100-year-old color photos

[Leigh]

Here's a BBC piece about a Russian photographer who invented a color ?reversal? process 100 years ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-17449958

- Leigh

[Brian C. Miller]

Prior thread: 100 year old color Russian photographs (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?66218-100-year-old-color-Russian-photographs)
Searched on Prokudin-Gorskii

Prokudin-Gorskii's surviving tri-color negatives are owned by the US Government. When they were about to be thrown out in France, a fellow managed to get Congress to cough up the cash for them.

The tri-color camera used three 4x5 frames dropped in succession by a clockwork mechanism on the camera. The filters were automatically moved into position.

[Steven Tribe]

Three exposure "colour filter" negatives was a pretty common technique even before Prokudin-Gorskii. Autochrome was a bit easier to use.
The BBC was a bit late to discover this - there has been previous media coverage during the life of LFPF and search reveals lots of previous threads here.

[SergeiR]

Every year someone finds his stuff :) On every single forum i was in years..

[Leigh]

To those who appear to have a problem with my post...

This showed up on the BBC news feed this afternoon, and I passed it on for those who might be interested.

If you're not interested, that's your problem.

- Leigh

[Steven Tribe]

No problem.
There is just a lot of informative material ready here - from people with real insight (not me!).
Personally, I am infatuated with autochrome colours - results from the tri-color system are almost too modern for me.

[Leigh]

Here's a link to the Library of Congress exhibit: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/ethnic.html

- Leigh

[Nathan Potter]

I guess I have overlooked these images and the source so I appreciate the note.

Not to derail the topic but the three color process got me to thinking about using it with digital B&W capture with large format Xray panels, as used in the medical profession. These panels (some I think using scintillation technology) are readily available in pretty decent pixel counts but only in B&W of course. Seems with proper color filters one could use them for a color process. Don't know about the cost of these units but this thread got me to thinking about investigating the availability.

What thinkest anyone?

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Leigh]

Seems with proper color filters one could use them for a color process.
That's how the original color television cameras worked...
Three separate vidicons(?), each with a primary color filter.

- Leigh

[r_a_feldman]

No problem.
There is just a lot of informative material ready here - from people with real insight (not me!).
Personally, I am infatuated with autochrome colours - results from the tri-color system are almost too modern for me.

I would recommend looking at http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie/ for current 3-color work and at http://www.vintagephoto.tv/color1.shtml for a nice collection of 3-color cameras.

P.S. Then again, according to Edwin Land, you can make "full-color" images using only two BW exposures, using red and green filters. See Edwin H. Land, "Experiments in Color Vision," Scientific American, Vol. 200, No. 5, pp. 84-99, May 1959, available at http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/courses/psy236/ColorVision/Land1959.pdf

[photobymike]

You know you could find pictures like this today in russia... use a Lomo with outdated film and there ya go.....