Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

This is a forum exploring Lippmann photography.
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alban

Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

Post by alban »

Hello,

I am looking for an example of a Lippmmann photograph, either historic or modern, to show at a scientific lecture at the University of Heidelberg (Germany). I vouch for the safe handling of the item and will pay for shipping both ways.

Alban
http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/kellerbauer
Colin Kaminski

Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

Post by Colin Kaminski »

I have found displaying them is the chalenge. Have you displayed one before?
alban

Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

Post by alban »

I have never seen one before!
Ed Wesly

Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

Post by Ed Wesly »

Well, when you see one in a museum or make one yourself, you will immediately understand why the process never took off. The viewing conditions are the opposite of holography; you want a broad source, not a pinpoint. In the classic Ives Astrophysical Journal article of 1907, he mentions his viewing chamber was to go to some room that had a north light exposure and use the sky as the reconstruction source!

If you are familiar with this article, some of the fruits of his labor are at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. The tests were he was checking his spectral sensitivity and bandwidth are there, in which he made holograms but didn't realize it! He used a variety of spectral light sources and exposed his plates to them, with of course the mercury backing. He made what we would call nowadays "conformal mirrors".

Of the two lensed images that I saw, one was of a stained glass window, all colors were recognizable, but not very intense. The other had some sort of processing error where blue sky went red in the middle of the plate, so all the red brick in the buildings went up to the IR.

When we looked at them there, we started illuminating them with a slide projector. Only part of the image lit up. Then I put a piece of paper in front of the slide projector lens so it would glow, and the images became visible.

Lippmann Photography: a theoretically wonderful invention, practically useless.
Martin

Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

Post by Martin »

Ed Wesly wrote:Of the two lensed images that I saw, one was of a stained glass window, all colors were recognizable, but not very intense. The other had some sort of processing error where blue sky went red in the middle of the plate, so all the red brick in the buildings went up to the IR.
I am not familiar with Ives' Lippmann photographs but I did see the collection of Lippmann's work in the Musée de l'Elysée (http://www.elysee.ch/index.php?id=144&L=1) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
I remember the colors on these Lippmann photographs looked very vivid. They were absolutely mind boggling – surpassing anything I had seen on color photos previously.
Some displayed landscapes with snowy mountains. These whites showed a broad range of different whites. Jean-Marc Fournier did make a spectroradiometer analysis of a tiny section taken from one of these photos by Lippmann (An investigation on Lippmann photographs: materials, processes and rendition, SPIE 2176, 1994, p. 147).
He writes:
These spectra are broad! the direct correspondence of these spectra with the real spectra of similar scenes measured with the same modern instrumentation is striking. Most notably, these spectra absolutely do not resemble the kind of sine function that would result from the diffraction by a volume grating. Lippmann explained in his 1894 paper the mechanism leading to these reproductions: at the recording stage, the interference pattern created by the superposition of the incoming wave with the reflected wave is recorded in the thickness of the emulsion. In the case of polychromatic light, the interference pattern has an intensity profile identical to the (temporal) Fourier Transform of the light's spectrum. The shape of their energy distributions represents the linear combination of all individual gratings which would be generated by any elementary monochromatic line present in the composition of the illuminating light.
I might add also that I never saw Neuhauss' and the Lumière brothers' works. Their Lippmann photographs are said to be superior to those made by Lippmann, when it comes to color fidelity.
alban

Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

Post by alban »

I appreciate all the info, but before I can worry about the right type of light source, I will need a Lippmann photograph to begin with!
hansholo

Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

Post by hansholo »

I can provide you with a modern Lippmann Photograph for your lecture. Please, let me know when you need it.
walschuler

Looking for Lippmann photograph for lecture

Post by walschuler »

Hi Alban,

I am pleased to see you checked in here too....As I said in my last email to you (not on this site) I hope you publish your remarks...

Bill Alschuler
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