Re: Aging a fraud-o-graph

John,

I think, rather than too sharp, it is a matter of what is sharp. Of course, it depends on the era you are trying to depict, but films were much slower, so it was a trade-off between stopping the motion and depth of field. Your probably couldn't have both at the same time! Figure a film speed of 25 ASA (ISO today). That, in bright sunlight, would give 1/25th @ F16, 1/50th @ F11, 1/100th @ F8 or 1/200 @ F 5.6. Of course, the film in the teens and twenties may have been more around 10 ASA, anyhow, you might have shot on a tripod at F16, as long as nothing much was moving, and gotten a very sharp overall image, or you might have been wide open at F5.6 and had very shallow depth of field, so only things at the distance of the engine front and few feet either side would be sharp. Remember, most these were shot on post card size negs, so the lens was a pretty long focal length, somewhere between 6 and 8 inch (150mm &200mm) and wide open at 5.6 or even 6.3. Also, most lenses were pretty soft around the edges of the image when wide open.

Using Photoshop and a layer mask on the image with gaussian blur, much of this affect can be achieved.

Another factor, most films back in the early 20s and before were orthochromatic films, not sensitive to all colors of light. Very blue and green sensitive, but reds mostly came out black. Earlier films often were only blue sensitive. These give a distinctive look to the early photos. Photoshop can do a good job of imitating these.

I hope I haven't been too long winded on this, but I've played around quite a bit trying for this look, sometimes with good results.

Steve