I thought it was the onion at first.
Look at the colors on that old US flag, we never should have switched dyes. That dark slate blue and the almost vermillion red. Those cheapo colors that came in under W Bush never sat right with me.
I think it’s entirely possible the color difference is just film vs digital. Digital tends to lean toward over-saturation. Also the upper picture has a noticeably warmer color temp.
See my other reply below, there are 2 different colors listed as acceptable for flag blue and maybe the lighter, more saturated one has become more common. Also flag material would affect the way the colors show up. Film vs digital photography is obviously playing a role in the images though, agreed.
This is demonstrably false.
https://ultimateflags.com/blog/history-of-the-american-flag/
The only flag change under a Bush was with his dad. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-5988-flag-day-and-national-flag-week-1989
I skimmed through that and didnt see any specifics about the particular shades of blue and red that must be used.
Wikipedia states: “The flag colors are not standardized by law, and there are no legally specified shades of red, white, and blue” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States
So it is not inconceivable that around the W Bush era, new suppliers of flags adopted differently dyed fabrics for production. I concede that this change could have happened earlier, during the Clinton era or even partially during HW Bush. But the current blue is visibly more cyan and lighter, and the red is more saturated and true red rather than the slightly orange hue that I remember seeing all the time during the Reagan era, and on historical flags.
It may be more likely that the color casting of older film media doesn’t represent the true colour of the object at the time
This.
I’ll admit I might be experiencing something like the Mandela effect here but further down in the wikipedia page under Designs, Colors it lists “Old Glory Blue” as either Pantone color [https://www.google.com/search?q=PMS+282C](PMS 282C) or [https://www.google.com/search?q=PMS+281C](PMS 281C), and perhaps the latter has been adopted more in the past few decades. The material the flags are made of could also have an effect on how the color is perceived.
