Before the advent of photometer

Photometer

In its widest sense, a photometer is an instrument for measuring light intensity or optical properties of solutions or surfaces. Photometers are used to measure:*Illuminance*Irradiance*Light absorption*Scattering of light*Reflection of light*Fluorescence...

s which accurately measure the brightness of astronomical objects, the apparent magnitude

Apparent magnitude

The apparent magnitude of a celestial body is a measure of its brightness as seen by an observer on Earth, adjusted to the value it would have in the absence of the atmosphere...

 of an object was obtained by taking a picture of it with a camera

Camera

A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...

. These images, made on photoemulsive film

Photographic film

Photographic film is a sheet of plastic coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halide salts with variable crystal sizes that determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film...

 or plates

Photographic plate

Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a means of photography. A light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was applied to a glass plate. This form of photographic material largely faded from the consumer market in the early years of the 20th century, as more convenient and less fragile...

, were more sensitive to the blue end of the visual spectrum

Electromagnetic spectrum

The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The "electromagnetic spectrum" of an object is the characteristic distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by that particular object....

 than the human eye

Human eye

The human eye is an organ which reacts to light for several purposes. As a conscious sense organ, the eye allows vision. Rod and cone cells in the retina allow conscious light perception and vision including color differentiation and the perception of depth...

 or modern photometers. As a result, bluer stars have a lower (i.e. brighter) photographic magnitude than their modern visual magnitude, because they appear brighter on the photograph than they do to modern photometers. Conversely, redder stars have a higher (i.e. fainter) photographic magnitude than visual magnitude, because they appear dimmer. For example, the red supergiant

Supergiant

Supergiants are among the most massive stars. They occupy the top region of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. In the Yerkes spectral classification, supergiants are class Ia or Ib . They typically have bolometric absolute magnitudes between -5 and -12...

 star KW Sagittarii has a photographic magnitude of 11.0 to 13.2 but a visual magnitude of about 8.5 to 11. It is also common for star charts to list a blue magnitude (B) such as with S Doradus

S Doradus

S Doradus is the brightest star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of the Milky Way. A hypergiant, it is one of the most luminous stars known , but so far away that it is invisible to the naked eye.This star belongs to its own eponymous S Doradus class of variable stars S Doradus is the...

 and WZ Sagittae

WZ Sagittae

WZ Sagittae is a cataclysmic dwarf nova star system in the Sagitta constellation. it consists of a white dwarf primary being orbited by a low mass companion. The white dwarf is about 0.85 solar masses while the companion is only 0.08 solar masses. This implies that the companion is a spectral...

.

The symbol for apparent photographic magnitude is m_pg and the symbol for absolute photographic magnitude is M_pg.

The photographic magnitude scale is now considered obsolete.