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The Civil War photo was color blind. Bright blue sky would
overexpose and be unprintable. These two photos, copied from prints
by G.N. Barnard showing the Confederate works before Atlanta, created
beautiful clouds by double printing, one exposure was made for the clouds,
one for the scene. Then a copy negative was made. There is a
little blur between the line of the clouds and the scene.
Orthochromatic or Panchromatic films did not appear until many years
later. Some times an exposure was made against "impossible" lighting
conditions, such as this photo showing Brady and his photo wagon on the
right.
This photo also shows the remarkable tonal range of these prints, the
detail was in the negatives, it took photographic excellence of Ansco to
bring it out.

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