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For anyone that was as curious as I was: WHERE DO THESE PHOTOS COME FROM? During the mid-1980s, the City of New York photographed every property in the five b
by erikig 8y ago
For anyone that was as curious as I was:
WHERE DO THESE PHOTOS COME FROM?
During the mid-1980s, the City of New York photographed every property in the five boroughs. The project had a bureaucratic origin: the photos were used by the Department of Finance to estimate real property values for taxation purposes. Buildings as well as vacant lots were photographed because both are taxed. Because it was difficult to distinguish while shooting between taxable and tax-exempt buildings, like religious institutions or government offices, the photographers just shot everything. The result is a remarkable body of imagery – over 800,000 color 35mm photos in both negative and print formats.
- jacobush 8y agoNegative is print format.
- CydeWeys 8y agoNo, the negative is the photographic film itself, not a print developed from said film. In some cases they lost the film over time and only have prints developed from it remaining.
- iodiniemetra 8y agoIf you're going to be pointlessly pedantic, at least be correct.
- jacobush 8y agoOMG - negative is the format for making prints. And the prints are hardly 35mm, are they? Maybe I was too brief, and I was pedantic, but not pointlessly so. Some points - - as it was formulated, you could have assumed they meant positive and negative film - you make prints from negative film - plot twist - those images don't reflect the resolution of 35mm at all, or even small prints made from 35mm film. So the text says there are 800 000 35mm film images - but what we see are 800 000 NTSC video stills. Quite the difference.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Bluestrike2 8y agoThat's because the digitized images (at minimum, the majority) aren't from the original film. Around 1989, the Municipal Archives Collection started archiving the most recent images on LaserDisc. That process was clearly destructive (to the 'archived' copy; not the original); given that the landscape photos fill the frame, they were clearly cropped. When the MAC went to digitize the images, they "extracted low-resolution tiffs of each frame from the LVDs for viewing in the gallery."[0] Others at that link appear to have been pulled from the original film. Hopefully, that means all of the originals were preserved for future scanning. Anyhow, according to a separate source quoting a NYC Tax Photos page that's no longer available,[1] the used 35mm film when they originally shot every building in the five boroughs between 1939 and 1941 (~ 720,000 black-and-white 35mm negatives) and when they later updated the photos between 1983 and 1988 (~800,000 negatives and prints). Starting ~1989, they then archived those latest photos on LaserDisc. Presumably because they'd be easier for tax assessors to work with. The 1939-1941 collection was shot on black-and-white negative film. For the 1983-1988 photos, all of the sources I've found state that they were "in both print and negative formats." Which may or may not be helpful, as it's not uncommon for people to sometimes positive/slide film as "negatives" even though it's...wrong. You'd probably have to contact the archive to verify that. Given the use case--a massive archive of images that can be quickly referenced by tax assessors--I find that odd if not unlikely. For that kind of massive volume, slides are easier to work with (toss a bunch on a giant light box) and take up much less storage space. Most importantly, slide film was--I believe--generally cheaper to buy and process in the 80s, not to mention it let you skip having to get prints made altogether. Aside from the DOF tax photos, the MAC has a massive number of other photos and documents online. Assuming you don't die of boredom waiting for the pages to load, it's fascinating.[2] 0. https://robincamille.com/2016-08-09-the-municipal-archives-tax-photos-collection-a-k-a-1980s-new-york-city-street-view/ https://robincamille.com/2016-08-09-the-municipal-archives-t... 1. https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/napoli13/2013/03/12/tax-photos-useful-for-planning-walking-tours/ https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/napoli13/2013/03/12/ta... 2. http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/NYCMA~4~4 http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/NYCMA~4~4
- acuozzo 8y agoUnfortunately what's presented here was taken from NTSC video; likely U-matic tape. Checkout this uncropped frame: http://files.80s.nyc/photos/3/05338/0023.jpg http://files.80s.nyc/photos/3/05338/0023.jpg
- CydeWeys 8y agoHow does this work exactly? Did they have some kind of device that allowed them to record a single frame to video tape at a time?
- erikig 8y agoActually from the site it looks like the digitized copies were saved as - get this - LaserDisc! Kudos to NYC, they decided to go full-on 80's mode for sure.
- acuozzo 8y agoThe final storage medium was LD, but these images were definitely stored and edited on a tape format prior to LD mastering.
- RIMR 8y agoOh yeah, plenty of cameras had a "photo" button, that recorded a single frame to like 2 seconds of VHS tape. You could put the tape into a reader, and project or print the photos later.