image: Victoria & Albert Museum, Public Domain.
About old photo techniques, introduction by Fred Truyen
PHOTOCONSORTIUM President Fred Truyen explains in a friendly way some of the old photo techniques and how they define the character of the photograph, in a nice article appeared on KU Leuven’s official blog “Cultural Studies Leuven”.
“Is the growing popularity of vintage photography yet another pointless surge of nostalgia in a world of digital banality and immediacy? A kind of allergic reaction to the emptiness of the selfie? Or is the photograph indeed something else than just the light information captured, but a magic that occurs in the chemistry of the material object that is the vintage print or plate?”
DAGUERREOTYPE
The video recreates the Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre study in France in 1839 to show, step by step, various techniques and procedures for the preparation of a daguerreotype.
BROMOIL
The video recreates the bromoil technique, mastered by Catalan photographer Joaquim Pla Janini. Bromoil was an improvement over the oil process in which paper coated with dichromated gelatin was contact printed. The name Bromoil is derived from the combination of bromide and oil. While the process was intended as an independent process, the bromoil transfer process became a popular derivative. Oil, bromoil and bromoil transfer were popular with art photographers working within the Pictorialist movement.
ALBUMEN
The video shows the process of elaboration of positive copies in paper with albumen technique in Girona in 1860.
CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHY
Virtual reconstruction of the experiments of Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1879 to succeed in capturing the movement of a galloping horse with the chronophotography.
WET COLLODION
Video showcasing the wet collodion process.
DEVELOPED GELATINOBROMIDE
Animated video showcasing the photographic process created by Richard Leach Maddox in 1871 and improved by Charles Harper Bennett in 1878, the most used photographic b/w process of the XXth Century.
PHOTOGRAVURE
The video explains the process of making a photogravure, the technology most used for the printing of photography. The recreation is based on the original Talbot-Klic technique (1879) with some procedural variants.
CHROMOGENIC PROCESS
This process was put on the market in 1935, with the Kodachrome Film. It is based on the principle of image formation based on the reaction of the color couplers based on the reaction of the silver salts. It is therefore the formation of the color with the dyes that have reacted and that form the final image, because the silver halides are eliminated during the processing.
DIGITAL IMAGE
The video shows the internal operation of a digital camera and explains in a didactic way the process of creation of the image, from the reception of the image to the storage in the memory card.