Rare Photograph Found In Attic Sell for $30K

[tgtaylor]

A portrait http://www.argus-press.com/news/national/image_7293b437-c197-5dd2-91cf-39ff541af862.html of slave children dating back to the 1850's or so was found in an attic. The camera must have been a large format view camera.

A few years back while awaiting for demonstrators to show up for the Michael Morales execution at San Quentin which was postponed, several member of the media engaged in a lively discussion about the consequences of the demise of film. One of the consequences mentioned was that finding historical photos such as this will no longer happen.

[Jack Dahlgren]

Did you see the comment? There was a link to an ebay auction where the same photo sold as part of a lot for about $150.

Who says that people won't be finding digital negatives floating around online in the future?

The future is not here yet.

[sultanofcognac]

I like the collection of stereograms. . .

one photo for 30,000, unless it's a one-off of a one-off event, just doesn't make sense to me. No wonder I'm not a collector :p

… plus, I now have a copy of that photo :rolleyes:

[ic-racer]

I just took a photograph of that from my computer monitor. It will be enlarged to 6 feet across and mounted in Diasec. Check with my dealer for pricing, but if you have to ask, it is too much for you....

[tgtaylor]

Who says that people won't be finding digital negatives floating around online in the future?

The future is not here yet.

You don't really expect that the photos you post today on Flicker, are going to be there 150 years from now do you? Fat chance of that and a far less thance that the ones you don't post on an electronic board will ever be found - even if left in your attic on a memory card/disk.

[Nicholas Whitman]

"I like the future ... I'm in it"
Firesign Theater

[sanking]

"I like the future ... I'm in it"
Firesign Theater

Yeah, but as Yogi Berra said, "The future ain't what it used to be."

Sandy King

[Brian Ellis]

A portrait http://www.argus-press.com/news/national/image_7293b437-c197-5dd2-91cf-39ff541af862.html of slave children dating back to the 1850's or so was found in an attic. The camera must have been a large format view camera.

A few years back while awaiting for demonstrators to show up for the Michael Morales execution at San Quentin which was postponed, several member of the media engaged in a lively discussion about the consequences of the demise of film. One of the consequences mentioned was that finding historical photos such as this will no longer happen.

O.K., I'll bite. Why not?

[LyleB]

I tend to agree that few photos will be found or viewed. For one thing, instead of having a shoe box or two of several hundred family photos, there will be disks/cards/whatever of tens or hundreds of thousands of photos - no one will bother.

Second, think of all the early digital photos that were saved to 3.5 floppies (Sony and others). 3.5" drives haven't been included on computers expect as special order for years now. Bet the same happens with the various cards that are popular today.

Third, magnetic and optical storage of information has not been that secure. I, personally, have hundreds of old floppies that are mysteriously no longer readable. Also have a bunch of CDs who's best use is as a coaster - especially if they were just tossed in a drawer for a couple of months. Have plenty of boxes/envelopes of photographs that have been stored in drawers for decades that are in fine shape. Electronic media requires periodic, active maintenance and redundancy if the data is to be considered secure.

[Robert Hughes]

I, personally, have hundreds of old floppies that are mysteriously no longer readable. Also have a bunch of CDs who's best use is as a coaster - especially if they were just tossed in a drawer for a couple of months. Have plenty of boxes/envelopes of photographs that have been stored in drawers for decades that are in fine shape. Electronic media requires periodic, active maintenance and redundancy if the data is to be considered secure.
That's right. Several news film and video archives have become useless over the years after forward-thinking people of the 1980's transferred their old 16mm newsreels to VHS, Beta, U-Matic, or MII. By now the videotape copies are largely unplayable or the video players have died, whereas the original 16mm films still work.

[Brian Ellis]

I tend to agree that few photos will be found or viewed. For one thing, instead of having a shoe box or two of several hundred family photos, there will be disks/cards/whatever of tens or hundreds of thousands of photos - no one will bother.

Second, think of all the early digital photos that were saved to 3.5 floppies (Sony and others). 3.5" drives haven't been included on computers expect as special order for years now. Bet the same happens with the various cards that are popular today.

Third, magnetic and optical storage of information has not been that secure. I, personally, have hundreds of old floppies that are mysteriously no longer readable. Also have a bunch of CDs who's best use is as a coaster - especially if they were just tossed in a drawer for a couple of months. Have plenty of boxes/envelopes of photographs that have been stored in drawers for decades that are in fine shape. Electronic media requires periodic, active maintenance and redundancy if the data is to be considered secure.

People still make prints, still have family albums, still keep prints in shoe-boxes. There are thriving businesses such as Creative Memories devoted solely to making and preserving family-type albums. It may be true that DVDs or CDs will deteriorate or be unreadable in the future. But how many families kept negatives around? None that I know of. I have family prints going back to the 19th century forward to the early 1980s, hundreds and hundreds of prints. But I don't have a single negative of any of them. My relatives are in the same boat, lots of prints, no negatives. And I doubt that most families are any different. People tended to think there was no need to sort and store negatives along with the prints, they mistakenly thought the prints would last forever or at least as long as anyone remained interested. CDs and DVDs can't be any worse than that and may be a whole lot better.

[tgtaylor]

A few years back a portfolio was published in LensWork that consisted of exposed but undeveloped film found in cameras sold at flea markets. These were not expensive cameras - just the type that amateurs purchased, took a shot or two and never picked up the camera again or bothered to develop what was inside. The cameras dated from the 1930's 40's and 50's.

[Scratched Glass]

I used to work at a photo lab, and developed a roll of 120 found in its original box that said proces before 1938. The 6x9 negs were very light but were printed with fair results. This was about 1998. My aunt gave me 6 rolls of 126 film that was about 30+ years old, and used an older process color film (c-22) She didn't want to spend a fortune, so I processed them in C-41 scanned the negs and went gray scale. The results were ok, but they were 126 afterall. 70 year old silver halide crystals are better than floppies, but they make archival CDs and as long as a kid doesn't use them as frisbees someone will always have a reader for them. Hell at least one lab will process c-22 and kodachrome and companies will record DVDs from your beta tapes.

Andy

[tgtaylor]

If someone found an original 5-inch floppy today, they would most likely throw it out than going thru all the trouble of trying to find a machine that could read it. If they found a silver (or color) print, on the other hand, they would carefully examine it before throwing it out.

Several years back NASA was unable to read images taken during the early Gemini flights because of "technological improvements."

Rembrandt's are still being found as well as silver images. Will the digitally created and saved image share the same fate?

[D. Bryant]

Rembrandt's are still being found as well as silver images. Will the digitally created and saved image share the same fate?

And your point is?

Don Bryant

[cosmicexplosion]

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