[rollei_list] Re: [Link] Russia in color, a century ago
- From: CarlosMFreaza <cmfreaza@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:20:32 -0300
This is a very interesting link about earlier colour photography, it
contains the letters Prokudin- Gorskii sent to Leon Tolstoy asking him
to take a colour portrait and describing his method; there are
photographs and comments about Dr. Miethe camera and Prokudin-Gorskii
studies with him, a bigger Tolstoy portrait is almost at the end of
the page:
http://www.utoronto.ca/tolstoy/colorportrait.htm
Carlos
2010/8/29 CarlosMFreaza <cmfreaza@xxxxxxxxx>:
> 2010/8/25 Hauke Fath <hauke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> For those who have not seen it, yet, "Russia in color, a century ago":
>>
>> <http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html>
>>
>> And an interesting detail for our Zeiss Ikon heads, from a comment:
>>
>> <snip>
>> 669 Great pictures, many thanks!
>> My first serious camera in 1958 camera was a used 35mm 1932 Zeiss Contax
>> Model 1. A unique feature that made it unique was that its wind-up/film
>> advance knob pointed forward, parallel to the lens barrel, instead of
>> sitting on top of the camera.
>> It took me many years to understand the reason for that. One of the
>> numerous Contax 1 accesories available was a disk divided into three
>> sectors, each of which carried one of the color filters used for this
>> color system!
>> The disk was mounted on this knob, and each time the film was advanced
>> it rotated 1//3 of a turn - automatically placing one of the filters in
>> front of the lens.
>> This allowed to take the three required pictures in a relatively quick
>> sequence, minimizing differences between the three corresponding images.
>> This color system probably was not very popular in those days, and Zeiss
>> chose to move the knob to the top on its later Contax models 2 & 3
>> beginning in 1936, which made the 3-filter disk unusable on them.
>> Posted by Bernard Wassertzug August 24, 2010 11:17 PM
>> </snip>
>
> Thanks for the URL Hauke, I had seen these images a few years ago but
> it's very good to see them again. The colors vividness is impressive,
> BTW it has to do with the corrections that the digital era makes
> possible, however the photographer Prokudin-Gorski also impressed his
> audience at the time, when the images were new; they were published in
> magazines, postcards and advertisements. The Tsar Nicholas II was also
> impressed by the images and gave to Prokudin-Gorski money and
> authorization to take color photographs about the life in the Russian
> Empire and these are the images we are enjoying now. The negs, glass
> plates and color prints were bought by the United States Library of
> Congress to Prokudin Gorski heirs in 1948, the collection has 1902
> negatives and 710 album prints without corresponding negatives. It was
> very difficult to obtain high quality images from these negs before
> the digital era, however a book with some of the images was published
> in 1980: "Photographs for the Tsar: The Pioneering Color Photography
> of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Commissioned by Tsar Nicholas
> II" (London: Sidgwick & Jackson. ISBN 0283986786 ).The Library of
> Congress contracted the photographer Walter Frankhauser to combine the
> monochrome negatives into colour images in 2000, he used a technique
> called "digichromatography" to combine the red, green and blue negs to
> obtain the full color image; he needed around six to seven hours to
> align, clean and colour-correct each image. The same Library
> contracted the engineer Agüera y Arcas in 2004 to produce an automated
> colour composite of each of the 1902 negatives from the
> high-resolution digital images of the glass-plate negatives (made by
> Frankhauser), he applied algorithms to compensate the exposure
> differences, it made quicker the process.
>
> Prokudin-Gorski had an unique camera to take the photographs, there is
> no known replica or illustration about his camera, Dr. Adolf Miethe
> had a similar camera (probably) designed in 1906, Prokudin Gorski met
> him in Germany previously. Prokudin Gorski method was an ingenious
> photographic technique, the images were captured in black and white on
> glass plate negatives, using red, green and blue filters; a single,
> narrow glass plate about 3 inches wide by 9 inches long was placed
> vertically into the camera, he photographed the same scene three times
> in a rapid sequence using a red filter, a green filter and a blue
> filter, he then presented these images in color in slide lectures
> using a light-projection system involving the same three filters.
> Problem for this method was that each image required several seconds
> to be taken and then some differences could appear between the three
> colours frames and the images could be projected or reproduced "out of
> register", without an exact coincidence between them (portraits
> specially), you can see a sample in the photograph about an old man in
> a river, the water has clear color fringing due to its movement.
> In spite of these drawbacks that he tried to avoid if possible,
> Prokudin Gorski color images were a success at the time, his colour
> portrait about the writer Leon Tolstoy became famous in the
> international intellectual circles.
> PG used 3x9 inches (about 8x23 cm) glass plates, an unique camera and
> a dedicated projector, I doubt you could obtain similar results using
> a small flexible negative like the 24x36mm, perhaps this is the reason
> the method had no interest for the Contax I users.
> an interesting link on the topic:
> http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html
>
> Carlos
>
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