Dutch medal in a Belgian group?

[Jef]

Dear Friends,

I was wondering if someone recognise the third medal of this artilleryman, there are some look-a-likes, but the ribbon doesn't match.

First medal of this gentleman is "medaille militaire first class" (long service), second: " medal Leopold II "( Commemo medal Reign LII), but the third seems very difficult.

At first I thought it was the commemoration medal VIIth Olympics which was instituted in 1921. Impossible as the pic was taken pre-WWI.

Someone stated it was the Dutch medal Oranje Nassau. The medal itself seems to match, but unfortunately not the ribbon! Does this medal exist with another ribbon? Or is it another medal?

In this way I was wondering if anyone is able to ID the third medal.

With kind regards and thanks from Flanders,

Jef

[Herman]

It is the Oranje Nassau medal in bronze.

 

In old Black and white pictures the ribbon shades are reversed. It has something to do with the development of the picture I read somewhere. 

 

Please check the left person (Major General de Veer) in the below picture taken in 1913.

His first award is a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion.  The colors are reversed. What should be dark is light and vice versa. 

 

Regards

Herman 

 

[Jef]

Hello Herman,

Thank you for your answer. I understand what you mean. I must say, the pic of the Oranje Nassau medal already is a black & white pic. This has nothing to do with negatives.  The real colours are shown in detail below. Right real colours, middle B&W of thesame pic, left the medals of the artilleryman. 

A dark colour in this case, dark blue, shows in B&W pic, black (In the negative black would be transparant.In the past I developed photographs myself, so that's what I experienced).

Second example a Belgian civilian with palms Order of the Crown. In color and in B&W; the white stripe remains white, dark parts remain dark.  

I hope you undertsand this.

kind regards,

Jef

Edited May 19, 2021 by Jef
not finished

[Great Dane]

You cannot compare old b/w photos to modern ones converted from color photos. How colors came out in old photos were determined by the photographic process (the emulsion?). Modern conversions to b/w can be done in a variety of ways. The most common one is just to desaturate the photo, which gives a b/w result that is very different from the old photos.

More capable apps like Photoshop can do the conversion from color to b/w in a variety of way, by individually adjusting the amount of R, G, B, C. M, Y and K (plus some pre-defined conversions) .

 

Look at old b&w photos of people wearing the Prussian Wilhelm Centenar medal, which is on a yellow ribbon, but appears dark gray in photos.

 

Herman is not talking about negatives.

 

Take a look in this thread Officer to identify please ! - Page 2 - Germany: Imperial: The Orders, Decorations and Medals of The Imperial German States - Gentleman's Military Interest Club (gmic.co.uk)

[Jef]

Thank you Great Dane for your answer. It make sense, but the photograph with Palms in the Order of the Crown, I used to compare is not a modern pic.  It's a pre-World War I photograph. So you think it is  possible the photographer  used another emulsion while developing the photograph? 

Kind regards,

Jef

[Great Dane]

I'm not an expert in the photographic process (I mentioned emulsion, but it could also be a step in the developing - I don't know).

But I do know, that it is not 'general' in the sense that bright colors appear dark and vice versa. If you look at the photo I manipulated in the thread I linked to, I would not have been able to predict the result just by evaluating light/dark. You really have to play around with the individual channels and the results are sometimes quite unexpected (like yellow becoming really dark, almost black, while other bright colors stay the same).

 

Now, for your specific medal, I can't say which one it is. I just wanted to add some information about comparing old and new b/w photos.

 

 

[Jef]

OK Great Dane, thank you for your appreciated answer.

kind regards from Flanders.

Jef

[Jef]

Hello again,

The explanation of Herman and Great Dane make sense, but at the same it  time made me very curious. Because in the past I worked with WWI negatives ( mostly Kodak folding camera, Eastman company). I never worked with glass negatives, Maybe that's a difference?

In this way I took two old medals from my collection and put it on the photograph. I see the black remains dark. The yellow is a bit dark too. Red is a bit darker. So, the shade of these colours are more or less corresponding the colours of the B&W pic. Now I'm wondering how the white/pale colour of the last medal could be dark blue? 

The more I look for an answer, the more I get question marks.

with kind regards,

Jef 

[Great Dane]

You make some good points, Jef.

So maybe it is a different medal... or the wrong ribbon... or...? As you say... question marks indeed...

[Great Dane]

Just for the fun of it, I took your ON image and applied some b/w conversions to it.

The middle is a standard b/w conversion. The right one is applying (crudely) the filter I applied to the color image in the other thread (less G, C and M and more B). I didn't fine tune the conversion.

 

 

Edited May 19, 2021 by Great Dane

[Jef]

8 hours ago, Great Dane said:

Just for the fun of it, I took your ON image and applied some b/w conversions to it.

The middle is a standard b/w conversion. The right one is applying (crudely) the filter I applied to the color image in the other thread (less G, C and M and more B). I didn't fine tune the conversion.

 

 

That's right Great Dane, nowadays you can manipulate  photographs  applying filters or with photoshop. If you should use the same filter on the whole photograph, the artilleyman  would wear a strange uniform, I guess.?

One hundred years ago photographs only could colourized.

Well done.

Kind regards,

Jef

[Great Dane]

Thank you, but the point I'm trying to make is this:

 

In the thread I linked to, we have a multicolored bar, a modern color photo and (with 99.99% certainty) an old b/w photo of that same bar.
I then tweaked a b/w conversion filter in Photoshop and applied it to the WHOLE color photo and got a pretty good match to the old b/w photo (all colors on that multicolored bar!). So I'm pretty convinced that my b/w filter accurately mimics the old photo/development process.

 

Then I applied the SAME b/w filter to your ON medal color photo and got the result on the right in my comparison. This convinced me that the medal your guy is wearing is in fact the ON medal on its correct ribbon.

 

Point is, I did not create a NEW b/w filter for this test. That would not have proven anything, for with only 2 distinct colors, you can get pretty much any result you want.
I also did not just apply a filter to some part of the photo and another filter to other parts. Again, that would not have proven anything.

 

In theory, if you could find the identical uniform and medals that your guy is wearing and take a color photo, I should be able to apply my b/w filter and get the exact same b/w photo as you have.

Edited May 20, 2021 by Great Dane

[Jef]

Great, splendid Idea . Here is the pic.

And addition of the OranjeNassau medal.

Jef

[Great Dane]

Here is my b/w filter applied (as you can see, the uniform is not significantly 'dis-colored' by the filter):

 

 

As you can see, there are some differences - the cuffs are not as dark and the black parts of the medal ribbons are more pronounced.

So my b/w filter is not perfect (I'm OK with that ?), but I still think it proves - or at least makes it possible - that your guy is wearing the ON medal on its correct ribbon.

[Jef]

OK, Thank you Great Dane for the experiment.

Jef

[Jef]

I believe I saw the correct ribbon. But I don't know which ribbon this is. Medal is a miniature, but this doesn't matter.

[Great Dane]

I can see the contours of a separate edge stripe on that medal's ribbon, so maybe the blue color is simply prone to heavy fading on those ribbons? Could be a period thing (lower quality materials used during a specific period)...?

[GM1]

18 hours ago, Great Dane said:

I can see the contours of a separate edge stripe on that medal's ribbon, so maybe the blue color is simply prone to heavy fading on those ribbons? Could be a period thing (lower quality materials used during a specific period)...?

 
 

These miniatures are in my collection and I’ve taken some additional pictures. No faded colores, but the ribbon doesn’t seem to match with the silver medal of the Order of Orange-Nassau, lacking the blue borders.

 

Still a mystery…

[Jef]

Hello Wim, Thank you for your answer. I'm wondering which ribbon this is. 

Kind regards,

Jef