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.'"

No, it isn't.

[Monkey_Genius]

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

Re:No

[netsavior]

yeah, that photo is in tfa

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 [livescience.com] (no, no pictures, PSFWUYWFAR)

what about the shroud or turin

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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/ [icanhascheezburger.com]

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

[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: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.

Careful with those numbers...

[Estanislao Martínez]

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 [wikipedia.org], which means that the amount of detail captured is color-dependent [ddisoftware.com]. 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 [wikipedia.org]