It just occurred to me that Agfa-Ansco's designation of 120 as B-2 could simply derive from Brownie No. 2.

“Oldest not-book object I’ve held” Rocks: “Am I a joke to you?”

32:40 “Latent image of vaporization.” That was perfect.

14:50 "not to be confused with the nick-collodion process" man I was having a shitty day, and now I'm grinning from ear to ear, thanks Alec!

"Early attempts at making dry plates resulted in very insensitive plates which were quite rude..." LOL!!!

5:23 "ray tracing was really slow" Some things never change.

I’ve known how pinhole cameras work for ages, but this explanation is the first time I’ve really understood *why* they work that way. The “move your head and the view changes” lead in was truly eye opening.

I absolutely love the running bits on this channel, particularly "throught the magic of buying X of them".

That Daguerreotype you have is a treasure. The detail on it is amazing and it seems to be a pleasant family photo. A beautiful piece of history.

Insensitive plates were quite rude.... I love it lol

“Through the magic of buying two of them, I have **one** of them right here!*

“Through the magic of buying two of them, I have one.” This joke will never get old.

I'm a photographer who has read/studied this stuff for decades. You made one of the better and more accessible summaries I've ever heard. Probably just the best, honestly. This is what I'm going to use whenever I wanna introduce people to real photography.

Playing the long game with “latent image of vaporization….” Love it

'Darkening the Blue' sounds like an amazing pop fusion jazz album, that I now want to hear.

Observation #1: I'm detecting, with approval, a fair amount of "Airplane!" type humor. Observation #2: Not calling it the Flarble may look a missed opportunity on the surface. Then again, you just know that name would have been genericized to the point that all facial tissues are Kleenex, copy machines are Xerox and photographic devices are Flarbles. And much like Google has become a verb, people would say "flarble me!" when they wanted a picture taken. Eastman-Kodak was one step ahead and knew what was coming. (Well, except for digital photography. They blew it there.)

Always impressed by the clarity of your shots of things like the daguerreotype. There's an inherent paradox in getting your hands on something you just have to see with your own eyes, and then capturing its subtleties in a video, but you always succeed to the point where it feels like we're in the room with you. S-tier content.

Oh my, FINALLY somebody shows daguerreotype from several angles! I can't believe how difficult it is to find a video like that! Thank you so much!

_"Making sure the flaps are retracted and locked like any good pilot"_ You're killing it today!

Louis Daguerre had a invention & business connection with Nicéphore Niépce, the man who is credited with the 1st photograph in the late 1820's. It was called the latent image back then because the word Photography was not invented until the late 1830's. Louis Daguerre & Nicéphore Niépce shared the same optics/lens maker (Charles Chevalier) who after learning about Louis' ambitions with trying to create a successful latent image, connected him with Louis Daguerre. There are postal letters between the two, & Nicéphore Niépce's process with the latent image played an encouraging role in Louis Daguerre's Daguerrerotype.

Wow, this really takes me back! My first camera was a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, which was just a slightly more modern version of the Brownie in the video. (Technically it was my younger brother's camera but I used it a lot.)

"possibly hipster reasons" just entered into my vocabulary

18:44 "Very insensitive plates, which were quite rude" I love deadpan humour.

Dude… As a professor of photography at both the community college and state university level, I take my hat off to you. This was one dense, intense, and condensed presentation! It’s hard for me to imagine being completely unaware of all aspects of photography and coming across this - I think “mind blown” might capture it best. Or maybe “mind imploded”… But you put out a gutsy, bravura, and balls to the wall attempt! I am going to give a couple days to recover, and then, “once more into the breech!” for part two. Wish me well and tell my wife I loved her!

11:20 I've always been amazed at the detail in a well cared for daguerreotype image. Just beautiful. I've been a keen photographer for many years and have a basic knowledge of the history of the craft. I'm really enjoying your history lesson, though. Thank you.

Absolutely LOVE the effort you put into the "latent image of vaporization" joke. Bravo 👏😂

Alec pulled me into his vortex with topics I found interesting. Next thing I know I'm learning about dishwashers, lanterns and now photography. I never know what the next random topic will be, but I'll be here.

11:05 The resolution/fidelity of the daguerreotype is absolutely incredible! I guess that's because you can fit A LOT of silver molecules within the small plate! 17:30 I need to know more about that wheeled contraption in the middle! 19:10 Love the dog portrait! The fact that someone in the early days of photography over a century ago wanted a portrait of their dog just as pet lovers do today is fantastic! 31:56 Why would you choose those as your subjects?... 32:38 ...That's why, LOL

This video made me look at an old post-war camera my great-grandmother used to own. It's been sitting on a shelf at my place as a display piece for years, but during this video I had a closer look at and figured out how to fold the lens in, and that it takes 120 film and has the same dials and peepholes the brownie camera does. (it's that telescoping paper kind of lens, and it's been in the unfolded position ever since I found it 20 years ago) I just ordered some 120 film for it, and I'm excited to try it out!

32:40 "On the film, we now have a latent image of vaporization" Wow, just wow.

"a latent image of vaporization" got me. the dedication to your extremely silly jokes is equally admirable and infuriating

Even though the daguerrotype is basically a mirror, its incredible that the images are so detailed and lifelike even with the flaws inherent of the process. Makes me appreciate them more than modern day pics, even if its just a little.

It is kind of nice to think that mother and her child, now long gone, are commemorated by this video.

"nick collodion" I'm dying

17:30 That is called a Rudge Rotary Tricycle. They make reproductions of them today. Quite unique.

It always makes me happy to watch the bloopers at the end. I can relax knowing that my struggle with words is shared with others.

"*not to be confused with Nick collodion*" Ah, I see what you did there...

As a truck driver I notice this camera effect off and on when I keep my sleeper dark and have a tiny hole in my mid curtain when they are closed. I can see trucks and people moving in front of my truck on my back sleeper wall during bright daylight. 👍🏻

I've studied this at photography school. Everything in this video. The only difference is that you managed to make this sound interesting and actually got me interested, letting people actually SEE how old cameras used to work instead of just studying it is WAAAAAY better.

31:43 Truly, the magic of having two of them prevails.

I love how you take the mechanics of a technology and really go hands on with it. Not just a diagram and "here's how it works in theory" but "here's this thing and I'm gonna use it". I like that very much!

19:10 what a good boy. hes sitting so still. i'm glad we got a picture of that sweet dog

As a hobbyist photographer who became so enamored with the Wet Collodion process that I actually took the time to learn it, this is the Technology Connections video I've needed! One minor note: since the collodion and silver nitrate are applied to the plate independently and not combined, it's called a 'suspension'. 'Emulsion' would refer to an amalgam of the two combined (which IS actually a thing in Aristotype/Collodio-Chloride printing). -Nick-Collodion

Very nicely described, but let’s not forget Fox Talbot the inventor of the negative to positive process in 1839. Daguerre got there first with announcing a useable process, but Talbot with his Calotype was more like the ‘film’ we know now - allowing you to make multiple prints from one negative (be it a paper negative). But you may be coming this in the next film. Loving your work! VERY excited you’re covering photography things!

Oh my god the subtle jokes throughout this video are hilarious. 24:11 “the arguably *nicer* 6 by 9 cm size” killed me

"Resulted in very insensitive plates, which were quite rude". The puns are out of control today.

"It's a dark chamber." The humour in these videos is right up my alley every time.

This man owns 2 of everything and cares about every last object in his collection

'“Latent image of vaporization." mad respect for how much setup went into this joke lol

"photographically smooth jazz" I swear, watching shit with the subtitles on all these years has allowed me to stumble upon some lil comedic gems of text

The tongue gag had me in tears I had to pause it. Jesus. Your dry humour is amazing.

Alec, here's a challenge for you: Find the most boring subject you can think of (but please, as international as possible), make a 10 minutes video about it - and your goal is to actually make it interesting for us. My prediction is that nobody will be disappointed. You're one of the wittiest people I follow on here.

As with many of the commenters, I would love to applaud to the latent image of vaporization joke. However, my favorite moment was the audio quirk where the noise of the shutter ended the audio being from the outdoor scene, and returned it to the indoor scene. Absolutely masterful.

13:47 when it clicked in my brain how the degarreotype was sort of a negative and I could see that the black hair of the subject was, in fact, just a perfectly reflective mirror reflecting a dark object, I literally gasped and pauses the video. I’ve been staring at it now for almost 5 minutes, amazed at how it just clicked and now I can see it. What a fascinating method of photography

Hi! Professional photographer here.... this is the best video on the internet. Thank you so much for this!!! Now I can send this video to people when they call 120 "120mm" and not 120.

As a modern tintype photographer this was a fantastic summary! Fun additional info viewers may find interesting: Tintypes in particular take about 1.5 hours from coating the plate to drying the varnish. Exposure times are usually 2-10 seconds with natural light or about 6000w/s of strobe at 3-5 ft is usually enough for a good exposure. Because it’s a UV sensitive process so colors appear differently such as reds getting much darker, blues getting much lighter (wood looks black, blue jeans look almost white, freckles look very distinct, blue eyes look almost completely white). Tattoos often almost disappear or sometimes so disappear because they’re under the layers of skin that reject UV light. It’s a laborious process that takes a ton of skill,practice, and tons of patience to get consistent long term results. Those that do it well have probably spent hundreds of thousands of hours practicing and studying! It’s such a fun and almost magical process to experience first hand if you ever find the opportunity.

I still find it amazing that humans worked out how to record an image before they worked out how to record a sound.

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. And probably a wizard, too. Cheers.

I took a college semseter of this and this video series told me everything and more in less time and way less money! Thank you!

I’m so glad you mentioned the ability of that camera to expose the same frame of film multiple times! When you first explained the shutter mechanism, I immediately got to thinking about how you could take some really dynamic and/or creepy shots with movement between exposures on the same frame (for example, of people dancing).

When I took photography in college, the professor turned the photo lab into a Camera Obscura that we sat in for the first lesson where he explained how SLR cameras work. That was one of the coolest classes I ever took.

“I’m no expert on mid 19th century baby fashion” has been the highlight of my morning.

I spent 35 wonderful years teaching teens about photography. I also spent 24 years teaching old people (adults) about photography. This eventually developed into digital imaging on both levels. If you were around earlier I would assign your KZfaq presentations as lessons to watch. They are really fun to view

"an ancient imaging thing that's very old"... this is the sort of detailed commentary I come here for

An apartment I stayed in for a few months had a window that created a camera obscura effect when the blinds were closed and covered by a blackout curtain. This made it so I could see the image of people putting their garbage in the bin around noontime when I was trying to sleep for my night shift job. It was pretty cool, but because it wasn't a camera obscura proper, it was very distorted. I could still tell what it was though.

"A latent image of vaporization" Do it! DO IT! I know you want to!

This is a fascinating video. My cousin's ex-husband is a professional photographer who also makes tintypes... I appreciate the deeper understanding of what he does.

I learned more from this video than I did the whole year I learned photography at school. All they taught us was art but using the camera instead of a paint brush, they didn't go into how the camera worked. Well done sir!

Even as a relatively young person, I made one of those pinhole cameras in highscool. I wish that was still a common thing, darkrooms are still so neat!

I was wondering if you'd ever cover some of this stuff, it's really neat to see as a collodion hobbyist and occasional daguerreotypist. Just a few small notes about daguerreotypes: 1. You don't actually *need* to develop a daguerreotype to create an image. The silver halides will eventually produce an image if you expose them long enough, but the big problem with that, aside from exposure time, is that the sensitized plate actually turns *black* in the exposed areas, which means that you would end up with a negative image that could only be viewed as such by reflecting a white background in the plate. The beauty of mercury development is that not only does it bring out a latent image that wasn't visible to the naked eye, but it replaces the darkened silver halides with a white amalgamation of mercury and silver, which is the reason you're able to view the plate as a positive. 2. Generally a sixth plate daguerreotype wouldn't be one sensitized plate cut up into six pieces (although there were some cameras that could project multiple identical images onto a single plate to be cut up later), it was just a popular plate size about 1/6th of a full plate, which is a size that Daguerre somewhat arbitrarily picked to give an edge to the French lens-making industry (the blanks required to make a lens that would cover that size were more readily available in France than England). In practice a whole plate was extraordinarily expensive (even today it would cost me a little under $200 to get a clad silver plate in that size) so they were rarely used. The first successful Daguerreotype portraits were made with mirror cameras that could only create a clean image about the size of a 1/6th plate, so between that momentum and the fact that they were just a much more affordable size it ended up becoming the most common portrait size. 3. The replacement of daguerrotypes with collodion photographs has less to do with the ease of viewing and a lot more to do with the practicality and expense of creating a Daguerreotype. Collodion allows much faster exposure times which helps with portraiture, but most importantly it's much, much less expensive. To make a daguerreotype you need an entire plate clad in metallic silver. To make an ambrotype or tintype you use a silver nitrate bath which can be reused for a great many plates before replenishing, because only an infinitesimal amount of silver actually makes it onto the much cheaper substrate. It's also worth mentioning that collodion allowed the creation of glass negatives, which could be printed to make as many identical copies as you want For anyone interested in the origins of photography, Mike Robinson's dissertation on the development of the daguerreotype process is really fascinating: centurydarkroom.com/s/Robinson_Dissertation_TMAD_sm-lsmh.pdf

Please don’t be offended that I keep falling asleep during your videos. Not to say that they’re boring, but that your voice and cadence are so freaking relaxing. Please accept the relative compliment that I keep coming back to actually see the video.

I've never fully understood why the aperture had to be such a tiny hole until your pinpoints of light on a screen explanation. Thank you for being you!

11:42 People used to dress like this babies and toddlers from both sexes. They were also treated sort of genderless until later stages of childhood.

My favorite thing about this channel is how quickly Alec pulls me in and keeps me interested in things I've often never thought about. I still think about that toaster video to this day.

Ahh, the pinhole... I used to spend substantial part of my savings on a more expensive DSLR body I had no cash left for the lens XD So my first ever photos with it were, until my M42 to EF adapter arrived, with a pinhole made of mount cap and pop can. Still an old Zeiss telephoto is far sharper than the cheaper lens I have.

I have a pinhole camera from my grandfather. It's a wooden box with a hole and a plate holder for 9x12 dry plates. But even better I have a camera from the 1920s for the same dry plates. I bought some modern dry plates from the US and shot a few - it's such an exciting process to have the image develop in the trays at your fingertips. I also managed to find actual plates from the 1910s which might still work. Now I am waiting for the summer to expose them and do some photography with it.

I can't wait to see how the rest of this series develops

During my childhood, on a trip to Yellowstone, my Mom, using a roll film camera, made an accidental double exposure, and ended up with a picture that appeared to be a bear submerged in the bottom of a hot spring pool. Usually though, double exposures were not that entertaining. With this type of camera, the best practice was to advance to the next frame as soon as you had taken a picture. In any event, you needed to be consistent in your procedure, so that you didn't accidentally double expose, or advance twice and end up with a blank frame.

This is high-key one of the most underrated channels on KZfaq. Every single video is GOLD.

watched this shortly before falling asleep after a long day, which convinced me that you were merely a man of my mind

"DA-GUERRE" might be the most Chicago your voice has ever been. Always lovely to hear someone appreciate their native brogue.

I cant wait to see how things Develop!

Fantastic! I used to have the whole dark room set up and did quite a lot of B/W photographer in my time. My grandfather was a professional photographer and I got my start using his equipment and cameras. This is fantastic!

That is the best description I've ever heard for camera obscura. I never could quite grasp it before, but your example of moving your head in relation to the bigger hole finally clicked for me. Thank you!

Bro you've somehow hit the mark of simultaneously being the most informative and one of the most humorous channels on KZfaq. I love learning things, and occasionally do not hate laughing while doing so.

This man is a master at teaching us topics we never realized we needed to know about! 😊🐕🐕🐾🐾

I have multiple 120 film cameras including a box camera. They are really fun and the results are charming. They're also not that expensive. I recommend picking one up! :)

I watch your channel even when the subject is something I know about. It is your research and delivery style that hooks me, keep being you !

"Latent image of vaporization" god you're such a nerd I love it

11:28 I'm actually stunned at how incredible that image looks!

“a sheet of transparent plastic” Oh man! You missed the FUN part of early film: It wasn’t just made of “transparent plastic”, it was made of celluloid ! For anyone that doesn’t know (and it would be a neat short episode on its own), celluloid was an early plastic made of guncotton, alcohol and some camphor. It was as flammable as you’d expect from those ingredients. It was so flammable in-fact it would ignite at temperatures as low as 50C/122F… a temperature early motion picture cameras could easily reach during normal operation: There's a reason the more modern, non-celluloid, stuff is called “safety film”.

There's a video series called "connections" that get into the deep details on how these inventions came about, step by step from one person making small improvements from others before them. Many by chance encounters with those people. Fantastic series!

Can confirm 120 film is still used today! I use it frequently in my 1951 Rolleicord!

Hello mr. Connections. Everyone has those lists of elite channels in their sub feed that they are genuinely excited to see, so much so that they hold off until they can get a good chill time to watch it. Just wanted you to know that you are one of these channels in my feed, keep up the great work, thanks!

Yes!! As a 20 yr old Chicago wet plate photographer, I love this

Life is Strange pre-prepped me for The Daguerreian Process. Mentioning "dark room" at the end brought back the trauma from the final episode.

I look forward to seeing how this develops! (I have kids... I can make dad jokes)... I'll see myself out..... :)

Daguerreotypes are so compelling, I want to keep looking at them. The detail is amazing and they seem to reflect life as well as light. I guess that's what gives them a ghostly quality.

Boy, do you sure know many details about many things. It is amazing that you can fill your brain with all of these many facts.. Great knowledge..

I actually used that kind of box camera as a young boy around 1965. I was around ten years old, and was completely fascinated about photography. A few years later (when I was around twelve years old) I started developing the films myself and using an enlarger to make my own photo's. The dark room was a construction of dark cloth and bamboo stakes I made in the attic (my father made a sleeping room in the other half of the space for me, and the whole was accessible by an loft ladder). Good times for sure.