100 Year Old Color Photos - You have got to see these.

Ric Trexell · Aug 22, 2010

Here are some color pictures taken circa 1910. They were made in Russia and look like they were made today. The photographer used three cameras I guess with RGB filters. I thought Kodachrome was first in color, but even if I'm wrong, these were taken decades before that. I was only able to open about 6 of the photos and with my dial up that took forever. The author is only showing a few now and will post more when he comes back from vacation. Check them out. They are at...

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

Hope you enjoy them. Ric.
P.S. I don't know if this is the proper place to post this, but I thought you guys would be interested.

Cromlech · Aug 22, 2010

Awesome, thanks!

chrismoret · Aug 22, 2010

great!! thanks for the link.

altair · Aug 22, 2010

I just tweeted about that earlier today. Awesome images indeed. Would love to see how his camera looked like.

R Shaffer · Aug 22, 2010

Very cool images. Thanks for the link.

One of the comments had this link added as to how they were created.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html

M.A.Longmore · Aug 22, 2010

.
Thanks Ric !

2F/2F · Aug 22, 2010

Toffle · Aug 22, 2010

I have seen #7 before, but none of the others. Quite amazing, actually.

fotch · Aug 22, 2010

Wow, amazing quality. Hmmm, so if color film were to disappear, there is still a way to do color.

2F/2F · Aug 22, 2010

fotch said:
Wow, amazing quality. Hmmm, so if color film were to disappear, there is still a way to do color.

Yep. Apart from gum bichromate, dye x-fer, carbro, and similarly involved processes in which each color layer is printed separately, the options involve digitization, however.

Also, without a bona-fide one-shot camera, which shoots all three separations simultaneously, you are limited to totally still objects if you do not want to see the separate color layers where movement occured between shots. A few of the Russian pix clearly show the effect of movement between exposures; number three on the arm on the left hand side, and number four in the water, for example. This being said, this effect is surprisingly absent in the photos over all!

McFortner · Aug 22, 2010

The George Eastman House has some Autochromes on their flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/george_eastman_house/sets/72157606226772243/ that have to be seen to believe!

srs5694 · Aug 23, 2010

fotch said:
Wow, amazing quality. Hmmm, so if color film were to disappear, there is still a way to do color.

Yes, I've seen modern examples of this. A few people on the Yahoo Zenit camera group got interested and experimented with this process and posted their results a couple of years ago. The caveats mentioned by 2F/2F still apply, of course.

FWIW, I used one of Prokudin-Gorskii's images (this one, from the original LOC site) as my desktop background for a while, back around 2000.

rudolf · Aug 23, 2010

srs5694 said:
FWIW, I used one of Prokudin-Gorskii's images (this one, from the original LOC site) as my desktop background for a while, back around 2000.

10 years ago?

Hmmm, that makes me wonder why on APUG, site gathering passionate photographers, bunch of Prokudin-Gurski's images is treated like a hot news (although it's well known since couple of years).

Best,

Jeff Kubach · Aug 23, 2010

Those photos are awesome!

Jeff

srs5694 · Aug 23, 2010

rudolf said:
10 years ago?

It turns out it wasn't quite that long ago, just 9 years -- but in my defense, I did say "around 2000." From the Wikipedia article on Prokudin-Gorskii:

In 2001, the Library of Congress produced an exhibition from these, The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated.

I recall learning of the LOC site soon after it was created.

It's "hot news" here today because of the Boston.com article referenced in the first post. The first paragraph of that article says it was inspired by the recent wildfires in much of Russia.

AgX · Aug 23, 2010

Ric Trexell said:
I thought Kodachrome was first in color,...

Ric,

You are not the first one with this misconception. The origins of natural colour photography are commonly located at the year 1861.

Spread within Apug you'll find a lot of postings on early natural colour processes as well as hints to english language literature on that issue.
A good introduction may be "Colour Photography" by Brian Coe from 1978

Chriscc123 · Aug 24, 2010

to tell you the truth, that all looks like chromatic aberration to me, and that would make sense for back then

100 Year Old Color Photos - You have got to see these.

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