1950s – Nightly view of the central market square of Husum, Germany, which has been decorated for the Christmas season. Photo © Cramers Kunstanstalt Dortmund (CeKaDe)
The story behind the image
It’s the Christmas season, and in Germany we celebrate the fest when the night sets in on the 24th of December. So, for today I selected a wonderful image from the archive showing the town of Husum in Northern Germany. It is the market square of the town, and the place changed very little since the 1950s and is still as beautiful and cozy today as it was back then.
The image was taken at night using a long exposure time. There are some ghosted cars next to the fountain, so the exposure time must have been very long. The image shows a decent sharpness, except for the far left where the buildings in the back seem to blur somewhat.
I scanned this glass negative at 4,800 dpi which is probably a too high resolution (2,400 dpi seems more appropriate) but I wanted to squeeze out the last bit of information from the original. Scanned in RGB colors (48 bits/pixel) this would have been a file of 3 GB which is too large. Using 16 bit greyscale TIFF reduced the size to around 1 GB, which can be handled well in Adobe Photoshop. Still, it’s not for the faint hearted to work on a 460+ Megapixel image. Just imagine: a 24×36 mm negative covers about 6.5% of the area of this glass negative.
I like the subtle shades which are already good in the original scan without any editing. And once the size is reduced, it looks even better, because the grain (which is visible in the original) disappears.
Glass negatives? Get one if you have the chance!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS.
Design ideas
The high resolution image
| Capture Date | 1950s |
| Location | Husum, Germany |
| Image Source | 15 x 10 cm glass negative |
| Digital Image Source | EPSON Perfection 4870 Photo |
| Digital Image Source Format | TIFF, 16 bits/pixel, greyscale |
| Edited Image Format | JPEG, 8 bits/pixel, sRGB |
| Edited Image Dimensions | 26768 x 17285 Pixels |
| Copyright | Photo © Cramers Kunstanstalt Dortmund (CeKaDe), Scan by Mark Zanzig/zanzig.com |
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