WWII Era Kodachrome Photos

I don't remember if you posted these before but if you did, I hope I said thanks and that they are awesome then as I am now.
 
The color and clarity is stunning in those photos. Better than anything I've ever scanned.
 
I know we are all used to the phrase, "Those were different times" but they really were and we as a society were different people. I am not sure we have it in us, culturally, in the U.S. to do now what they did then if we needed to. I hope I am wrong but those were special people populating the States then.
 
Analog baby...............All i do is spend time pimpin the analog. Wont these brats realize its alway better.
 
I don't do photography, but I love to look at old photos.

The site that the linked photos were taken from, shorpy.com, is amazing.

They use glass negs the size of windowpanes, if they are to be believed, and the result is the stunning clarity and maximized faithfulness to the potential of the technology used to capture the images. They have hundreds of photos and I have never seen one that made me thing 'eh, next.'

This is what improved 1080 resolution on your TV and computer is about.
The Link
 
As Paul Simon said...

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's
a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
 
Kodachrome was great but equally important in the stunning beauty of these photos is the format. They were shooting negatives that were 4" by 5" in size. The enhanced size means that the detail is going to be far superior to identical photos taken with a 35 mm film.

I shoot digital for everyday stuff, 35mm for nice black and whites, use 120 for good quality and a 4x5 for the great stuff when I go to Big Bend. The increased negative size enhances the quality. It is like going from the junior high football team to the Horns in terms of quality.

And I second the recommendation of that website. I could waste all day just staring at their stuff.
 
I wish our generation had as much style as those back then. Many of these shots were probably staged, but still...even the laborers are put together. No sloppiness anywhere.
 
I find the discussion on that site interesting. Many comments about how much better these photo are than current digital photos, which may be accurate but they seem to be seeing this in the digital versions... I could understand this if they were looking at prints and comparing them to prints from modern digital cameras. But it seems to be lost on them that they are looking at digital photographs of the originals so how can they tell the original was any better than what they are seeing?

It sort of reminds me of the advertisements for TVs that you see on TV demonstrating how good their picture is. If you've got a crappy TV and look at the image of their TV on yours, are you going to see a crisp, clear image in the midst of your bad image surrounding it and think, wow, I need to upgrade my TV?
 
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