Russian Tsardom 1905 in colour

[UtwigMU]

Prokudin Gorskii was a Russian photograph and inventor, pioneer of colour photography.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky

He travelled then pre revolution Russian empire and took photographs.

The visible spectrum of colors was divided into three channels of information by capturing it in the form of three black-and-white photographs, one taken through a red filter, one through a green filter, and one through a blue filter. The resulting three photographs could either be projected through filters of the same colors and exactly superimposed on a screen, synthesizing the original range of color additively.



The photographs can be seen here:

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

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/prok/

[Jammrock]

Love these photos and the diversity they show. I've never really thought of Russia as being so diverse outside the Slavic population. It's really neat to see other historical aspects of Russia.

[Evildead666]

Back when I worked in the Photo industry, i used the TIFFs of some of these and the large JPEGs as test prints for different thermal/chemical/inkjet printers.

They've been online since before 2006 at least.
There are more of them now though, I had a complete collection back then.

The pictures are very very good, and of a time long gone by sadly.
Stuff we shall never see again.

Great Pics.

[Brian Ellis]

When I was a teenager, during and just after the war, roll film was unobtainable, let alone colour film, but glass plates and cut film was available. I tried, unsuccessfully, to make film and I had permanent brown fingers from silver nitrate. I did make some wet collodion plates as an experiment. I also experimented with colour (I remember a bowl of roses) by taking three successive photos through RGB filters, onto 6 x 9 cm panchromatic cut film, reverse developing them, and binding them together. The result was muddy but the colours of the roses were there. The first roll film that became available, in 1947, was the orthochromatic Kodak Verichrome and we were rationed by the dealers to one roll a month! By the following year, panchromatic film became available again. A year later, I bought my first colour film which was Dufaycolour. This consisted of a transparent RGB reseau printed on a thin plastic stock with a pan emulsion flowed over it. The photo was taken through the film base and reverse developed to a transparency. The colour rendering was rather similar to the photos in the OP's post, soft but accurate, but it needed a bright back light to view them. I think I still have somewhere a couple of my old Dufaycolour slides. I even tried to print in colour from separation negatives using a process marketed by Ilford. This consisted of three colour coupler dyes, magenta, cyan and yellow, which could be mixed. Ilford's idea was that you could make a bromide print in any single colour you wanted by bleaching out the silver after colour-coupled development and fixing. My idea was to develop in one primary colour, reactivate the bromide emulsion, expose, redevelop in the second colour and the same for the third colour, bleach and fix. The results were far from convincing! It was not until 1953, when I bought my first 35 mm cam (Braun Paxette) that I was able to use Kodachrome, which I used until c. 1990 (Kodachrome A Pro 40 ASA, with a daylight filter, reducing it to 25 ASA).

Also, if you Google autochrome and click on any of the images, you are taken to many hundreds of colour photos from c. 1906-1930. Some are stunningly beautiful (some are not!)

[paulw]

Quite amazing color photos for the time considering how they were done. Pity they couldn't do the same with movie film at that time. Yeah I know there were hand painted color movies but just not the same..

[Umfriend]

I'm amazed at the quality of the pictures, both the resolution as the colours.

[Brian Ellis]

I'm amazed at the quality of the pictures, both the resolution as the colours.

The resolution is not surprising; they were most probably taken on whole plate glass slides (8.5 x 6.5 inches), less probably on half-plate (6.5 x 4.25 inches) and still less probably on quarter-plate (3.25 x 4.25 inches). I have a quarter-plate camera and I was once asked, about 60 years ago, to take a photo for a small batch of posters, about 40 x 60 inches. I used low-speed Ilford plates (I think probably with the FP1 emulsion) for the negatives. I bought a 40" wide roll of bromide paper for the job. I had to rent a darkroom for a day because I had no quarter-plate enlarger. It was equipped with a horizontal enlarger and I pinned the paper to the wall. The developing/stop bath/fixer trays were enamelled iron with a long dimension of just over 40" and I placed them on the floor and see-sawed the paper though them. I had to make up fresh chemicals for each photo! Rinsing was done in a bathroom type bath with a cold tap running and the overflow taking the excess. Drying was done on a clothes line! I mention this because the images were pin sharp and no grain was visible. Those who have never used plates probably have no idea of the quality that is possible.

I agree that the colour is remarkable and I have always noted that additive processes, like this guy used, always give more pleasing results to my eye than the subtractive processes (e.g., Kodachrome for slides or Ektacolor for neg/pos prints). Unfortunately, only subtractive film (exception Dufaycolour) has been available for 60++ years. I believe that this is because the RGB filters are more accurate to the true primary colours than the colour-coupled dyes used in subtractive films/papers, whether the coupling was in the emulsion (all films and papers except Kodachrome and, possibly, the original c. 1955 Ilfachrome) or in the developer.

[Umfriend]

Ah, OK, that is not 35mm sized film then. Thanks.

[Evildead666]

Look at the Wikipedia link in the first post, it'll give you some idea of how it was done, and some interesting info as well.

[Brian Ellis]

Gorskii-camera-illust.png

[paulw]

Thanx Brian. Makes sense how they could do this without someone moving between shots..

[Umfriend]

Wow. What exposure time would it need?

[Brian Ellis]

Wow. What exposure time would it need?

Excellent question! I understand that, in bright sunlight, it could be done in two seconds with a wide aperture. The only concrete data I found was with the portrait of Tolstoy (below), it took 6 seconds. This was obviously in hazy conditions (no hard shadows) with a wide aperture (trees well out of focus). The victim was in a position that made it easy to sit still.

L.N.Tolstoy_Prokudin-Gorsky.jpg

[Evildead666]

Thank you very much Brian, I had an inkling of how it was done, but your explanation was great.
I haven't had time to go through them all, but i'll try and get all the TIFF's that are interesting.

I do remember a carpet seller, that had a huge range of reds, and a dude sitting in a chair outside a pale/white building, dressed in a blue coat that is just vibrant.

In my eyes, this is stuff we'll never see again, because its not there anymore. All the more interesting.