r/whatisit • u/Hangry-24-7 • 1d ago

New, what is it? Uncle holding something

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Picture of my wife’s uncle as a boy 7 or 8 yrs old. Grew up on a farm in western NY. This picture dates back to around 1947 or 1948. What is the boy holding? Is it a toy? Or some sort of farm tool?

Update — yes this photo was enhanced using ai to take the graininess out of the original picture. My wife is giving a copy of the image to her cousin for an 80th birthday gift along with other photos.

The AI bashing on this post is unbelievable! How come nobody is bashing the fact that I used a scanner to create a jpeg of the image as opposed to creating a duplicate from a photo negative in a dark room and sending out 250 copies thru the postal service?

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u/TyrannicalTestical 1d ago

This is an AI generated image. It's likely being used as a test to see if people can tell. There have been a lot of these lately.

62

u/FunGuy8618 1d ago

Goddamn good catch. The mother's hand is all weird, and the resolution is much too clear for the age of the photograph.

17

u/SchrodingersMinou 1d ago edited 1d ago

The resolution isn’t too good. Digital photography hasn’t yet caught up to the resolution of a Victorian large format negative.

ETA this photo has 100% been mangled by robots but the resolution is not an indicator of its age.

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u/warm_rum 23h ago

In some ways, but while most smartphones are beat in ppi, older cameras suffer other problems.

1

u/SchrodingersMinou 22h ago

Well, yeah, carrying around a bunch of plate glass and a giant wooden box with a hood and a tripod is a lot less convenient than an iPhone

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u/PXranger 16h ago

Look at the old Graflex news cameras, that were common up to when 35mm cameras took over, they used 4x5 inch film. You can enlarge a photo from one of those up to 40"x50" if you keep it at 150 dpi. those old cameras took some amazing photos.