[rollei_list] Re: [Link] Russia in color, a century ago

  • From: CarlosMFreaza <cmfreaza@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:15:19 -0300

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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