Old Photos of NSW - late 1800's
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If anyone can produce compelling evidence to the contrary, I will happily remove them.
They appear to have been taken around the Newcastle area. There are no obvious links between them, so they may well be part of a larger collection. Going by the cracks in some of them, they would have been glass plates.
What impressed me is the clarity and definition from what today is considered ancient technology.
I'll put the names above the photos for easier reading.
0 6 0 loco 62XX
Aberdare Colliery
B205 class loco 238
B 205 class loco 317
B Pit Merewether NSW 24 Feb 1899
BLW-NSWGR K 294 Toronto NSW
Construction of coal stage at Port Warratah
Cooperative Colliery Wallsend NSW
D 255 class loco 263 Honeysuckle NSW
E 10 class loco Toronto NSW
F 351 class loco 361
Greta Coliery GRETA NSW
Hetton Wheelers picnic and E 10
J and A Brown's works HEXHAM NSW
J Hayes and E 10 Z 20 loco
Kings Wharf Newcastle - looking East
Merewether Beach steam tram terminus
Port Warratah roundhouse CARRINGTON NSW
Steam tram Tudor Street, HAMILTON
Stockton ballast grounds
The end of the dyke - Newcastle
The pit at Newcastle NSW 1890 - 1900
The ship - Norfolk Island
I hope you have found them interesting.
Max
Port Elderley
Port Elderley
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They certainly show how tough life was back then.
The number of loco,s in Carrington and the number of sailing ships is a surprise too.
John.
Posted
Inactive Member
A great set of photos! Thank you very much for sharing!
What is clearly shown in the photos is the clothes of the persons. I am collecting rolling stock for SR in the 20s and I can buy more ready to run rolling stock of the highest quality than I can afford bt where are the people from Preiser, Hornby, Bachmann? I have only found some figures in the Preiser range but nowhere neare enough to populate even my small layout. Even for the 40s, 50s for example I would need more male figures wearing a hat if the photos in my books are typical. But I think in the UK it was the same as in Austria that in the past you did not go out of house without hat.
Thomas
TUTTO IN GRIGIO ARDESIA
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Inactive Member
Max
Port Elderley
Port Elderley
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Bozzy(never known to pass a pub)
Posted
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Maybe they had more vents on the other side.
Max
Port Elderley
Port Elderley
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One thing that struck me, apart from the locos, was the shipping. The couple of photos of the docks show a huge number of ships and of course they are virtually all sailing ships. I think we take engine power for granted today. Imagine the difficulty of steering large sail ships like those amongst so many others.
I see sailors getting into enough trouble in the local yacht havens with their little 40ft craft, and then they are still using engines to manoeuvre!
Posted
Full Member
Those are good thanks for putting them up. The clarity is expected - they are plate camera photos; with long exposures and fine (for the time) emulsion, and then developed by experts.
That equipment is what was used for 'builders photos', digital photos are good but cannot get anywhere near the definition of either 35mm camera or and even more so photos like yours; but digital have other advantages; I am certain that you would not want to lug about a full glass plate camera or wait for the exposure time!
The very large plate cameras used for 'view' used to be carted about by a mule - or possibly the smaller donkey.
Addition Try the following link for something like the camera would have been -
http://www.dtristramludwig.com/collection.html
another link gives a size of 6.5 a 11 inches which I think is a bit small! W Jackson in the USA used 11" x 14": they needed the following transport - one mule (burro) for the camera and one for the glass plates, well wrapped and secured, and perhaps one for him as well. These glass plates were used as scrap, having removed the negative , for greenhouses!
Here is the sort of pack that was used in the USA
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/39110/rec/9
Another link of a whopper!
http://uncommonplacebook.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html
and a final one
http://www.flickr.com/photos/becca3k/3164014819/
Yours Peter
Last edit: by peterbunce
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Cheers,John.B.:thumbs
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Max
Port Elderley
Port Elderley
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I hope you have found them interesting.
Most certainly have!!
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As others have said, they would be taken on a "large format" plate camera - probably a 10 x 8. When I worked in photography in the early 80's, we used a 10 x 8 for studio shots - almost impossible to lug around - and the quality was out of the is world.
I also agree with Peterbunce in that a high quality film camera will always produce better results than a digital camera. These shots are a fine example. They're old, probably some of them are glass plates, the cameras were old, the film emulsions were crude but the results are truly fantastic.
I'm going back to them for another "study" - I may be gone some time ……………………….:cheers
! could spend my life looking at old photographs
'Petermac
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Max
Port Elderley
Port Elderley
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Well, not literally.
Thanks for sharing them.
I hope they are being preserved in an archive somewhere.
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Max
Port Elderley
Port Elderley
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