The First Photograph of a Human

wiredog writes "The Atlantic has a brief piece on what is likely to be the first photograph (a daguerreotype) showing a human. From the article: 'In September, Krulwich posted a set of daguerreotypes taken by Charles Fontayne and William Porter in Cincinnati 162 years ago, on September 24, 1848. Krulwich was celebrating the work of the George Eastman House in association with the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. Using visible-light microscopy, the George Eastman House scanned several plates depicting the Cincinnati Waterfront so that scholars could zoom in and study the never-before-seen details.'"

Comments

Cat

[MrEricSir]

Okay, the first photo of a human, whatever.

But now I want to see the first photo of a cat. Ideally one with a caption.

Re:Cat

[arth1]

You're an AC, and probably joking too, but the earliest Daguerrotype pr0n was, according to livescience.com two years earlier than this:

"Technology drove innovation in the porn genre. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, a primitive form of photography. Almost immediately, pornographers commandeered the new technology. The earliest surviving dirty daguerreotype — described by Slade in a 2006 paper as "depicting a rather solemn man gingerly inserting his penis into the vagina of an equally solemn and middle-aged woman" — is dated at 1846."
Source: http://www.livescience.com/culture/pornography-history-erotica-sexuality-101011.html (no, no pictures, PSFWUYWFAR)

Re:Cat

[wampus]

Boeing, boeing, gone?

Re:Cat

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because MrEricSir has an unhealthy obsession with cat daguerrotypes does _not_ make him a catholic.

I'm certain he can quit any time he wants to.

Re:Cat

[FleaPlus]

But now I want to see the first photo of a cat. Ideally one with a caption.

Here you go, from 1905, the "What Delaying My Dinner?" cat:

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/12/01/funny-pictures-oldest-ever-lolcat-found/

Re:Cat

[flimflammer]

So really, the first picture of a human was porn, and not the picture in this article? That's awesome!

Re:Cat

[paiute]

You're an AC, and probably joking too, but the earliest Daguerrotype pr0n was, according to livescience.com two years earlier than this:

"Technology drove innovation in the porn genre. In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype, a primitive form of photography. Almost immediately, pornographers commandeered the new technology. The earliest surviving dirty daguerreotype — described by Slade in a 2006 paper as "depicting a rather solemn man gingerly inserting his penis into the vagina of an equally solemn and middle-aged woman" — is dated at 1846."
Source: http://www.livescience.com/culture/pornography-history-erotica-sexuality-101011.html (no, no pictures, PSFWUYWFAR)

Greatgreatgrandma?????

Re:Cat

[Snowgen]

So really, the first picture of a human was porn, and not the picture in this article? That's awesome!

No. You made the mistake of reading the summary and thinking that somehow reflected what the fine article said. It's a common mistake here. If you actually take the time to read the rather brief article itself, you will find that the first photo of a human was in 1838.

Re:Cat

[sribe]

You're an AC, and probably joking too, but the earliest Daguerrotype pr0n was, according to livescience.com two years earlier than this:

Yes, well, if the submitter had bothered to RTFA, he would have found that the 1848 one is not the one claimed to be the first photo of a human. It seems that examination of the 1848 photo lead to examination of another photo in 1838 with a person visible in it.

Re:Cat

[Nugoo]

(no, no pictures, PSFWUYWFAR)

Pretty
Safe
For
Work
Unless
You
Work
For
A
R... epublican?

Re:Cat

[aaaantoine]

(no, no pictures, PSFWUYWFAR)

Huh?

I Googled this acronym, and the only results that came back were references back to this Slashdot post.

Re:Cat

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

L-old cats?

Re:Cat

[Anonymous Coward]

(no, no pictures, PSFWUYWFAR)

Huh?

I Googled this acronym, and the only results that came back were references back to this Slashdot post.

I am guessing Perfectly safe for work unless you work for a retard ?

Re:Cat

[OakDragon]

I was about to post it, but you beat me to it! Absurdly close to the modern lolcat!

Re:Cat

[MrEricSir]

I'm in a support group for catholics and dogholics.

Re:Cat

[MrEricSir]

Someone needs to tell that cat: "Keep your fork, there's pie"

Re:Cat

[Rodyland]

Probably Safe For Work Unless You Work For A Religious-extremist? Russian?

Re:Cat

[Raul654]

That might be the oldest lolcat, but there are definitely older pictures of cats.

Re:Cat

[flimflammer]

Well, in all honesty I was joking. I guess since I didn't post as AC, my intent was lost. That's what I get for trying for Funny.

Re:Cat

[Runacta Munac]

But if you zoom in really tight, you can see who it is - it's Waldo!

Re:Cat

[JDmetro]

No it is your mother I do believe.

Re:Cat

[Tablizer]

No, I asked for the oldest photo of a pussy, not a cat!

Re:Cat

[sznupi]

And for "Russian" - not what you'd think, not what you'd hope for.

Re:Cat

[ProbablyJoe]

So according to those dates, the first photograph of a human was actually taken a year -before- the technology was invented.

Clearly photography eclipsed Daguerre's less famous invention, time travel.

Re:Cat

[sznupi]

Is it dead? :/

Re:Cat

[sznupi]

"Absurdly" might be not the bets choice of words, unless about people of every period thinking how special they are.

In related news: stereoscopy, the "3D" sister of photography, is also more than 150 years old. I'm sure it will get popular any day now...

Re:Cat

[bratwiz]

Republican, retard-- whatever you wanna call it.

Pretty much the same thing.

Re:Cat

[pinkushun]

+1 for lulz!

Re:Cat

[buanzo]

You can see some of the oldest available porn in Amsterdam's Museum of Sex. Been there, done that.

Re:Cat

[w0mprat]

Why, I'm glad you asked: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/12/01/funny-pictures-oldest-ever-lolcat-found/

I want to know what the first FAIL was. Were any photos taken in 1912 of the Titanic sinking?

I was hoping for an actual person.

[MrCrassic]

The snaps in the article make it clear that you have to really dig to find what you're after. I was hoping for a full picture of someone. Either way, it's amazing how far we've come in terms of photography (and technology in general).

We can afford to throw away shots. Compared to the film days, that's a big deal.

Re:I was hoping for an actual person.

[kiwijapan]

I was hoping for a photo of the first human .... how knows, maybe in another 100-200 years or so (mind you, gotta figure out the whole time travel thing first)

What I find more interesting...

[gandhi_2]

...is that 162 years later we take digital pictures that don't have the resolution to allow visible-light microscopy-level zooming.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[MyLongNickName]

Well, the techniques are definitely different. While this photograph is defnitely very high resolution, you likely had to wait ten minutes for the image to be firmly etched into the plate. Would be really hard to take a shot of the World Cup... though you would likely get a good shot of the World Series.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[Animaether]

Speak for yourself when you say 'we'.

People who used daguerrotypes weren't exactly exactly numbering in the millions... the camera, plates, development equipment, etc. required cost a pretty penny even back then.

So let's take an objective look at things... I don't know which size that particular photo was, but one site on the interwebs lists as the largest daguerrotype plate a 6.5 x 8.5 inch plate. That's -huge-, but let's roll with it.

Now let's see what other photography equipment you're not likely to find with a typical tourist... how about a LEAF APTUS-II digital back? It's only 53.7mm x 40.3mm and has a resolution of 10,320 x 7,752 pixels.

Let's blow that sensor up to the size of that plate. The aspects don't quite match.. Losing a bit off the length there you're left with 52.7x40.3mm and 10,127 x 7,752 pixels.

So now on 8.5" we've got 10,127 pixels or ~1,191.4DPI and on 6.5" we've got 7,752 pixels or ~1192.6DPI.

Let's call it a round 1190DPI. I'd say that's pretty tight and you'd need at least a magnifying glass to see details no larger than a few pixels - which the blobby messes from the photograph discussed can pretty much be labeled as. (Note that the two photos in the article linked to are different photos - the detail from the photo referenced in the 'microscopy' section can be found on the original page: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2010/10/22/130754296/first-photo-of-a-human-being-ever )

That's not even counting large format digital camera backs or -scanning- digital backs (sure, exposure sucks, but daguerrotypes weren't exactly 1/800s wonders either - the second image was a 10-minute exposure) that will give you a much greater resolution yet.

And all that without the fuss and nasty chemicals and a result you can copy again and again and physically handle any which way you want (other than setting it on fire and electrocuting it, I suppose) without fear of smudging off the exposed elements, etc.

Then again.. most people don't care to have that much resolution in the first place. The primary mode of display these days is on the internet. While that's gone beyond the 800x600 'e-mail size' photos, by far the most gallery sites still do not post a full 5MP picture, never mind the 10MP that's just about standard now, unless it's a site specifically for great photos or panorama photos (which you most certainly would need a microscope for if printed out at the size specified above.).
In that respect.. it certainly is interesting.. and makes me wonder why so many people still buy into the megapixel race.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[Moryath]

The shift to digital is an interesting one.

We lose a good deal of data even going to . It's possible to take a standard 35mm print (standard photo album size) and extract enough useful information during developing to make prints that look actually pretty damn good at, say, 11x17 or 24"x36" or even larger poster formats as long as the film was good quality, because it's a relatively analog photo (only constrained by the grain of the film itself).

At the same time, for easy copying and storage space and shorter-term editing ability, the digital photo does wonders.

The uniqueness of the first man captured on film being there because he was, quite literally, just sitting still the entire time the daugerrotype was exposed is a marvel.

Part of the major loss with digital, however, is the amount of "thrown away" data. In the old days, photographers filming a busy scene would snap off roll after roll, then develop and check their shots later. I'm reminded of a famous basketball championship where a photographer only realized the next day, going through his rolls, that he'd captured a perfect pandemonium in which, in the midst of all the carnage, he had a perfect view of one of the coaches flipping off a ref. These days, all the other shots - which are actually just as important and form an interesting slideshow of the event - would probably just get deleted out of hand by the guy.

The other major loss with digital is the work put into staging and arranging a shot. The "well I'll try and adjust and if it doesn't work I'll just delete and go again and photoshop the light sources later" approach just doesn't have the same artistry as someone painstakingly getting it right the first time.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[0100010001010011]

Anyone else imagine this guy in his office just sitting there going "Enhance"

Re:What I find more interesting...

[icebike]

(only constrained by the grain of the film itself)

At what pixel density to we approach the finest grain film?
I thought we were well past that already. Perhaps I misunderstood?

But do we not also "Throw away" information when printing from film? Its such a selective process, exposure just so, or you lose the shadows. Paper also has grain. Is it fine enough?

Re:What I find more interesting...

[nedlohs]

Why would they get deleted out of hand? Keeping the digital image around is orders of magnitude easier than keeping around negatives or bothering to make prints from them and keeping those.

I would expect the digital camera user to also just shoot and shoot and shoot and check the photos afterwards as well. With the cost of each click being far less to boot.

Sure going through them afterwards is also going to be difficult due to the sheer volume. Whenever I dowload images from my camera they get put in YYYY-MM-DD folders and nothing ever gets deleted. A professional photographer is going to produce far more pictures but they also likely have far more disk space to burn too.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[evilWurst]

With a little bit of searching, I come up with about 20 megapixels for a perfect shot on perfect 35mm film, 12 megapixels for a merely "good" shot. The best film scanners can go up to 36 bit color depth per pixel, also.

The best DSLRs I can find on newegg today are 21 megapixel cameras in the $6000 range and claim true 14 bits per color channel (which would be 42 bit color), so yes, it seems they've passed 35mm film.

The camera tier under that are about 18 megapixels and 22 bit color, for $800-$1300.

Keep in mind that to get that top quality data, you'd have to set the camera to save everything raw instead of using lossy compression, so the files will be huge. (A quick, rounded calculation says 110 MB per shot). 35mm film comes in 24 shot rolls, right? So that's 2640 MB for a roll-equivalent. For kicks, looking up the biggest and fastest flash memory card, I see a 64 MB card for over $600 that claims 90 MB/sec write speed. That's equivalent to 24 rolls of film (576 shots), though, and it's reusable. Cheap 35mm film looks to be about $10 for four rolls, so $60 for the same number of shots, but I don't know what higher quality film costs and I'm not sure how to find out. Still, you've come out ahead with the memory card if you fill it more than ten times. Oh, and I left the cost (time and/or money) of developing and scanning the film.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[evilWurst]

I need to preview more. 64 GB flash card, not 64 MB.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[im_thatoneguy]

Or it's the same artistry--just being done on the computer.

Ansel Adams dodged and burned his photos in development. It's nothing new. We aren't to the point yet where you can just "photoshop all the light sources" yet but we will. And what's wrong with that? What's the difference between doing it on location where time is of the essence and electricity and lights might be scarce instead of capturing the composition and lighting in post?

You still have to have an eye for composition and lighting.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[im_thatoneguy]

64 MB card for over $600 that claims 90 MB/sec write speed.

Overkill. Also not the way RAW works.

RAW only has one color sample per pixel. So you need to divide your numbers by 3. So more like 30MB per shot.

As to your $600 CF Card... no. You can get a 64GB - 60MBs write speed card for $150. Cameras have buffers so you can shoot burst and fill the buffer before needing to write to card. Most cameras can't shoot beyond 3 FPS. Before your buffer fills you could shoot on burst a few seconds of shots with a 60MB card.

You're spending about twice as much for the medium. But like you said developing and scanning is where you get hit. Think $15 a roll if you want 22 megapixels with 36bit color. So 24 rolls will set you back about $300 for procsesing. About twice a CF Card.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[im_thatoneguy]

Kind of unfair though. Our sensors are about 6cm^2. These were shot on 350cm^2 films. That's considerably larger. Take a modern 21megapixel camera and scale it up and you would have a 1.2 Gigapixel camera.

Also the shots were extremely long exposure (and black and white). If you built a panoramic head for this 1.2Gigapixel camera and shot a panoramic series of shots over 3-4 seconds you could probably get at least 5 shots in. I would bet that 5.2Gigapixels is more resolution than any of these photos and with considerably more dynamic range.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[DerekLyons]

You can't do visible light microscopy on most film images either, even back then. That requires large formats and/or extremely specialized film.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[Machtyn]

These days, all the other shots - which are actually just as important and form an interesting slideshow of the event - would probably just get deleted out of hand by the guy

I'm not a photog pro, but I have had the (un)fortune of browsing through my family's photos (all 1000s of them over a week's reunion) and selecting the best picture from a group that were taken as a quick 3 or 5 snapshot set. Certainly, there is a chance of missing the special image... the process is tedious.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[IICV]

Part of the major loss with digital, however, is the amount of "thrown away" data. In the old days, photographers filming a busy scene would snap off roll after roll, then develop and check their shots later. I'm reminded of a famous basketball championship where a photographer only realized the next day, going through his rolls, that he'd captured a perfect pandemonium in which, in the midst of all the carnage, he had a perfect view of one of the coaches flipping off a ref.

What? That doesn't make any sense at all! Every single digital camera I have seen in the last few years has a three or five shot mode, where every time you press the button it takes multiple shots! Hell, my N900 will even take multiple shots and stitch them together into an HDR image!

What you're talking about is basically one of the problems with film, not digital. Sure, professional photographers who developed their own photos and bought rolls of film in bulk could afford to take multiple shots, but consumers were far more constrained - they had maybe thirty shots on their camera, and once that was done they'd have to hope there was another roll in their backpack, and then they had to pay ~$10 to get the roll processed at the end of the vacation - and they paid for all the photos, even the shitty ones.

Digital changed all that. Now you can take a bajillion pictures during the day, look at them all on your laptop at night, and take another bajillion the next day - photos take up almost zero space on modern digital storage hardware, so why delete anything ever?

In short, what you just said there makes no sense at all.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[grcumb]

Well put. A friend of mine who's worked extensively as a war photographer as well as other things once told me that, "Photography hasn’t significantly improved since the early years. It’s just become more convenient.”

Re:What I find more interesting...

[Eskarel]

Depends what you mean by film.

We've already gone past the kind of detail you're likely to get out of the kind of 35mm film you used to buy and get developed down the local shop(though . However, medium format film has a dramatically larger surface area and large format film is substantially higher than that.

Large format film is 4 inches by 5 inches for a single frame, which if you take a minute to think about it is pretty damned high quality, if somewhat impractical for regular use.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[sznupi]

It's possible to take a standard 35mm print (standard photo album size) and extract enough useful information during developing to make prints that look actually pretty damn good at, say, 11x17 or 24"x36" or even larger poster formats as long as the film was good quality, because it's a relatively analog photo (only constrained by the grain of the film itself)

People can't tell the difference between 13, 8 and 5 megapixels at 16"x24"

Re:What I find more interesting...

[necro81]

we take digital pictures that don't have the resolution to allow visible-light microscopy

Of course you can't - it's a digital image stored on ethereal media. Were you planning on taking a microscope to the SD card or something?

Get me closer - I can't see the bits yet! Let me tune in the focus better ... and ... Yes! Oooooh, I think I see a ... 1! and that right there is surely a ... 0!

(I understand and sympathize with your point, but the opportunity was too good to let slide)

Re:What I find more interesting...

[Jason Levine]

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't delete my photos. Even if they are blurry and completely not suitable for framing or even posting on a website, I keep them. I have a 1TB drive. That's plenty of space for all of the digital photos I've taken since 1999 (when I got my first digital camera). (My digital photos take up about 250GB.)

Re:What I find more interesting...

[LordSnooty]

But I've seen plenty of press snappers scanning through their pictures at the event and presumably deleting the ones they don't want. I think GP's point is that those not-so-desirable shots can be removed just minutes after they were taken, and never find their way back to the picture editor. In film days, every snap would be viewed by the editor, who may have liked one that the snapper thought was worthless.

Of course this wouldn't apply to the amateur, who will purge their collection much later, if at all.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[mcgrew]

But you're still nowhere close to a Hasselblad with 70mm film (four times the resolution of 35mm), and there were even larger films. IINM the old deguerrotypes had negatives the size of the print, which would give you incredible resolution.

Re:What I find more interesting...

[IICV]

I seriously doubt that they're deleting the ones they don't want. Like I said, there's no reason to do that due to space considerations, and like you said, on those tiny little screens they might miss a small detail that would be obvious to someone on a big screen. They're probably just looking through them to see what they've gotten and haven't gotten.

No, it isn't.

[Monkey_Genius]

This is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boulevard_du_Temple_by_Daguerre.jpg

Re:No, it isn't.

[neonsignal]

sadly, that photograph was also in the linked article, but the submitter only read the first half...

Re:No, it isn't.

[MichaelSmith]

Yeah I saw that on bb last night. I wondered why Daguerre picked such a boring scene with only one person? I suppose the guy getting his shoes cleaned was friendly to long exposures.

Re:No, it isn't.

[cavePrisoner]

Isn't that picture already in the fine article?

Re:No, it isn't.

[erstazi]

It's likely that this was a busy street at the time, but because the image would have taken several minutes to form, only the figure standing still -- getting his boots shined? -- shows up.

Re:No, it isn't.

[PatPending]

I downloaded this image so I could zoom in. There appears to be a child's face peering out from the upper left window of the building in the foreground. (That or Alfred E. Neuman is mooning us!) Also--to the right of the man getting his shoe shinned--isn't that a person sitting at a table?

Re:No, it isn't.

[Y-Crate]

Yeah, about a year and a half ago I sat through a lecture on the 1838 photo. We discussed the presence of the two people on the street corner, and how it was such an unexpected treat given the ridiculous exposure times back then (they were measured in minutes). This isn't news.

Re:No, it isn't.

[PatPending]

Correction--two people sitting at a table. That or I'm seeing dead people.

Re:No, it isn't.

[hedwards]

You are indeed, unless you've found somebody that's like 180 years old.

Re:No, it isn't.

[icebike]

There are two more people at the table.

Re:No, it isn't.

[MichaelSmith]

Ah good point.

Re:No, it isn't.

[scottrocket]

"There appears to be a child's face peering out from the upper left window of the building in the foreground"

It could be a cat!

Re:No, it isn't.

[sznupi]

Can we be certain those are not statues?

Re:No, it isn't.

[mcgrew]

I saw six people. There['s a guy standing outside a door, and what looks like children in a window (there's a high resolution image at wikipedia you can blow up in an image editor)

No

[stoolpigeon]

It's not the first photo of a human. This was on boing boing a couple days ago. Probably digg, reddit, and who knows where else too. There is a dageurreotype by Daguerre from 1838 with a person in it.

It's o.k. to be a couple days behind on this stuff, but dang, to still be repeating this that were shown to be incorrect a while back is sad.

Re:No

[netsavior]

yeah, that photo is in tfa

Re:No

[HouseOfMisterE]

You're a couple of posts behind on this stuff...

Re:No

[stoolpigeon]

Yeah- it's fitting. I'm playing a game on my phone, watching the baseball play-offs and trying to post at the same time. But I still feel better having vented.

Re:No

[necro81]

This was on boing boing a couple days ago. Probably digg, reddit, and who knows where else too

I first read about this in Wired back in June or July. I'm sure it was in some photog publication a while before that, and folks at the George Eastman House have probably been publicizing by word-of-mouth in their circle since they first laid eyes on the plates.

Re:No

[mcgrew]

You DO Like Reading Off a Computer Screen

Disappointed

[Dyinobal]

I came hoping for boobs and left disappointed.

Re:Disappointed

[MichaelSmith]

You need the old African pictures...

Old news is so exciting

[bhcompy]

This is so old it's in my Art textbook from my Art 110 GE class.

Re:Old news is so exciting

[Scorpinox]

I was about to post the same thing. I'm taking an online art class and the photograph is printed in the book, "Preble's Art Forms 9th Edition". I do find it fascinating how old news can suddenly jump into popularity all over the web.

Zoom and Enhance

[stoolpigeon]

You're mistaken there. I was watching CSI and visible-light microscopy-level zooming is nothing.

Re:Zoom and Enhance

[JDeane]

Uncrop!

Re:Zoom and Enhance

[Rockoon]

Obligatory Red Dwarf - Back to Earth

Re:Zoom and Enhance

[dominious]

I was scrolling this thread for a CSI reference just to post this link:
http://www.moronail.net/img/2010_see_if_you_can_enhance_that_license_plate

Visible-light microscopy

[19thNervousBreakdown]

What will they think of next!

what about the shroud or turin

[Anonymous Coward]

wasnt that supposed to be the first photograph of a human made in the 1200s?

Re:what about the shroud or turin

[h4rr4r]

1. It's fake
2. Photographs require light, note the photo part of the word.
3. If the shroud of turin was what it was claimed to be it would have to have been made almost 1200 years before 1200 AD.

Re:what about the shroud or turin

[moortak]

It may be a fake in the sense of not the burial shroud of Jesus, but it is real in the sense of an artistic and historic artifact. There was a popular theory kicking about for a while that the shroud was formed by a very primitive photographic process. The idea is covered on the wiki.

Re:what about the shroud or turin

[moortak]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin

Re:what about the shroud or turin

[Jesus_666]

Right now upon hearing "primitive photographic process" and "imprints the rough silhouette of a human onto fabric", the only thing I can think of is a nuclear explosion. I don't know why but for some reason I think the bible would have been more awesome if the Romans had nuked Jesus.

27 And Pontius Pilatus said: 28 "I say we shall smite him with nuclear weapons from atop the Mount Zion. 29 It is the only way to be sure."

Re:what about the shroud or turin

[xmousex]

thats exactly the point i was trying to make

1200 ad

they used sunlight and a chemical agent

dont you watch history channel

Hardly the first?

[heptapod]

Some argue that the Shroud of Turin is the first photograph of a human being.

Re:Hardly the first?

[h4rr4r]

Smart people realize that the Shroud is a fake and this new theory is just to deal with the fact that it could not have been an impression that made such marks.

Re:Hardly the first?

[MichaelSmith]

Hand stencils dating back 2,500 years have also been found on the walls of Argentina's Cueva de las Manos (Cave of the Hands) in Patagonia, in France, Spain, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia's Gua Ham cave, in the Handprint Cave of Belize and Elands Bay Cave in South Africa [9]. Handprints and stencils span all continents and began appearing on rock walls around the world at least 30,000 years ago [9].

Re:Hardly the first?

[Nicolas MONNET]

This hypothesis is ridiculously useless from the beginning; when you want a 1:1 image of something that looks like an imprint, it's a million times easier to make an imprint. Occam's razor's rolling on the floor laughing.

Re:Hardly the first?

[sznupi]

I wonder if back then it was also treated as vandalism...

What Every Detective Show Has Taught Me...

[No Lucifer]

Researcher #1: What's that in sector 2E?

Researcher #2: I don't know... it couldn't be...

Researcher #1: Isolate it. Now zoom in.

Researcher #2: It looks like a human, but I can't tell

Researcher #1: Clean it up. Now, you can clearly see the person in this photo is wearing a Rolex. Just like our suspect.

Re:What Every Detective Show Has Taught Me...

[dominious]

Wait a minute. Zoom in on the reflection of that Rolex...

OT but interesting

[FiloEleven]

The guy mentioned in the summary is Robert Krulwich, an NPR correspondent and one half of the wonderful radio show Radiolab.

They usually look at the science behind all sorts of things, from psychology to physics to music. The production quality is fantastic, the content is almost always thought-provoking, and the hosts have an interplay that is often humorous while remaining informative. I've linked to several of their shows in the past when they were relevant to the discussion.

If you have a curious mind, you can easily spend countless hours listening to their shows, and unlike much entertainment they are all grounded in reality and will enrich your existence.

not a busy street

[junglebeast]

if it were a busy street, the presence of people would have reduced the average light creating visible darkness on the road. there are no dark patches or streaks so it was probably an empty street after all.

Re:not a busy street

[Gerafix]

How many long exposure photographs have you took? That's not how it works. Well in one scenario you'd be correct but people would have to be packed onto that street like sardines.

Re:not a busy street

[eriqk]

I've taken long exposure photographs with ISO 25 film. Some exposures times were close to a minute. It's remarkable how moving objects like people disappear completely.
In one instance, a car was waiting to cross a street for quite a while and it only remains as a very faint, ghostly image.

Careful with those numbers...

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

With a little bit of searching, I come up with about 20 megapixels for a perfect shot on perfect 35mm film, 12 megapixels for a merely "good" shot. The best film scanners can go up to 36 bit color depth per pixel, also.

I've seen so many different numbers given by so many people on this question that I've basically stopped believing all of them. It's a complicated issue; the general opinion, however, is that APS-C digital cameras are as good or better than 35mm film cameras in practice.

One of the reasons the issue is complicated is because the results you get depend on how you perform the comparison. Let's assume that you take two photos of the same scene, using the same lens at the same aperture, but one photo is taken on the film camera and the other on a digital camera with the same frame size. How are you going to compare the photos? Here's three ways you could do it:

1. You could scan the film on a film scanner, and compare the scan image file to the digital camera's file. But then the problem you have is that the film scanner might fail to reproduce all of the detail on the film. For example, many film scanners have aliasing effects that magnify the appearance of grain in some conditions.
2. You could make a print from each of the photos, and compare the prints. The problem then is that unless you scan the film (introducing the problems detailed above), you're going to have to use two very different printing methods for the two photos; a digital print for the digital photo, and a traditional darkroom print for the film one. But now the results are a function of the print method as much as the capture type. And, it's a subjective comparison.
3. You could put the film on a light table and examine it with a magnifier, and compare it by eye with the digital photo displayed on a monitor at the equivalent magnification relative to the sensor size. This is probably the best, but the comparison is subjective again.

And I'm sure that somebody who knows this stuff better than me can pick this apart...

The best DSLRs I can find on newegg today are 21 megapixel cameras in the $6000 range and claim true 14 bits per color channel (which would be 42 bit color), so yes, it seems they've passed 35mm film. The camera tier under that are about 18 megapixels and 22 bit color, for $800-$1300.

You're assuming that the number of megapixels is an accurate representation of the amount of detail (spatial resolution) that the camera can reproduce. It is not; it's an upper bound on the amount of detail that the camera can reproduce, and nearly every digital camera falls significantly short of its sensor's resolution limit, due to the anti-aliasing filters used to eliminate color moiré artifacts, which basically blur the image at the sensor.

But wait, there's more!

• The amount of detail captured is as much a function of the lens as it is a function of the sensor. There's a physical upper limit on how much resolution you can get from a lens of a given aperture, and of course, lenses are also imperfect devices. Today's 18 to 24 megapixel digital cameras are actually starting to hit the upper limits on the amount of detail lenses can reproduce.
• The 21 and 24 megapixel cameras you cite have a larger sensor than the 18 megapixel models. Larger sensors tend to lead to more detail, because the lenses are larger, and at the same print or display size, they're less demanding on the lens.
• Nearly all digital cameras use Bayer-pattern sensors, which means that the amount of detail captured is color-dependent. Those 18MP cameras are actually 9MP green, 4.5MP red and 4.5MP blue.

Re:Careful with those numbers...

[Iskender]

I've seen so many different numbers given by so many people on this question that I've basically stopped believing all of them. It's a complicated issue; the general opinion, however, is that APS-C digital cameras are as good or better than 35mm film cameras in practice.

I'd moderate you up if I had some points. Instead I'll reply and say that I've had the same reaction. At some point I realized that if you string together all the statements about which cameras are equivalent to which (from both film and digital people) you end up with the following:
1) 35 mm film is better than digital medium format;
2) Any pocket digital camera is the same as large format film.

While silly things like the above emerge far too easily, there does seem to be one constant: large format film still has its place. Sure it's probably fading, but it's been with us for more than a century and people still use it for work every day. My photography hobby has been primarily digital all the way, but I'll never diss large format. It's pretty much where everything started and amazingly it's still alive. I haven't heard anyone who knows what it is dare say anything bad about it. I hope it lives longer than fads like 35 mm film. :)

Re:Careful with those numbers...

[lee1026]

While I agree that resolution is as much a function of the lens as it is of the sensor. We can essentially ignore the lens when we are discussing 35mm film - for the most part, modern DSLRs use the same lenses as 35mm film, so both suffer equally on the lens front. (Assuming you buy full frame, of course)

Re:Careful with those numbers...

[Smauler]

To perform a true comparison of detail retained, you could take long range pictures of text, then see if you could decipher it by any means possible. Would this work, or am I being overly simplistic?

Re:Careful with those numbers...

[mcgrew]

Resolutions keep rising all the time. When we have high enough resolution sensors and high enough resolution monitors, we'll be able to have holographic monitors.

Stereoscopy has a lot of limits. The eyes and brain (the brain is the primary sight organ) use not only stereoscopy, but rangefinding and focus (among other cues) to determine depth. And with stereoscopy, focus gets in the way, which is why it gives some people headaches.

Soon, digital will surpass even large format film.

Colorized Version looks interesting

[tkrotchko]

If you scroll to the bottom of the article, somebody spent some time colorizing and tagging various parts of the photo:

http://www.lunarlog.com/colorized-boulevard-du-temple-daguerre/

Extrapolating...

[Jesus_666]

CSI 1850: "Constable, use the power of science in conjunction with this here microscrope to enhance the daguerrotype to henceforth unknown levels of detail!" - "Certainly, sir!"

CSI 2000: "Give me a 2000x magnification on that 320x240 low-quality JPEG. Now zoom in on his finger and run what you see through our fingerprint database."

CSI 2150: "The perpetrator has left no traces. We have nothing." - "Let's just ride our unicorns through the heliosheath until they sweat liquid justice!" - "Huzzah!"

Re:A Memorable image...

[sznupi]

And yet, for some reason, in the place most proud of him - the photograph is virtually unknown; one "standard painting" is how people remember Chopin.

Re:Provided it's not a fake...

[dino2gnt]

No solid proof has been offered as to its authenticity, either.