Customer Reviews

Dating Old Photographs 1840-1929

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This magazine is less than 100 pages long and only five (5) pages are devoted to text describing how to date photos. While there is some useful information, it is too little. The rest of the pages are just old photos that are grouped by era, with no annotations to help you determine how the photo is dated. If you really want to know how to date photos as the title suggests, try a different book.

I found that this book is not worth the money I spent for it. It is more like a magazine than a book. There are only 100 pages, (three of which are advertisements) and most of them are filled with old photographs with no explanations. The photos are classified in 5 year intervals and no detailed reasons given for why these photos are in those intervals. There is only 5 pages of text eplaining how to date these photographs and about half the text is used to give you a brief and very general history of early photography. The book, if that is what you want to call it, does not do a fair or even adequate job of helping a collector date old photographs.

This "book" is actually a short essay. It was long on examples of old
photographs, but did little examination of those examples. The essay
is 5 pages and photos ran from page 8 to 93 with 5 to 6 photos on each page.
These photos were not identified as to their type of photographic method.
It is a fine example of a geneological collection of family photos for
the author, but hardly a book to learn from. I was quite disappointed.

For someone just beginning the process of dating old photos, this book is very handy. It covers the basics in a concise way, giving an overall look at what is involved. In addition to the 8 pages of general information, there are 85 pages of real photographs with known dates. The only drawback as I see it is that most of the photos are of Canadian people, and that many of them do not seem to be dressed typically for the time period. Anyone purchasing this book will soon want to "graduate" to Taylor's Uncovering Your Ancestors through Family Photographs, for example.

Definately not worth the money. Lots of good photos grouped by time period, but almost no information on the characteristics that date the photo.

I thought this book would be of help in dating my own photos, but it needs more explanation to do that. I gather I'm supposed to infer how to date my own photos from looking at examples, but I'm not too good at inferring.

I felt I needed this book for the old photos that have nothing written on them. Style does give a possible time frame to work from which is what we often need. It is very well put together and informative.

I really enjoyed the book but I feel the quality of the photographs were not as vivid as they could be. It is a good reference for my photos.