My new Tintype Avatar.

[Captain John Jarrett]

Gents,

Two Flints has taken me to task for not posting my Avatar with Spencer Rifle on the SSS. So in order to rectify the situation here it be:

[Harve Curry]

That is real nice. Is there a program to make it look that way?

[Captain John Jarrett]

Harve,

This Tintype was taken by a gentleman named Bob Hartsaw at the Preston Plantation Civil War event. I am sure there is a Photoshop program for a regular photo, but this one is the real deal.

Capt. John.

[Abilene]

Most excellent!

[Mick Archer]

  Howdy Pards! 

   I am too computer illiterate to say, and not a photographer either, but...

  IMHO, "Photo Shop" can kinda/sorta/not really "soup" an image, but the visual quality of a Period camera whether ferrotype or wet plate collodion on glass or paper  just cannot be beat for "color," flat "depth of field," and the short "focal length" of the "two dimensional" flatness of period images or modern images done with the period cameras and processes. 

   A nice image!!!

   Mick Archer

[panhead pete]

OUTSTANDING!!!  I like the overshirt & outfit as well.

Thanks for sharing!!

Panhead Pete

[Dakota Widowmaker]

Excellent photo... a real keeper.

To "antique" a photo, I like some of the tips on this site...
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/paintshoptutorialsphotofx/Photo_Manipulation_Compositing
_and_Photo_Effects_in_Paint_Shop_Pro.htm

I think my avatar has a "tin type" or sepia version some where... turned out rather nice.

[Tuolumne Lawman]

Anyone else notice the negative is reversed?

[Two Flints]

Hi T.L.,

Isn't that tintype normal for the time period?  I always thought that the process that produced a tintype made it come out that way, in reverse, the print would come out reversed just as you would see yourself when looking in a mirror. 

Below, the Billy the Kid, left-handed vs right-handed controversial tintype.

Henry McCarty (Billy the Kid)

Billy the Kid. (Reversed ferrotype photo)

For most of the 20th century, it was widely assumed that Billy the Kid was left-handed. This belief came from the fact that the only known photograph of McCarty, an undated ferrotype, shows him with a Model 1873 Winchester rifle in his right hand and a gun belt with a holster on his left side, where a left handed person would typically wear a pistol. The belief became so entrenched that in 1958, a biographical film was made about Billy the Kid called The Left Handed Gun starring Paul Newman.

Late in the 20th century, it was discovered that the familiar ferrotype was actually a reverse image. This version shows his Model 1873 Winchester with the loading port on the left side. All Model 1873s had the loading port on the right side, proving the image was reversed, and that he was, in fact, wearing his pistol on his right hip. Even though the image has been proven to be reversed, the idea of a left handed Billy the Kid continues to widely circulate.



Two Flints

[Mick Archer]

  Howdy Pards! 

   Having poured through hundreds and hundreds of Period images,  some are found reversed, and some are found  "right."
   (One learns to look for guns with "backwards" locks, or shirts, jackets, coats with the buttons buttoned right-over-left instead of the "masculine form" of left-over-right.)

   I have always been meaning to ask Period photographers why some are reversed and some are not, and never remember to...
      

     Mick Archer

    (Unlike the human eye that projects an upside-down image, and the brain takes care of setting it right...)

[Tubac]

Gents,

Any theories on why 'The Kid's" hat is crushed like that?
It would seem to me that you'd want to look your best for a
photo, and take the added time to fix the hat.
Maybe I'm being too picky.

Tubac