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“In 1848, Charles Fontayne and William Porter produced one of the most famous photographs in the history of the medium — a panorama spanning some 2 miles of Cincinnati waterfront. They did it with eight 6.5- by 8.5-inch daguerreotype plates, a then-new technology that in skilled hands displays mind-blowing resolution.
“The panorama could be blown up to 170 by 20 feet without losing clarity; a digicam would have to record 140,000 megapixels per shot to match that. Under the microscope, the plates revealed a vanished world, the earliest known record of an urbanizing America.”
- Wired
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Thank you to Katie C., Wired, Codex XCIX and PK Phillips Photography.
Superb! The ‘Plate 3-detail’ image is wonderful. Do you have the others available at that resolution?
Nice views, particularly of the Showboats. Recently returned home to Cincy, taking shots that reflect the contrast in time. BTW, it’s the Ohio River at Cincinnati, not the Cincinnati River.
What is interesting to note is that the original is a daguerreotype panorama, so not only is this rare in terms of the time period, but in terms of the medium used as well. To see this panorama looking more true to the original than the manipulated version shown above check it out here…