Before colour film

[PeterHatt]

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[spydrxx]

The technique has been used countless times and often amazes people. Years ago I used to use only 2 filters shooting a shot in B&W and  making positives for projection with two projectors. The audiences were always blown away. Human physiology and physics are often revelationary to many people.

[250swb]

You can do this now easily in Photoshop, just blend three shots of the same thing by carefully putting red, green, and blue filters in front of your film camera lens. But unless you can do it really quickly anything that moves like clouds, trees, etc, will render with a ghost colour of the filter you used. Which is why I very much doubt that is a self portrait.

Edited February 15 by 250swb

[evikne]

18 minutes ago, 250swb said:

You can do this now easily in Photoshop, just blend three shots of the same thing by carefully putting red, green, and blue filters in front of your film camera lens. But unless you can do it really quickly anything that moves like clouds, trees, etc, will render with a ghost colour of the filter you used. Which is why I very much doubt that is a self portrait.

He may have instructed someone to quickly change the filters and press the shutter button. I would still consider it a self-portrait.

[jerzy]

Static objects were photographed using the method as described by 250swb. But there were as well cameras having beam splitters inside and exposing 3 photoplates simultaneously. On the photo above we may see water being not sharp and this could indicate that photo was taken using such beam splitting camera. Book „Wonderful world of Albert Khan“ shows such early colour photopraphs

[roydonian]

With a beam-splitting camera, all three images would have been taken at the same moment in time, so the water would have been properly rendered. The fact that the water shows no detail suggests that three consecutive exposures were taken in order to record red, blue, and green.

[SpotmaticSP]

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Beautiful photos of a bygone era. I invite everyone to do a quick google to view some of his other color photos. 

[250swb]

And of course with moving things like clouds leaving maybe ten or twenty seconds between the individual exposures it can transform the photo into a kaleidoscope of colour. 

[Jul]

3 hours ago, jerzy said:

there were as well cameras having beam splitters inside and exposing 3 photoplates simultaneously.

Werner Bischof used one of these, some sample pictures here:

https://www.magnumphotos.com/events/exhibitions/werner-bischof-in-color/

[TomB_tx]

Technicolor motion picture process also used 3 B&W films in one camera up until the 1950s

[jaapv]

20 hours ago, jerzy said:

Static objects were photographed using the method as described by 250swb. But there were as well cameras having beam splitters inside and exposing 3 photoplates simultaneously. On the photo above we may see water being not sharp and this could indicate that photo was taken using such beam splitting camera. Book „Wonderful world of Albert Khan“ shows such early colour photopraphs

The technique that Produkin-Gorsky used was described often All sources that I know  of mention the use of the three-filter technique, not a beam splitter. The technique was well-established by then as it was suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855 and first executed by Thomas Sutton in 1861.

[Jul]

5 hours ago, jaapv said:

All sources that I know  of mention the use of the three-filter technique, not a beam splitter.

In order to get the picture in one shot, you need both. The camera referred to in the article linked at

https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/419282-before-colour-film/?do=findComment&comment=5758146

is the Devin Tricolor, the following link is a schema which shows how it works:

https://media.invisioncic.com/l323473/monthly_2018_09/1726552759_OneShotcolorschematic.jpg.970d0b86392b621190548b53f027bb01.jpg

[wlaidlaw]

On 2/15/2025 at 7:33 PM, jerzy said:

Static objects were photographed using the method as described by 250swb. But there were as well cameras having beam splitters inside and exposing 3 photoplates simultaneously. On the photo above we may see water being not sharp and this could indicate that photo was taken using such beam splitting camera. Book „Wonderful world of Albert Khan“ shows such early colour photopraphs

I have tried three times to visit the Albert Kahn museum in Paris and failed. Either shut for refurbishment, strike or just the lazy curators not feeling like opening on that day.

My experience with French museums has not been happy. in 2003, when I had a house in Burgundy near Macon, I lent my WW1 military Jules Richard aeronautical camera to the National Photography Museum, in Chalon-sur-Saone, for a display of photography in WW1. This was on the strict understanding that at some point I would look to recover the camera and agreeing on an insurance value of €800. Luckily I had asked for and received a letter from the museums head curator to this effect. When in 2004, I went to collect the camera after the WW1 exhibit had closed, first they told me that I had donated the camera to the museum so could not have it back and then on production of the letter from the head curator (now retired), they said they could not find the camera. I therefore made a second visit to present them with a formal claim for €800, the agreed value. On my way out of the museum in a very bad temper, after an hour and a half of obstructive conversation with the deputy curator, I spotted in a glass case, my "lost" camera. A further very heated meeting ensued, where they tried to deny it was my camera, in spite of my having photographs showing the front of the camera, with its serial number clearly engraved and only when I threatened to go to the gendarmerie and have the deputy curator charged with theft, did they extremely grudgingly return my camera. Last time I will ever lend something to a museum. 

Wilson

[roydonian]

2 hours ago, wlaidlaw said:

I have tried three times to visit the Albert Kahn museum in Paris and failed. Either shut for refurbishment, strike or just the lazy curators not feeling like opening on that day.

I visited it about a year ago. There is not really much of a museum in terms of objects to see, other than literally hundreds of reproductions of autochromes from the collection. The garden is worth seeing, but it is obviously starting to attract tourists. During a visit I made several years earlier, the garden was plagued with an endless series of noisy school groups - the sort of children to whom the loud yell seems to be the normal mode of communication..