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

[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

[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

[MrEricSir]

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

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...

[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.

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.

[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.

[hedwards]

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

Re:No

[netsavior]

yeah, that photo is in tfa

Re:No

[HouseOfMisterE]

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

Old news is so exciting

[bhcompy]

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

Zoom and Enhance

[stoolpigeon]

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

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:what about the shroud or turin

[moortak]

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