Lincoln Update

The old daguerreotype didn’t sell, so it would appear the smart money doesn’t believe its subject can be adequately authenticated. For those interested, there were nice discussions at Amanda’s place, and Melissa’s too.

I still believe the photo is Lincoln. Many agreed, but many also believed the opposite, some of them declaring with certainty that it is not him. To them I would say that with the known information, it is just as impossible to definitively prove it isn’t Lincoln as it is to prove that it is. Maybe someday more information will surface to tip the evidence one way or the other.

UPDATE: Check out roberto’s latest effort with regard to the alignment of Lincoln’s eyes and the overlay of one image on top of the other.

Says he:

“I wasn’t sure how valuable that would be — the two sets of eyes being very similar to one another. But it proved to be a fairly interesting exercise.

In order to exactly align the pupils, I had to scale the “fake” Lincoln head and rotate it 4.5% counter clockwise. When the image was overlaid on the body of the real Lincoln, the head appeared as being too small for the body. This disproportion was even more apparent when a Difference blending mode was applied.

So, using the eyes as a rather good comparative measure, I believe Lincoln’s had a rather large head, and certainly a much larger one than that of the fake Lincoln.“

Click on the image to enlarge it.
The results of the experiment can also be seen at roberto’s studio.

Are there other artisan’s out there who can comment on whether the technique roberto used is properly taking into account left-right camera angle, height of camera compared to subject, image distance from camera, head tilt left-right, forward-back, and so forth? What roberto has done seems reasonable to me, but you know how easily I can be snowed. Also, am I getting it wrong that once the head size is adjusted to be the same, and the eyes aligned, the ears line up almost exactly with the authenticated Lincoln?