Despite the abundance of photographers, often self-made, few can tell in detail about the history of photographs. This is exactly what we will do today. After reading the article, you will learn: what a camera obscura is, what material became the basis for the first photograph, and how instant photography appeared.
How did it all begin?
People have known about the chemical properties of sunlight for a very long time. Even in ancient times, anyone could say that the sun's rays make the skin color darker, they guessed the effect of light on the taste of beer and the sparkling of precious stones. History goes back more than a thousand years of observations of the behavior of certain objects under the influence of ultraviolet radiation (this type of radiation is characteristic of the sun).
The first analogue of photography began to be truly used back in the 10th century AD.
This application consisted of the so-called camera obscura. It is a completely dark room, one of the walls of which had a round hole allowing light to pass through. Thanks to him, a projection of an image appeared on the opposite wall, which the artists of that time “modified” and obtained beautiful drawings.
The image on the walls was upside down, but that didn't make it any less beautiful. This phenomenon was discovered by an Arab scientist from Basra named Algazen. He had been observing light rays for a long time, and the phenomenon of a camera obscura was first noticed by him on the darkened white wall of his tent. The scientist used it to observe the darkening of the sun: even then they understood that looking at the sun directly is very dangerous.
First photo: background and successful attempts.
The main premise is Johann Heinrich Schulz's proof in 1725 that it is light, not heat, that causes silver salt to turn dark. He did this by accident: trying to create a luminous substance, he mixed chalk with nitric acid and a small amount of dissolved silver. He noticed that under the influence of sunlight the white solution darkened.
This prompted the scientist to do another experiment: he tried to obtain an image of letters and numbers by cutting them out on paper and applying them to the illuminated side of the vessel. He received the image, but he didn’t even have any thoughts about saving it. Based on the work of Schultz, the scientist Grotthus established that the absorption and emission of light occurs under the influence of temperature.
Later, in 1822, the world's first image was obtained, more or less familiar to modern man. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce received it, but the frame he received was not properly preserved. Because of this, he continued to work with great diligence and received an 1826 full-length shot called “View from a Window.” It was he who went down in history as the first full-fledged photograph, although it was still far from the quality we are used to.
The use of metals is a significant simplification of the process.
A few years later, in 1839, another Frenchman, Louis-Jacques Daguerre, published a new material for taking photographs: copper plates coated with silver. After this, the plate was doused with iodine vapor, which created a layer of photosensitive silver iodide. It was he who was key to future photography.
After processing, the layer was exposed for 30 minutes in a room illuminated by sunlight. Next, the plate was taken to a dark room and treated with mercury vapor, and the frame was fixed with table salt. It is Daguerre who is considered to be the creator of the first more or less high-quality photograph. Although this method was far from “mere mortals,” it was already significantly simpler than the first.
Color photography is a breakthrough of its time.
Many people think that color photography only appeared with the creation of film cameras. This is not true at all. The year of creation of the first color photograph is considered to be 1861, it was then that James Maxwell received the image, later called the “Tartan Ribbon”. To create it, we used the three-color photography method or the color separation method, whichever you prefer.
To obtain this frame, three cameras were used, each of which was equipped with a special filter that made up the primary colors: red, green and blue. As a result, we got three images that were combined into one, but such a process could not be called simple and fast. To simplify it, vigorous research was carried out on photosensitive materials.
The first step towards simplification was the identification of sensitizers. They were discovered by Hermann Vogel, a scientist from Germany. After some time, he managed to obtain a layer sensitive to the green color spectrum. Later, his student Adolf Mithe created sensitizers that were sensitive to three primary colors: red, green and blue. He demonstrated his discovery in 1902 at a Berlin scientific conference along with the first color projector.
One of the first photochemist scientists in Russia, Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, a student of Mite, developed a sensitizer more sensitive to the red-orange spectrum, which allowed him to surpass his teacher. He also managed to reduce the shutter speed, managed to make the photographs more widespread, that is, he created all the possibilities for reproducing photographs. Based on the inventions of these scientists, special photographic plates were created, which, despite their shortcomings, were extremely in demand among ordinary consumers.
Instant photography is another step towards speeding up the process.
In general, the year of appearance of this type of photography is considered to be 1923, when a patent for the creation of an “instant camera” was recorded. Such a device was of little use; the combination of a camera and a darkroom was extremely cumbersome and did not greatly reduce the time it took to obtain a frame. Understanding of the problem came a little later. It consisted in the inconvenience of the process of obtaining a finished negative.
It was in the 30s that complex light-sensitive elements first appeared, making it possible to obtain ready-made positive images. Their development was initially carried out by Agfa, and the guys from Polaroid started working on them en masse. The company's first cameras made it possible to receive instant photographs immediately after taking a frame.
A little later, similar ideas were tried to be implemented in the USSR. The photo sets “Moment” and “Photon” were created here, but they did not find popularity. The main reason is the lack of unique light-sensitive films for obtaining positive images. It was the principle laid down by these devices that became one of the key and most popular at the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st century, especially in Europe.
Digital photography is a sharp leap in the development of the industry.
This type of photography really began quite recently - in 1981. The Japanese can safely be considered the founders: Sony showed the first device in which the matrix replaced photographic film. Everyone knows how a digital camera differs from a film camera, right? Yes, it could not be called a high-quality digital camera in the modern sense, but the first step was obvious.
Subsequently, many companies developed a similar concept, but the first digital device, as they are accustomed to seeing it, was created by Kodak. The camera began to be mass-produced in 1990, and it almost immediately became super popular.
In 1991, Kodak and Nikon released the Kodak DSC100 professional digital SLR camera based on the Nikon F3 camera. This device weighed 5 kilograms.
It is worth noting that with the advent of digital technologies, the scope of application of photography has become more extensive.
Modern cameras, as a rule, are divided into several categories: professional, amateur and mobile. In general, they differ from each other only in matrix size, optics and processing algorithms. Due to the small number of differences, the line between amateur and mobile cameras is gradually blurring.
Application of photography
Back in the middle of the last century, it was difficult to imagine that clear images in newspapers and magazines would become a mandatory attribute. The photography boom became especially pronounced with the advent of digital cameras. Yes, many will say that film cameras were better and more popular, but it was digital technology that made it possible to rid the photo industry of problems such as running out of film or overlapping frames.
Moreover, modern photography is going through extremely interesting changes. If earlier, for example, to get a passport photo you had to stand in a long line, take a photo and wait a few more days before printing it, but now it’s enough to just take a photo of yourself against a white background with certain requirements on your phone and print the photos on special paper.
Art photography has also made great strides forward. Previously, it was difficult to get a highly detailed shot of a mountain landscape; it was difficult to crop unnecessary elements or make high-quality photo processing. Now even mobile photographers, who are ready to compete with pocket digital cameras without any problems, are getting wonderful shots. Of course, smartphones cannot compete with full-fledged cameras such as the Canon 5D, but this is a topic for another discussion.
Digital SLR for a beginner 2.0- for NIKON connoisseurs.
My first MIRROR- for CANON connoisseurs.
So, dear reader, now you know a little more about the history of photography. I hope you find this material useful. If this is so, then why not subscribe to blog updates and tell your friends about it? Moreover, there is still a lot of interesting materials waiting for you that will allow you to become more literate in matters of photography. Good luck and thank you for your attention.
Sincerely yours, Timur Mustaev.
Almost 200 years ago, Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niepce smeared a thin layer of asphalt on a metal plate and exposed it to the sun in a camera obscura. This is how he received the world's first “reflection of the visible.” The picture did not turn out to be of the best quality, but this is where the history of photography begins.
Just some 30-40 years ago, a significant part of photographs, films, and television programs were black and white. Many people have no idea that color photography appeared much earlier than we think. On May 17, 1861, the famous English physicist James Maxwell, during a lecture on the peculiarities of color vision at the Royal Institution in London, showed the world's first color photograph - “A Tartan Ribbon”.
Since then, photography, in addition to turning from black and white to color, has received many more varieties: aerial and space photography, photomontage and x-rays, self-portraiture, underwater photography and 3D photography have appeared.
1826 - first and oldest photograph
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French photographer, took this photo using an eight-hour shutter speed. It's called "View from a Window at Le Gras" and has been shown in recent years at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
1838 - first photograph of another person
Louis Daguerre took the first photograph of another person in 1838. The photo of Boulevard du Temple shows a busy street that appears deserted (shutter speed 10 minutes, so there is no movement), except for one person in the lower left of the photo (visible when zoomed in).
1858 - first photomontage
In 1858, Henry Peach Robinson performed the first photomontage, combining several negatives into a single image.
The first and most famous composite photograph was called Fading Away - it consists of five negatives. The death of a girl from tuberculosis is depicted. The work caused a lot of controversy.
1861 - first color photograph
James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish mathematician and theoretical physicist, took the first color photograph in 1861. The photographic plates used in the process are now kept in the house where Maxwell was born (now a museum), at 14 India Street in Edinburgh.
1875 - first self-portrait
The famous American photographer Matthew Brady was the first person to photograph himself, i.e. took a self-portrait.
The first aerial photographers were birds. In 1903, Julius Neubronner connected a camera and a timer and attached it to the neck of a pigeon. This invention was taken note of by the German army and used for military reconnaissance.
The first underwater color photograph was taken in the Gulf of Mexico by Dr. William Longley and National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin in 1926.
On October 24, 1946, a 35mm camera mounted on a V-2 rocket took a photo from 105 km above the Earth.
The first photograph to show a fully illuminated Earth is known as The Blue Marble. The photo was taken on December 7, 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft.
When and where did the first color photograph appear?
May 17, 1861 English physicist James Clerk MAXWELL, * 06/13/1831, Edinburgh, Scotland; † November 5, 1879, Cambridge, England, produced the first color photograph using the so-called additive method. http://tmn.fio.ru/works/72x/311/hist_col...On May 17, 1861, Maxwell was offered the high honor of giving a lecture in London in front of the Royal Institution - an institution glorified by the names of Rumfoord, Davy and Faraday. The topic of the lecture is “On the theory of three primary colors.” And it was at this lecture that James decided to give the final, already indisputable proof of his three-component theory.
When he approached one of the most sophisticated photographers of the time, the editor of Notes on Photography, Thomas Sutton, with a proposal to take a color photograph, he was amazed. And, of course, he refused. It took Maxwell a lot of effort to persuade him.
It was decided to photograph a bow tied from a three-color ribbon, placed against a background of black velvet. Photographing was carried out in bright sunlight and was carried out three times. The first time the bow was photographed was through a transparent flat vessel filled with a solution of copper chloride. The solution was bright green. The other solution through which the second negative was exposed was a copper sulfate solution - it was bright blue. Another negative was obtained through a bright red solution of iron thiocyanate. All these negatives were then printed on glass.
Not without anxiety, on May 17, 1861, James Clerk Maxwell entered the multi-columned mansion on Abermarle Street, Piccadilly, where the Royal Institution was located. Carriages arrived, transporting the important and the infirm; the younger and unmerited people hurried off on foot, with and without wives.
There are three magic lanterns installed in the hall, and heavy glass positives at the ready. In front of the lenses of each flashlight are the same filters that were used when shooting - red, blue and green.
James explains to the assembled ladies and gentlemen the essence of the three-component theory, insisting that the primary colors with which all others can be obtained are precisely these: red, blue, green.
Need proof? Please! James instructs Sutton and his assistants to set fire to bars of calcium carbonate - Drummond's light for magic lanterns. The bars flare up, giving a bright white, slightly bluish light.
The red rays of one lantern cut through the darkness of the hall, then green and blue rays appear in the air of the lecture hall. Three color images are projected onto a white screen so that they coincide, and then... Everyone sees a colored, completely natural image of a bow made from a multicolor ribbon, as if created with the bright colors of an artist. This is completely different from the usual products of a primitive device, which produces a black and white image, like a bad engraving.
This was, of course, a complete triumph of the three-component color theory. And no one then understood that the main significance of that day was not at all in the triumph of the three-component theory, but in the fact that in the process of proving this theory, color photography was demonstrated to the world for the first time!
Photographer of the Tsar Proskudin Gorsky - color photographs of Tsarist Russia
Incredible facts
When we think of old photographs, we primarily think of black and white pictures, but as these stunning photo early 20th century, color photography was much more advanced than one might think.
Before 1907, if you wanted a color photograph, a professional colorist had to color it using different dyes and pigments.
However, two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière, made a splash in the field of photography. Using colored potato starch particles and a light-sensitive emulsion, they could take color photographs without the need for additional coloring.
Despite the difficulty of production, as well as the high cost, the process of producing color photographs was very popular among photographers, and one of the world's first books on color photography was published using this technique.
First color photos
Thus, the brothers revolutionized the world of photography, and Kodak later took photography to a whole new level by introducing Kodakchrome film to the market in 1935. It was an easier and more convenient alternative to the invention of the Lumière brothers. Their Autochrome Lumiere technology immediately became obsolete, but still remained popular in France until the 1950s.
Kodakchrome, in turn, also became obsolete with the advent of digital photography. Kodak stopped producing film in 2009. Digital photography is the most popular form of photography today, but modern advances in photography would not be possible without the hard work of pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière.
Now let's look at a collection of amazing photographs from a century ago, taken using the innovative technology of the Lumière brothers.
1. Christina in red, 1913
2. Street flower seller, Paris, 1914
3. Heinz and Eva on the Hill, 1925
4. Sisters sitting in the garden making bouquets of roses, 1911
5. Moulin Rouge, Paris, 1914
6. Dreams, 1909
7. Mrs. A. Van Besten, 1910
8. Girl with a doll near soldiers' equipment in Reims, France, 1917
9. Eiffel Tower, Paris, 1914
10. Street in Grenada, 1915
11. One of the very first color photographs, made using the technology of the Lumière brothers, 1907
12. Young girl in daisies, 1912
13. Two girls on the balcony, 1908
14. Balloons, Paris, 1914
15. Charlie Chaplin, 1918
The very first color photographs
16. Mark Twain's Autochrome, 1908
17. Open market, Paris, 1914
18. Christina in red, 1913
19. Woman smoking opium, 1915
20. Two girls in oriental costumes, 1908
21. Van Besten painting in the garden, 1912
22. Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1913
23. Woman and girl in nature, 1910
24. Eva and Heinz on the shore of Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, 1927
25. Mother and daughters in traditional clothes, Sweden, 1910
26. Neptune's Fountain, Cheltenham, 1910
27. Family portrait, Belgium, 1913
28. Girl in the garden with flowers, 1908
eye.A person from birth receives a postulate: sunlight is white. Objects have color because they are painted. Some color features of light have been known for a long time, but aroused interest rather among painters, philosophers and children.
Camera for “three-color” photography by E. Kozlovsky (1901):
At the origins of color
It is a common misconception that it was Newton who discovered that a sunbeam consists of a combination of seven colors, clearly demonstrating this in an experiment with a triangular glass prism. This is not entirely true, since such a prism had long been a favorite toy of children of that time, who loved to make sunbeams and play with rainbows in puddles. But in 1666, 23-year-old Isaac Newton, who had been interested in optics all his life, was the first to publicly declare that the difference in color is by no means an objective phenomenon of nature, and that “white” light itself is just a subjective perception of the human being. eyes.
Trichromic camera from the early 20th century. Three primary color filters create three negatives, which when added together form a natural color:
Newton demonstrated that a sunbeam passed through a prism is decomposed into seven primary colors - from red to violet, but explained their difference from each other by the difference in the size of the particles (corpuscles) falling into the human body. eye. He considered the largest corpuscles to be red, the smallest to be violet. Newton also made another important discovery. He showed an effect that would later be called “Newton’s color rings”: if you illuminate a biconvex lens a beam of monochrome color, i.e., either red or blue, and project the image onto the screen, you will get a picture of rings of two alternating colors. By the way, this discovery formed the basis of the interference theory.
Projection light for three-color photography:
A century and a half after Newton, another researcher, Herschel (it was he who proposed using sodium thiosulfate, which is still indispensable to this day, to fix photographs) discovered that rays of sunlight, acting on silver halide*, make it possible to obtain images of a color almost identical to the color of the object being photographed, those. color formed by mixing seven primary colors. Herschel also discovered that depending on which rays reflect a particular object, it is perceived by us as colored in one color or another. For example, a green apple appears green because it reflects the green rays of the spectrum and absorbs the rest. This was the beginning color photos. Unfortunately, Herschel was unable to find a technology for permanently fixing the color obtained on silver halide - the paints quickly darkened in the light. In addition, silver halide is more sensitive to blue-blue rays and perceives yellow and red rays much weaker. So for “equal” transmission of the full spectrum, it was necessary to find a way to make photographic materials color sensitive.
In the middle of the Second World War, the Kodacolor method appeared, which was used to take a photograph of the English Kittyhawk fighter in North Africa
Color photography and black and white are almost the same age. The world was still amazed by the black and white image of the surrounding reality, and the pioneers of photography were already working on creating color photographs.
Some people took the easy route and simply tinted black and white photographs by hand. The first “real” color photographs were taken back in 1830. They were not distinguished by the richness of their shades and quickly faded, but still it was a color that offered opportunities for a more natural rendering of the image. It wasn't until a century later that color photography became a powerful image medium as well as great mass entertainment.
The cornerstone of the photographic process is the properties of light. Back in 1725, Johann H. Schulze made a major discovery - he proved that silver nitrate mixed with chalk darkened under the influence of light, and not air or heat. 52 years later, Swedish chemist Karl W. Schiele came to the same conclusions when conducting experiments with silver chloride. This substance turned black when exposed to light rather than heat. But Schiele went further. He discovered that light in the violet part of the spectrum caused silver chloride to darken faster than light from other colors of the spectrum.
In 1826, Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce received the first, blurry but stable image. These were the roofs of houses and chimneys visible from his office. The photo was taken on a sunny day and the exposure lasted eight hours. Niépce used a tin-based plate with a photosensitive asphalt coating, and oils acted as a fixative. Even before this, in 1810, the German physicist Johann T. Seebeck noticed that the colors of the spectrum could be recorded in moist silver chloride, which had previously been darkened by exposure to white light. As it turned out later, the effect is explained by the interference of light waves; the nature of this phenomenon was revealed by Gabriel Lipman using photographic emulsion. The pioneers of black-and-white photography, Niépce and Louis-Jacques Daguerre (who developed a process for producing a clear and easily visible image in 1839), sought to create durable color photographs, but they were unable to secure the resulting image. This was a matter for the future.
In the “languid” image of a checkered ribbon, obtained in 1861 by James Clerk Maxwell through color filters, the colors are reproduced quite accurately and this made a great impression on the audience
First color images
The first attempts to obtain a color image using a direct method yielded results in 1891; success was achieved by the Sorbonne physicist Gabriel Lipman. On Lipman's photographic plate, a grainless photographic emulsion was in contact with a layer of liquid mercury. When light fell on the photographic emulsion, it passed through it and reflected off the mercury. Incoming light collides with outgoing light, resulting in standing waves - a stable pattern in which bright areas alternate with dark, the silver grains produced a similar pattern on the developed emulsion. The developed negative was placed on black material and viewed through a reflector. White light illuminated the negative, passed through the emulsion and was reflected by the pattern of silver grains on the emulsion, and the reflected light received color in appropriate proportions. The processed plate produced accurate and bright colors, but they could only be seen by standing directly in front of the plate.
Lipman surpassed his contemporaries in color accuracy, but excessive exposure times and other technical obstacles prevented his method from finding practical application. Lipman's work showed that scientists should also focus on indirect methods.
Frederick Ivis's Kromskop projector was used to project images (a basket of fruit) obtained by a device that allowed all three negatives to be placed on one photographic plate. Kromskop's filters and mirrors combined partial positives into one combined image
This, of course, has been done before. Back in 1802, physicist Thomas Young developed a theory that eye contains three types of color receptors that react most actively to red, blue and yellow colors, respectively. He concluded that the reaction to these colors in various proportions and combinations allows one to perceive the entire visible color spectrum. Young's ideas formed the basis of James Clerk Maxwell's work in color photography.
In 1855, Maxwell proved that by mixing red, green and blue in varying proportions, any other color can be obtained. He realized that this discovery would help develop a method of color photography, which requires identifying the colors of an object in a black and white image taken through red, green and blue filters.
Six years later, Maxwell demonstrated his method (now known as the additive method) to a large audience of scientists in London. He showed how you can get a color image of a piece of checkered tape. The photographer took three separate pictures of the tape, one with a red filter, one with a green filter, and one with a blue filter. From each negative a black and white positive was made. Each positive was then projected onto a screen using the corresponding color of light. The red, green and blue images matched on the screen to create a natural color image of the subject.
At that time, there was a photographic emulsion that was sensitive only to blue, violet and ultraviolet rays, and for scientists of subsequent generations, Maxwell's success remained a mystery. The green-sensitive plate was created by Hermann Vogel only in 1873, and panchromatic photographic plates, sensitive to all colors of the spectrum, became commercially available only in 1906. However, it is now known that Maxwell was helped by two lucky coincidences. The red colors of the tape reflected ultraviolet light, which was recorded on the plate, and the green filter partially transmitted the blue light.
For the creation of a photographic plate that transmits color through the interference of light, Gabriel Lipman received the Nobel Prize. Parrot is one of his works
In the late 1960s, two Frenchmen, working independently of each other, published their theories of the color process. These were Louis Ducos du Hauron, who worked furiously in the provinces, and Charles Cros, a lively and sociable Parisian, overflowing with ideas. Each proposed a new method using dyes, which formed the basis of the subtractive color method. Du Hauron's ideas summarized a whole range of information on photography, including subtractive and additive methods. Many subsequent discoveries were based on du Hauron's proposals. For example, he proposed a raster photographic plate, each layer of which was sensitive to one of the primary colors. However, the solution to use dyes turned out to be the most promising.
Like Maxwell, du Hauron produced three separate black-and-white negatives for the primary colors using color filters, but he then produced separate color positives that contained dyes in the gelatin coating. The colors of these dyes were complementary to the colors of the filters (for example, a positive from a negative with a red filter contained a blue-green dye that subtracted red light). Next, it was necessary to combine these color images and illuminate them with white light, resulting in a color print on paper, and a color positive on glass. Each layer subtracted corresponding amounts of red, green or blue from the white light. By this method du Hauron obtained both prints and positives. Thus, partly using Maxwell's additive method, he developed it by seeing the prospect of a subtractive color method. Further implementation of his ideas was, unfortunately, impossible in those days - the level of development of chemistry did not allow us to do without three separate color positives and solve the problem of combination.
Many difficulties stood in the way of color photography enthusiasts. One of the main ones was the need to give three separate exposures through three different filters. This was a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, especially when working with wet collodion plates—an outdoor photographer must carry a portable darkroom with him. Since the 70s of the last century, the situation has improved slightly, because pre-sensitized dry photographic plates became commercially available. Another difficulty was the need to use very long exposures; sudden changes in lighting, weather or the position of the subject would disrupt the color balance of the final image. With the advent of cameras capable of exposing three negatives simultaneously, the situation improved somewhat. For example, a camera invented by the American Frederick Ivis made it possible to place all three negatives on one plate; this happened in the 90s.
These butterflies were photographed in 1893 by John Joule using a raster photographic plate. To create a combination filter, he applied microscopic and transparent strips of red, green and blue colors to the glass, about 200 per inch (2.5 cm). In the apparatus, a filter was placed against the photographic plate; it filtered the exposed light and recorded its tonal values on the photographic plate in black and white. Then a positive was made and combined with the same raster, as a result, the colors of the subject were recreated during projection
In 1888, George Eastman's hand-held Kodak camera went on sale for $25 and immediately attracted the attention of American citizens. With its appearance, the search for color photography began with renewed vigor. By this time, black and white photography had already become the property of the masses, and color rendering still needed practical and theoretical development.
The only effective means of recreating color remains the additive method. In 1893, Dubliner John Joly invented a process similar to that previously described by du Hauron. Instead of three negatives, he made one; Instead of an image made up of three color positives, he projected one positive through a three-color filter, resulting in a multicolor image. Until the 30s of our century, raster photographic plates of one or another type made it possible to obtain an acceptable, and sometimes just good, color image.
From "Autochrome" to "Polycolor"
This microphotograph shows how starch particles, painted in three primary colors, are randomly scattered and form a raster filter on a photographic plate developed by the Lumière brothers in 1907.
The image obtained in 1893 by John Joule using a three-color filter was not very sharp, but the next step was soon taken by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, the founders of social cinema. At their factory in Lyon, the Lumière brothers developed a new raster photographic plate, which went on sale in 1907 under the name Autochrome. To create their filter, they covered one side of a glass plate with small round pieces of transparent starch, haphazardly dyed in primary colors and then pressed. They filled the gaps with carbon black, and applied a layer of varnish on top to create water resistance. By that time, panchromatic emulsion had already appeared, and the Lumiere brothers applied a layer of it to the back of the record. The principle was the same as that of Joule, but the Lumiere filter did not consist of parallel lines, but of a dot mosaic. Exposures in good light did not exceed one or two seconds, and the exposed plate was processed using the reversal method, resulting in a color positive.
Subsequently, several more raster methods were invented, but their weakness was that the filters themselves absorbed about two-thirds of the light passing through them, and the images came out darkish. Sometimes particles of the same color would appear side by side on autochrome plates, and the image would turn out to be spotty, however, in 1913, the Lumière brothers were producing 6,000 plates a day. Autochrome plates made it possible for the first time to obtain color images in a truly simple way. They have been in high demand for 30 years.
The fragile colors of the portrait, taken by an unknown photographer around 1908, are quite characteristic of the Lumière brothers' Autochrome technique.
The additive method "Autochrome" attracted the attention of the general public to color, and in Germany research was already underway in a completely different direction. In 1912, Rudolf Fischer discovered the existence of chemicals that, when film is developed, react with light-sensitive halogens in the emulsion to form insoluble dyes. These color-forming chemicals—color components—can be incorporated into the emulsion. When the film is developed, the dyes are restored, and with their help, color images are created, which can then be combined. Du Hauron added dyes to partial positives, and Fischer showed that dyes could be created in the emulsion itself. Fisher's discovery returned scientists to subtractive methods of color reproduction using dyes that absorb some of the basic components of light - this approach underlies the modern color process.
At that time, researchers used standard dyes and experimented with films with several emulsion layers. In 1924, in the United States, old school friends Leopold Mann and Leopold Godowsky patented a two-layer emulsion - one layer was sensitive to green and blue-green, the other to red. To make an image in color, they combined a double negative with a black and white positive and exposed them to dyes. But when the results of Fisher’s work became known in the 20s, they changed the direction of their research and began studying the paint-forming components in three-layer emulsions.
However, the Americans found that they could not stop the dyes from “creeping” from one emulsion layer to another, so they decided to put them in a developer. This tactic was successful, and in 1935 the first subtractive color film, Koda-Chrome, with three emulsion layers, appeared. It was intended for amateur cinema, but a year later 35 mm film appeared for the production of transparencies. Because the color components for these films were added at the development stage, the buyer had to send the finished film to the manufacturer for processing. Those who used 35mm film received back transparencies in cardboard frames, ready for projection.
Advertising of the new color film of the Agfa company in 1936
In 1936, the Agfa company released 35 mm Agfacolor color positive film, which contained color components in the emulsion, which for the first time gave photographers the opportunity to process color films themselves. Six years later, the Kodacolor method was introduced in the United States, which made it possible to obtain rich and colorful prints. Based on a negative process, the Kodacolor method ushered in the era of instant color photography. Color printing became extremely popular, but instant color photography developed just as rapidly.
A portrait taken with a Polaroid camera shows the accuracy and speed of color reproduction in instant photography, which was introduced in 1963.
Back in the late 40s, the Polaroid Corporation sold the first kit for producing black-and-white photographs in 60 seconds, and by 1963 the modernization necessary to produce color photographs within a minute was completed. The owner of a Polaroid camera with Polycolor film only needs to click the shutter, pull the tab and watch in amazement as the people or objects he photographed appear in full color on a piece of white paper in one minute.