Beautiful! Wish I could emulate that look today. There is a look to early color photography--both still and motion--that I think is simply gorgeous .

Ah, there's so much I'd like to say, but, this time, I think I'll stay quiet.

Thanks for sharing!

Priceless . . . - g

Seeing clips like this only reinforce (in my mind anyway) that film will never die.

Mike

What causes the cyclical variations in light intensity in motion pictures from the early part of the 20th C? Is that an aging film problem, or an original capture problem?

In 1922 my grandmother was 21. But I don't think she wore fashions like that!

Tim

What causes the cyclical variations in light intensity in motion pictures from the early part of the 20th C?

1) Camera shutters had larger variations in timing due to the mechanical governors in use at the time.

2) The emulsion layers on the film were not uniform due to manufacturing variations.

3) The cine processors were not as precise in regards to speed, temperature, and agitation.

The cameras at that time were hand-crank and the internal workings (e.g. shutters and intermittent motion) did not move the film as uniformly and smoothly as it did once motors were added.

The cyclic variations may have been introduced in the transfer, but one would think Kodak would have done a frame accurate transfer..

The color gradations are amazing.

There is some extreme gate float in the last part of the video - wonder what they were projecting it on..

50 years of R&D and we still cannot digitally capture photons as well as Kodak could 90 years ago. I think film will outlast all of us here.

I find this statement funny just because we're looking at a digital low bitrate version of some of the first color motion picture work ever done & you said it looks better vs digital newer stuff. :D

I'd say part of it is people don't work with the medium like they used to. They treat it differently vs 1920's & 30's. I work with a woman who's been in theater for decades (she has to be ~70 or 80) & when she does still photos now you would think they were taken in the 1940's, based on how she does the lighting, clothing, setting, makeup, etc.

You still can get that look today. Kodak still offers the full spectrum of film stocks on 100ft 16mm daylight spools that will run in most vintage hand crank or spring motor cameras, not to mention 8mm film cartridges. Ektachrome 100D is now the only reversal stock left in MP and it looks amazing. Nothing else can emulate it. With 16mm, various stock choices, and digital post options available these days... it's almost a crime to see it go unused as much as it does in the way of digital and HD hype. My HD footage from my last trip doesnt hold a candle to the color reversal stock I shot along side it.

I have to say i didn't find the images particularly good. They were washed out and desaturated. The brightness variations may be excused by the limited technology at the time, but they're still there and distracting. The technology is all of a piece and every defect detracts from the overall quality. If i had a digital camera that took images that poor i wouldn't bother using it. Fortunately even my cheapest digitals do much better.

The old Kodak images do have a few things going though. The sharpness is definitely better, the gradations are good (although, seeing a low bitrate digital copy makes this hard to judge), and there are no interlace artifacts!

Still though, i think overall i get a much more pleasing result out of a $350 HD pocket camcorder than that film test showed.

============================

If you'll pardon the musings of a becoming-old man ... as time goes by i find myself thinking more of what's already happened in the past than anticipating what's to come. I've found myself reminiscing a lot these days on how billions of people have come and gone before us, and aside from a very rare painting or even rarer photograph and an occasional written description, once their contemporaries are gone we have no knowledge of what that person was like. I drive by what used to be a once thriving little community on my way to work. All that's left now are a few stone foundations and chimneys. The people are gone, forgotten. The memories were organic, fleeting, and short lived. I wonder who they were, what they did, what made them laugh and love. I'm one of the youngest people who still remembers my great grandparents, and those memories, few and spotty as they are, will be gone all too soon (well, hopefully not *that* soon ;) ).

I think my generation is seeing a turning point. Starting somewhere as i was growing up, there's a good chance that long after we're gone, people will still be able to experience what we were like, see our expressions in motion, see how we react, even hear our voices. This could be a profound change in how those who come after us perceive us. More and more of us will be better known to future generations as the people we were rather than just dates on a family tree or notes of our few accomplishments.

Of course, the flipside is that more of us may eventually be remembered by that youtube video of that party we got drunk at ...

"I have to say i didn't find the images particularly good. They were washed out and desaturated. The brightness variations may be excused by the limited technology at the time, but they're still there and distracting. The technology is all of a piece and every defect detracts from the overall quality. If i had a digital camera that took images that poor i wouldn't bother using it. Fortunately even my cheapest digitals do much better."

How are the recordings from your cheapest digital, or your best one for that matter, going to hold up after 88 years? I'll take the Pepsi Challenge with my 1965 Bolex H16 and Kodak Vison 3, with your best HD cam any day of the week. Some of you tech guys are so blinded by technical factors, aesthetics mean nothing. The colors were really nice for it being the first color film ever. The flicker was representative of the time... The overall look is based on a sense of historical wonder, curiosity and mystique, something digital video just doesn't have regardlesss of how you "crunch the numbers". If you want to be fair, post some VHS from the 80's and after 25 years all you'll see are trails and static.

Oh, i agree with you completely on that aspect. However, that doesn't even touch the fact that overall, images from my cheap digital camera score far many more pleasing points with the eye than that 1922 stuff does. I'd rather watch a 110 minute film shot on cheap digital than 10 minutes of that flickery stuff.

Some of you tech guys are so blinded by technical factors, aesthetics mean nothing. The colors were really nice for it being the first color film ever. The flicker was representative of the time... The overall look is based on a sense of historical wonder, curiosity and mystique, something digital video just doesn't have regardlesss of how you "crunch the numbers"

funny you should mention that... the reason we even have this is because it was the best "technical factor" & "aesthetics" meant nothing @ the time. In 88 years someone will say that the first digital video was amazing because of it's great use of 256 colors on a 320x240 screen vs the huge-number x huge-number res display they're using. They'll say the low-color depth & pixelation is a look of historical wonder, curiosity & mystique. something their quanton video devices don't have regardless of how much they "'crunch the numbers'".

;)

" In 88 years someone will say that the first digital video was amazing because of it's great use of 256 colors on a 320x240 screen vs the huge-number x huge-number res display they're using. They'll say the low-color depth & pixelation is a look of historical wonder, curiosity & mystique. something their quanton video devices don't have regardless of how much they "'crunch the numbers'"."

Your may very well be right. Provided video cassettes, DVD's and hard drives can archive past the next 20 years. Hard drives wear out or quit and aluminum decays, so i wouldn't hold my breath.

I guess I better start backing up to Kodak Ektachrome 100D now.

How many feet of that tape will it take to store 1,000 hours of HD video? I hope Best Buy has it in stock.

:)

anyone out there lip read what the models are saying?

"it'll never catch on....."

"what do you mean undress!?"

"mr mill's said he's going to make me a star...."

I'll have to disagree with you on the archival qualities of film. It does degrade over time, even tri-separations can have problems with registration and every time it is copied / restored anew something is lost.
Digital on the other hand can last forever. Sure HDDs and DVDs can fail however the archival DVDs I use are rated and tested to last at least 100 years, possibly 300 years. Old film that has been restored is now archived digitally too. I would mention that DVDs and HDDs do not suffer from problems such as vinegar syndrome and I've made a good income baking magnetic tapes with sticky shed syndrome.

The one inescapable advantage of digital is there's no generational loss. Yes, it may take some work and cost money to maintain digital archives but there is simply no way for millenium achiving that the photochemical media can compete. For acquisition though....

Bob.

" guess I better start backing up to Kodak Ektachrome 100D now.

How many feet of that tape will it take to store 1,000 hours of HD video? I hope Best Buy has it in stock"

The film "tape" holds about 3 minutes per 50ft... 3 minutes is probably just about as much of your 1000hrs of endless tape rolling most people will ever want to see :-))

Your may very well be right. Provided video cassettes, DVD's and hard drives can archive past the next 20 years. Hard drives wear out or quit and aluminum decays, so i wouldn't hold my breath.

Again, funny you should mention that... because we're not watching this on film, we're watching it on a low quality digital stream. As far as we know, the film was destroyed decades ago, we're looking @ a digital copy of a copy of a copy. ;)

Digital technology actually enhances analog film quite a bit. Telecine scanners are improving just as rapidly as any other digital device. Kodak practices good archive control and given the span of 100 years before film starts to degrade... we are now starting to see film archives from the 40's or the 70's re-scanned with new technology, allowing us see them on a whole new level. Unless your watching a projection of the original print, it hasn't been till recently that we are able to see old footage in it's more accurate state. A good example would be the amature color footage shot during WWII, recently scanned to HD and airing on the History Channel. It looks stunning for being 65-70 years old. Projecting the original copies would look just as good... but limited to the immediate folks who posses the original spools.

Also, as digital technology keeps evolving and different video formats come and go... Original film footage can always be rescanned to the most current modality. Those same home movie reels from the 70's that were transfered to crummy VHS by someone recording them off a bathroom wall, can now be rescanned to HD on a 4K Spirit.

My 16mm Kodachrome II, Ektachrome MS taken in the late 60's and early seventies (35 years old) was almost totally wiped out colorwise before professional restoration and they did a very good job of it.
JJK