a second thought, let alone knew they were called "retro reflectors".
Not only could I stop thinking about the toaster, I bought one off ebay!
haha so true, i was (trying) to explain the toaster vid to someone other day :') legendary
I've studied this at photography school. Everything in this video.
The only difference is that you managed to make this sound interesting and actually got me interested, letting people actually SEE how old cameras used to work instead of just studying it is WAAAAAY better.
I learned more from this video than I did the whole year I learned photography at school. All they taught us was art but using the camera instead of a paint brush, they didn't go into how the camera worked. Well done sir!
Bro you've somehow hit the mark of simultaneously being the most informative and one of the most humorous channels on UA-cam. I love learning things, and occasionally do not hate laughing while doing so.
“I’m no expert on mid 19th century baby fashion” has been the highlight of my morning.
didn't they dress baby boys and girls the same back then?
@@MrTaxiRob Not entirely the same, but both wore gowns and generally, boys had fancier hair and ribbons.
@@gutterbones what about the wig, does that do anything to identify their sex?
@@MrTaxiRob That's a good question, and on that I'm not sure.
That's also the name of my debut album.
There's a video series called "connections" that get into the deep details on how these inventions came about, step by step from one person making small improvements from others before them. Many by chance encounters with those people. Fantastic series!
I've never fully understood why the aperture had to be such a tiny hole until your pinpoints of light on a screen explanation. Thank you for being you!
"DA-GUERRE" might be the most Chicago your voice has ever been. Always lovely to hear someone appreciate their native brogue.
Your mother's a brogue.
That one caught me off guard, I was expecting a cut not that lol
Seth callback
Almost certainly a jackal
i bursted out laughing when he said that
11:28 I'm actually stunned at how incredible that image looks!
You can still find these for sale. There are a few photographers who still make them, though most you’ll find are old
Yeah its interesting, low quality photos are a more modern invention than photos. We tend to forget and think things just get better over time, but like the disposable film cameras I had as a kid were a lot worse than those ones
@@jek__ I know right. We had ray tracing back in the 1800s and we're just getting back to ray tracing now. /s
This is high-key one of the most underrated channels on UA-cam. Every single video is GOLD.
Fantastic! I used to have the whole dark room set up and did quite a lot of B/W photographer in my time. My grandfather was a professional photographer and I got my start using his equipment and cameras. This is fantastic!
"Resulted in very insensitive plates, which were quite rude". The puns are out of control today.
I cant wait to see how things Develop!
Nice
He hired you to comment that didn't he.
@@moikkis65 Such a Negative attitude.
Come on with this light hearted humour. One would wonder if the first nude photograph on daguerreotype could be called a double exposure.
I didn't have photography classes in elementary or high school but we did get to do pin-hole 'camera' project in elementary school using toilet paper rolls, cardboard and tracing paper due to a timely solar eclipse so we could 'view' the eclipse safely.
Amazing that these old photos survived a centrury and a half to be marvelled in the 21st century.
I can't wait to see how the rest of this series develops
"develops" - I see what you did there!
I bet it's going to gain plenty of exposure along the way.
I love to be exposed to more info about films.
Can confirm 120 film is still used today! I use it frequently in my 1951 Rolleicord!
Ahh, the pinhole... I used to spend substantial part of my savings on a more expensive DSLR body I had no cash left for the lens XD So my first ever photos with it were, until my M42 to EF adapter arrived, with a pinhole made of mount cap and pop can. Still an old Zeiss telephoto is far sharper than the cheaper lens I have.
I actually used that kind of box camera as a young boy around 1965. I was around ten years old, and was completely fascinated about photography. A few years later (when I was around twelve years old) I started developing the films myself and using an enlarger to make my own photo's. The dark room was a construction of dark cloth and bamboo stakes I made in the attic (my father made a sleeping room in the other half of the space for me, and the whole was accessible by an loft ladder). Good times for sure.
"A latent image of vaporization" Do it! DO IT! I know you want to!
I do not understand but I wish to
@@KepSquiPu Watch some more of his videos…
@@KepSquiPu that's a two-layer joke. First, it pokes fun at Alec having to explain latent heat of vaporisation multiple times before making a proper video about it. Second, the photo he took is quite literally that: a latent image that requires development before it becomes viewable, which portrays a process of vaporisation of water from a kettle.
During my childhood, on a trip to Yellowstone, my Mom, using a roll film camera, made an accidental double exposure, and ended up with a picture that appeared to be a bear submerged in the bottom of a hot spring pool. Usually though, double exposures were not that entertaining. With this type of camera, the best practice was to advance to the next frame as soon as you had taken a picture. In any event, you needed to be consistent in your procedure, so that you didn't accidentally double expose, or advance twice and end up with a blank frame.
Ha, I’m imagining my mom trying to remember to roll the footage every time. She once recorded half of Europe’s sidewalks cause she mixed up recording with not recording. If she used a Kodak like that, every photo would be a double/triple/septuple exposure.
This is a fascinating video. My cousin's ex-husband is a professional photographer who also makes tintypes... I appreciate the deeper understanding of what he does.
That is the best description I've ever heard for camera obscura. I never could quite grasp it before, but your example of moving your head in relation to the bigger hole finally clicked for me. Thank you!
Daguerreotypes are so compelling, I want to keep looking at them. The detail is amazing and they seem to reflect life as well as light. I guess that's what gives them a ghostly quality.
The effect where they turn into a mirror with an image on it is pretty cool too.
Even as a relatively young person, I made one of those pinhole cameras in highscool. I wish that was still a common thing, darkrooms are still so neat!
I never did that but instead I used B&W camera and learned how to develop in darkrooms
I made one in jr high… I used a checkbook box.
I built my first D/R when I was 18. Getting ready to retire in a few years, I'm designing my new darkroom I'll be building next year. All mine have been for colour photography. I do shoot digital, but nothing like doing it yourself from start to end. Film cameras on eBay are cheap including awesome medium format 120 cameras that costs $8k or more just 20 years ago.
I did not, but I am also from latinoamerica, so, even in a high standard high school (as in high quality, not so expensive) we didn't had access to do things like that, we did a few experiments like sparking flash film and things like that, but there was not much to do and the art teachers do not had access to the materials and environment to make this things possible.
When I was a Boy Scout I made one that wedged into the opening of a 126 cartridge.
I didn’t know I’d ever be this excited about a black and white photo. Very educational
Yes!! As a 20 yr old Chicago wet plate photographer, I love this
Hello mr. Connections. Everyone has those lists of elite channels in their sub feed that they are genuinely excited to see, so much so that they hold off until they can get a good chill time to watch it. Just wanted you to know that you are one of these channels in my feed, keep up the great work, thanks!
He is the only channel I actually have notifications turned on for.
I almost never even put him on 2x speed.
this, dankpods, idat, and some other tech channels are mine.
I feel ya. Sometimes I'm a week late to these videos but it's out of love.
Seriously, TC is definitely something I always save for the right time!
I’m looking forward to the rest of this series. My Dad was one of the last non-digital commercial photographers around, and he taught me the processes before he passed away. Also, the George Eastman museum UA-cam channel has some great videos on the historic processes and some longer lectures.
I know I've been over this topic a dozen times, and maybe it's just the early hour and that I've had more THC than caffeine thus far, but thinking about the "light travels in a straight line" and the camera obscura pinprick hole and realizing that all the ambient light we're seeing is just a million images, projected in straight lines, creating that warm glow is a "whoa, man, that's trippy" moment.
I appreciate how those videos are almost never self-referential. Intentionally bad jokes are just that, with no explanation or bragging on how witty someone is. Then, there is nothing about being youtuber, producing videos or earning money from it unless it’s related to the topic. Those are just sincere, humble, high quality videos about technology and nothing more.
I never know what I'm going to learn when you post a video but I always look forward to the next topic. Excited to watch this series develop!
It's a very sensitive subject but he is exposing it appropriately.
iseewhatyoudidthere.jpg
Don't shutter your mind to new possibilities.
Daguerrotypes really look amazing. All development after that made the process easier and cheaper (and less deadly) and viewing less finicky, but sacrificed something in the quality. Even today's digital images can't compete in the number of shades of grey and resolution, at leat on the actual media, forgetting optics. I envy your Ektachrome shirt.
I don't care how many times I watch one of your videos, it's always a treat
32:44 - I love these moments of "yes, I said that, I'm serious, and... it matters?"