Comparison between two first print scans from two sources

Kentaro Mori, November 27th, 2003
Revisions:
12.02.2003
12.18.2003
01.13.2004


The images below are scans of two sets of first prints: one from Ademar Gevaerd and the other from Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos.

This is a panorama made from eight images, four of each source:


(Click to enlarge - 327 Kb)

The scans from Gevaerd's prints are in red:

The scans from the Olmos' prints are in blue:

From these comparisons, it can be clearly seen that none of these sources are complete. There are parts of the ship, sea and sky that show up on scans from one source, but not on the other, and vice-versa. This indicates that all of them were probably cropped.


Assuming the original negative had a square format (as in 6x6), and from the differences between photos from two sources, we can suggest just the minimum cropping made. Below, the green area is the minimum area of what's been cropped from both sources on P4:


(Click to enlarge)


If we compare the second photo from the two sources, we can also note that there's  heavy distortion between them. One of them is not only cropped in relation to the other (which is also probably cropped in relation to the original negatives), but it cannot possibly match the other image no matter how we resize and move it. There's spherical aberration, if we match the center, the borders won't. Actually, the aberration does not seem to be exactly spherical. This poses serious problem to any analysis of first prints. Here is the relevant comparison:


(Click to enlarge - 158Kb)

We can also notice just how much one of these photos is cropped. And it was a first generation print made by Barauna himself.


There's this one other version of P2, presumedly from yet another source:

The quality is terrible, but it does allow us to see that it contains a bit of what is not on Olmos' prints (ando on Gevaerd's prints too) :

It further confirms that all prints are cropped. This poses serious problems to any angular measurement on these prints.

END