1900-1915 HD quality photos of the United States cities. Is that normal?

Some of them looks like CGI to me.
If this is real pictures, then the type of lens in use and the shutter speed is similar, maybe better than most modern camera.

No movement blur anywhere, that’s some fast exposure right there when 80+% of the cameras in use were still glass plate. Even expanding images on my iPad can’t catch them out.
Korben, right on cue, just as I’m settling down for the night, once again you pop up and give me something new to think about.
Bleary eyed, just when he thought the day was nearly over, he staggers out of the room to switch on his desktop....

They had equipment.

• Early Photographic Equipment

Turpinhero said:

No movement blur anywhere, that’s some fast exposure right there when 80+% of the cameras in use were still glass plate. Even expanding images on my iPad can’t catch them out.
Korben, right on cue, just as I’m settling down for the night, once again you pop up and give me something new to think about.
Bleary eyed, just when he thought the day was nearly over, he staggers out of the room to switch on his desktop....

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There is a bit of motion blur, but it's hard to spot. Mostly in people's feet as they're stepping forward, or rubber wheel tread/ spokes.

The quality is from dry glass plate and fast exposure times.

This all seems about right to me, but I'm probably too "radicalized" at this point. At the very least, it is yet another example that the arrow of progress, especially when it comes to technology, does not necessarily move forward. Being "better" often isn't the endgame, being cheaper/faster plays a role, as does the politics of the industry. As KD has shown repeatedly, mass transportation was clearly better 100 years ago in terms of efficiency, availability, and most other standards, but there was big time money to be made selling everyone a gas burning car.

With photography too, I think we have to deal with the modern day marketing of HD and the switch from analog to digital. It's really all just a different delivery mechanism for a people with clearly different entertainment priorities than 100 years ago. The fact is you only need a higher resolution if you need something to be huge (which is again a need promoted by marketing).

Basically, it makes sense to me that wonderful "HD" quality photography was available 50 to 75 years after it was allegedly invented, but most people didn't have a use-case for a photo the size of a mural. So the industry was able to scale down the quality for reasons of quicker/cheaper production (think Polaroid) in order to get more people to buy it. Eventually, once the market is saturated, it's time to unveil the "upgrades" which is just rebranding what already existed (think Tesla).

What's interesting (and probably the saddest) is that it really seems like there's nothing new under the sun, just a market that expands and collapses based on the overall culture and the average person's disposable income.

Banta said:

This all seems about right to me, but I'm probably too "radicalized" at this point.

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I think some of us are to a degree. For me it can also be hard to separate the “common core” narrative from some of the things we see.

KorbenDallas said:

I think some of us are to a degree. For me it can also be hard to separate the “common core” narrative from some of the things we see.

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Heh, yeah. I mean, sure, the average person might find the picture quality available here to be anachronistic, but I would suspect that any expert in the field of photographic history wouldn't be. It's just that we are raised in a certain paradigm that tries to reject any anomalies to the overall storyline. And we live in a world that is increasingly specialized, so most people's knowledge outside of their field of expertise is so shallow, they have no choice but to accept the consensus (which is more driven by corporate interest and the media than by actual "experts").

That said, I do believe everytime someone becomes confronted with one of these perceived anomalies, there's an opportunity to expand one's personal paradigm. Or you can just say "cameras wouldn't show people back then, idiot!" and go back to sleep.

Agreed. We probably need a certain standard of when and what was possible, within the narrative, of course. Unfortunately, the narrative is too vague about many things. Could be for a reason, I guess.

Here we could run into some difficulties figuring out what the actual narrative is. Things we uncover could arguably be an overlooked, and therefore unadvertised narrative. Well, at least, this could be a convenient position for the PTB to assume.

May be the narrative is what’s commonly accepted as normal, for there have to be other reasons why certain things are not being advertised.

Look into what they recorded the images on to. Film/glass plate, emulsions, size of film sheet/glass plate. I'm of an age to know these things really matter when it comes to the amount of visual clarity captured. Basically the larger the sheet the more detail there is assuming the emulsion is up to it.
Ipads and all screens are incapable of rendering an analogue image in full detail as they are all limited by pixel size.