Russian color photos circa 1910

[Hertsblue]

yes. But even if I'm half Ukrainian ( and half Breton), I would not like to live in this time in these places.

No, indeed. I suspect all those sunny places would be deep under snow come winter. 

[ronan]

I have just GOT to do some more investigating into these piccies...To suss out exactly how the photo's were done....and how much is down to digital enhancement.
Did the photographer use just one lens on the camera ?....How long did the people or landscape have to stay in  exactly the same position, if the chap was swapping plates ?...And for how long ?
Mind boggling to someone who used to think he knew lots about photography.

Cheers - Phil.

That would be interesting.. keep us informed, please !

[Fenton]

I know some of the french colour photos I have seen from the same period were done using 3 filters and 3 lens with red green and yellow, when combined this made the colour image

Found this

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

[Techno]

That's the man Fenton !

Ronan.....Yep...I will.
It's driving me slightly round the bend trying to work out film speeds, exposure times, etc, etc......and the method 'SPG' had to actually employ to get these images.
My 'gut' feeling is that what we're seeing, have had to be 'digitally enhanced' by a fair old amount.
Cheers - Phil

[Fenton]

I read on one of the sites tht they were mostly 3 second exposures

[Albie Bach]

Fantastic pictures. Thanks for posting.
There's a load of info about the process in the link below, including a section on digital color rendering and a comparison with the original images towards the at the bottom of the page.

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

Cheers, Colin

EDIT - corrected word order

[Techno]

I have problems with some of those images, unless they've really gone to town with the enhancement.

3 (or 4).....three second exposures.....plus the time to switch the plates around. (OK that bit's pretty quick with practice)....Lets say around 10 seconds absolute minimum ?
Clouds and water wouldn't be very sharp in an exposure of that sort of length.
More investigating to do !
Fascinating though.
Cheers - Phil.

[Fenton]

I found this info on how he did it

He accomplished this with a clever camera of his own design, which took three black and white photos of a scene in rapid sequence, each though a differently colored filter. His photographic plates were long and slender, capturing all three images onto the same plate, resulting in three monochrome images which each had certain color information filtered out.

[ronan]

Clouds and water wouldn't be very sharp in an exposure of that sort of length.

Nor the people.
Look at some ACW photos, for example.
But Fenton probably found the answer.

[Techno]

Now it's starting to make a bit of sense !
Well found F

Looking at the one particular image on the wik-ip page which shows the 3 'negatives' and the finished 'result', I think it shows a bit more clearly what the undigitized (Is that a word ? ) composite image would have looked like.....So I imagine there has been a fair bit of tweaking.....Which has been done awesomely well.
Cheers - Phil

[Fenton]

If you look at some of the French WW1 pic in colour they are quite sharp as well...Graham who really invented photography said such a proceedure was possible in 1855 but equipment available wasn't good enough at that time


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autochrome_Lumi%C3%A8re

[Leman]

I think the French pictures were done with potato starch or something like that. The zouaves look superb!

[Techno]

Fascinating !!
Cheers - Phil.