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Photography on a geranium leaf

grand-illusions.com — This may be one of the oldest methods of photography, it uses a geranium leaf as the film which gets exposed to light and chemicaly treated to reveal the image.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 19, 2005

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25 Comments

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  • wthulhu, on 08/29/2009, -0/+2@mach5
    looking at a leaf photo... on weed?
  • Chaos12, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thats amazing
  • kurtu5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Could it not be done by creating a wet paste from any green leaf, coating one side of the inside of a box with it, then let it starve. This would allow the remaining cells to eat up all the carbs, thus making the leaf more sensitive to light. Now we have a carb poor mass of dying cells inside the box. We setup the box on a sunny day, poke a hole in one side with a pin and plug it back up in a few minutes.

    Place the box in a sunny spot so it gets hot to dessicate the coating, thus killing the cells and cloroplasts while leaving the pinhole plugged. Finallly take some iodine and bathe the side of the box in it.

    Violia! Instant photography. Some one correct me if the alcohol is absolutely necessary. I thinks its just to kill the clorplasts. Perhaps they need to be killed quickly so they dont make carbs during thier dark cycle. I would rather have a more effective technique, than resorting to a bright projector and hours.

    If you ever get "Conneticut Yankeed in King Arthur's Court", you can use this to impress, instead of having to remember a solar ecplise is about to occur.
  • godulous, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0the light (or any un even light exposure) causes the leaf to metabolize starch in that area and iodine reacts with the starch to change the color

    "The chlorophyll in healthy green leaves captures light and uses its energy to join together carbon dioxide and water. The result is the organic compound we call starch. It is the basis of much of the food we eat. Starch is white, but if you drop a small amount of a solution of iodine on it, the starch turns black."
  • ddod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Cool Science is always fun...
  • FoxHunter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"looking at a leaf photo... on weed?"

    That got a good chuckle out of me. ;)

    ----

    Dugg the story too. Very cool.

  • Mach5, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0hiddenLYNX: well, inform us! whats cooler then a leaf photo?
  • godulous, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"http://digg.com/technology/the_world_s_first_photograph."

    i just saw that yesterday, thats pretty awsome!
  • HiddenLYNX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0mach5
    using water color paper, tshirts, glass, metal to print pictures on. anything you can think of probably would work, im looking at a lamp id think about trying it on. its photosensative chemicals, painted on, looks like a painting
  • zelig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very cool.

    +Digg
  • TheFlyingMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0thats awsome, i'd love to see something like that done on a much larger scale. Tech meats mother nature. Deffinate digg
  • trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Anyone know how to make this permanent ( I don't mind using modern techniques ). My grandmother is a botanist, photographer and chemist so this would be a perfect gift if only it were more permanent.
  • HiddenLYNX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0ive done a lot of alternative processing recently, this is neat, but not the coolest thing ive seen
  • SuperFarStucker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The romans couldn't have done it with any real objects because they wouldn't have been able to create a static projection onto the leaf. Maybe some simple geometric figures, but really, he is backing into his 'invention' from a known process. There was nothing to 'spur' this invention in ancient times, and in fact it was more worthless then than it is now.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0That's cool..
  • HiddenLYNX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0noxel,
    if youd like to make another unintelligent comment like that one you just posted, please dont use digg, or dont use the internet. that was a worthless and stupid comment. the point isn't that its a new way of replacing photography, and dont spread your stupid flame war propaganda in a thread that it doesnt matter in: in other words, go away and never speak again.
  • Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0To heck with the Romans, why didn't the Greeks invent this? Oh yeah, they were too busy not inventing the steam engine.
  • godulous, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0noxel
    go uninstall life and delete the .exe files
  • bugleboy624, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hmm...interesting. Next!
  • ezkiel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"To heck with the Romans, why didn't the Greeks invent this? Oh yeah, they were too busy not inventing the steam engine."

    But they were ahead of their time for anal :P
  • puny_midget, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Haha the guy has a shiny, bald head.
  • BugMeNot2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0http://digg.com/technology/the_world_s_first_photograph.
  • deepsub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0g33k 4l3r7!!!!

    1t.5 teh c001
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0You can also make diodes out of geraniums!

    --
    http://www.robert.to/
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1The photo looks like dick. My camera takes better then pictures then this. GTFO.

    PS3 = DEAD

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