WW I in real color - not colorized

Purportedly some actual color photos from the First World War. Unfortunately no info on the camera, film or photographer. I find the color effects in some of the photos very appealing, all of the photos interesting. If anyone knows any of the missing info, please share.

 

The Great War in colour: Incredible photographs of World War I | Daily Mail Online

Fascinating, thanks for sharing.

Great to see them, but these have been posted on-line before, but I cannot find the link now without a lot of trouble.

I think the camera must have been a "one-shot" camera of the sort of the much later one still being sold in November 1939:

Likely made using the Autochrome process <LINK>.

These people really had great sense of composition.

BTW, I think these photos were shot on large format cameras, given the shallow DOF in many of them, and the lack of wide angle perspective distortion. So, autochrome process seems plausible, since they were typically produced on glass plates mounted on large cameras.

Great War photographs are rare but most of these--whatever the process--look very stagey and propagandistic. Unsure of French policy toward photography but the British were very strict about controlling it, particularly at the front where the French shots likely weren't taken. We can thank the then-new Vest Pocket Kodak and 127 film for many of the shots snapped secretly underfire or in the reserve and supply trenches near the front. The French photos look to have been leisurely shot in rear areas away from the front.

I think these photos were shot on large format cameras

Agree, which reinforces the case for Autochrome. Given the requirements to make an Autochrome image, I would expect them to be "stagey an propagandistic". They certainly would not be conducive to a snapshot, documentary type of situation.

If it ws (and most at the time were) shot in a one-shot camera (3 negatives, one for blue, one for green, and one for red) then there would be three plates to be combine. Technicolor was another 3-color process.

 

 

Three shots with RGB filters and combined:

These were Autochromes, no question.

Thanks, Sandy. I hadn't seen these, before. It's amazing how much of a difference color makes. I wouldn't have expected it to matter for purely documentary shots, but it makes a huge difference.