Colorized video footage of San Francisco from 1906(?) Can we confim the date? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2022, 12:34:43 pm
content: The video (indeed the whole channel) is very interesting by itself. However this is in the description..QuoteFurther down in the description links the original b/w print scan source from 2018:https://archive.org/details/MarketStreet19064KScan20181016Which leads to a particular comment:QuoteWhat do you think?

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2022, 03:23:29 pm
content: First, I didn't watch the entire video. I'm not going to spend the time on it. But I did look at the photo shown in your post and it clearly doesn't match what I saw of the first part of the video.But FWIW I have seen colorized photos of San Francisco that were very shortly taken after the 1906 earthquake. Those photos had also been "photoshopped" to show less damage than what actually occurred! IIRC it was some kind of publicity move by the city father's to discourage out of state businesses from moving taking their business to other areas that they thought would be safer. It was in a documentary about the 1906 earthquake.The clock tower in the photo that you posted should be an easily identifiable landmark. Find out where is, or was, and what happened to the surrounding area during the earthquake. That should tell you if this photo was taken before the 1906 earthquake or not. But FWIW I don't see any signs of damage in the photo and I know that very few parts of SF escaped damage in the earthquake so my initial impression is that this probably is a pre-earthquake scene.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2022, 03:37:54 pm
content: they're still driving like that. crazy town

author: BrokenYugo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2022, 03:40:40 pm
content: If all this stone construction went up post earthquake, then it shouldn't be too hard to date some of the buildings to confirm.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2022, 03:56:07 pm
content: For color photographs:"Autochrome" was the first commercially available process, introduced in 1907.It is a positive transparency process that used colored grains of starch that acted both as an exposure filter to the silver-halide underneath and a viewing filter after the monochrome silver halide layer was developed and removed from the glass plate, leaving the colored grains on the other surface.Exposure is very slow, maybe 10 to 30 times slower than standard monochrome emulsions of that era.Color photographs have been made before that, using hand-tinting of the monochrome print.Marshall Oils are still made for that purpose, being formulated to work well with the surface of b/w prints.https://www.dickblick.com/products/marshalls-photo-oils/

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2022, 05:30:24 pm
content: I don't see anything out of place for 1906. This video is obviously highly 'enhanced', the original is readily found. There is a car that resembles a Model T at 5:36, but with that video and no Ford logo, I would guess that it is just one of many of the cars at the time that generally resembled the Model T. And the numbers of cars might have been a little higher on Market Street than the general average for the area. And the buildings along that street were large masonry, banks and such, not the wooden houses that the rest of the city was made out of. I'm sure that an actual historian would not have any difficulty authenticating or refuting this. Here's a side-by-side before and after with the original version of this video and a newsreel from the aftermath. And a narrated version of the original.

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 17, 2022, 07:57:29 pm
content: I don't see anything wrong about dating the film 1905-06. It's heavily remastered of course.The comment about "Ford T" is pure ignorance, I don't see a single one. I do see a couple of Ford Model B, which fits timewise.The other cars are almost impossible to identify, there were hundreds of small car manufacturers back then. One might be a Packard, but it's hard to say.

author: MikeK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2022, 03:51:12 am
content: Photo allegedly from 1906 on this page, almost halfway down on the left:https://opensfhistory.org/search/index.php?q=Market+Street&_ds=1&bn=62&bs=50&so0=contains&so1=contains&sk=6&desc=0Shows "Sanborn... Wholesale" sign that appears the same. Also "Wilson" something sign in front of it.

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 18, 2022, 05:04:56 am
content: At 1:13 you can see the Flood Building to the left of center behind the street rail car, with smaller pre-1900 buildings in front of it on Market St (across from Powell St). Those smaller buildings were destroyed in the earthquake:https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt6b69q9n8/(1:43 is a better view) They look pretty old in that footage. The Flood Building was finished 1904. So this would be sometime 1904-1906.Edit: here's a view dated 1905, and those smaller buildings match.https://opensfhistory.org/Display/wnp26.384.jpgI don't think those buildings were actually ever replaced; images from the 50s and 70s shows it being an intersection. Today it's a plaza and BART entrance.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2022, 05:55:00 am
content: Quote from: TimFox on April 17, 2022, 03:56:07 pmAnother method of making colour photographs used in the late 19th Century, was to expose the same scene through Red, Green, & Blue filters, then produce a composite colour picture with a printing press. This gave good quality images, but was really only useful for "Still Life" type shots, or unchanging scenes.

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2022, 06:07:09 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on April 17, 2022, 03:37:54 pmThe pedestrians were acting as if they were stoned----a portent of the 1960s, perhaps?Also, did you notice all the right hand drive carsandhorsedrawn vehicles?-----Interesting, no?

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2022, 07:23:01 am
content: Quote from: vk6zgo on April 18, 2022, 06:07:09 amIt was suggested in one of the vids that bdunham7 posted that certain cars may have been included in the movie for bustling effect only in that the narrator mentions that a few cars appear to be doing pointless laps around the carriage doing the filming.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2022, 01:39:39 pm
content: Quote from: vk6zgo on April 18, 2022, 06:07:09 amIn North America, driving on the right side of the road was conventional from the beginning, but it took a while before having the steering wheel on the left was universal. Some early drivers preferred to see where they were with respect to the edge of the road. Seehttp://www.lostinthepond.com/2013/03/fact-american-steering-wheels-havent.html

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2022, 03:41:14 pm
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on April 18, 2022, 07:23:01 amthat on 46 something license plate keeps coming back. if you watch attentively there are several license plates that keep circling and you can see the cars making u-turns. they typically go around a horse cart to the right , speed up then cut across the front of the car so it looks like they come out of a side street.As for the date ? i think it was filmed yesterday, the potholes are all still there...

author: MikeK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 18, 2022, 10:48:02 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on April 18, 2022, 03:41:14 pmThe potholes are still there because you have it so easy in CA...after over 100 years the puny little potholes are the same. Come over to the northeast for real potholes.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2022, 12:34:08 pm
content: Quote from: MikeK on April 18, 2022, 10:48:02 pmCould the colder climate in the north-east be a factor? When tiny cracks fill with water and the temperature falls below freezing, the expansion causes the cracks to become large holes. This happens here in the UK, when we get a cold winter.

author: TimFox
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2022, 01:36:36 pm
content: Certain areas of the US (which covers a very large area), including Chicago, go through the freeze-thaw cycle many times during the winter months.More northerly areas stay frozen, and more southerly areas are unfamiliar with snow and ice and drive accordingly.

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2022, 01:54:02 pm
content: Quote from: TimFox on April 18, 2022, 01:39:39 pmOr, because stagecoach drivers (probably many horse driven carriages) sat on the right. The left was for the shotgun. What's customary is slow to change.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 19, 2022, 02:47:22 pm
content: Quote from: jpanhalt on April 19, 2022, 01:54:02 pmWe still have volvo's with a gunrack