Why were the pictures from these old cameras black and white?

Why were the pictures taken with old cameras black and white, and

how was color film dicovered?

The first color film was developed in the 1890's having only two dye layers, red and green. Very cutting edge for the time but it left something to be desired. As the technology matured color film became increasingly popular in the 40's and 50's. And by the 1970's a majority of all photography was done with color film.

color film was originally discovered in the late 1840s but the secret was suppressed for a hundred years by corporate interests to preserve the high prices of daguerrotype plates.

 

:)=

Color film wasn't discovered, it was developed with lots of hard work and newer technology...major difference.

Pictures taken with old cameras were B&W because that's the film they had to work with. Many of those old cameras will do just fine with color film- some had a greenish tint to the lenses, I understand, though, and didn't work as well with color. If you've ever seen the original Wizard of Oz movie, it was one of the early color films.

 

The first popular color films were primarily slide films, so for years, if you wanted color you used slide film, then bored your guests with slides of your vacation. I guess I first got a camera when I was 11, in 1971, and all the pictures I took were B&W- it was still common even though they had color print film then.

I'll side with Richard's response. Just as I'm sure that all the digital development today is a conspirancey....conspoonsy...conspirosy..evil plot to keep the true film artist down.

Life was all black and white then. Nature didn't come in color until the last century, and then it was a slow process. Traffic lights didn't work so police had to direct traffic by hand. Rainbows were rather bland. Crayolas came only in shades of gray. Kodak Yellow didn't exist. That also explains why the early Fords were only in black!

And the winner is....Alex!

horay alex.. I almost believed you, but i was born in 1935 and when we ate under the tree the table was bright blue.

 

as was said there were early and none too stable color films.

early films used dyes starch grains and werre very slow, and i supose none to stable. One i read about was called DFUFAYCOLOR.

 

the 2 musicians who invented kodachome on a nyc hotel room originally told gerorge eastman to hold up!

they had a better 3 color process.

 

I recall the story of george eastman having " kodacolor" movie film at a garden party in 1928

 

 

the first real amd stable color fim was kodachrome in 1934-36?

an early pop photo told a story about peter gowland ? who shot 4 sheets of 4 x 5 kodachrome just before he went away to war in ww2.

and his wife sold them all.

 

according to what I read, kodak was busy and glad to sell stuff to the us govenment during ww2 , but was pretty busy " doing business" to devote all their time to the war effort.

 

agfa-ansco, had been siezed by the us government in 1938 for making microfilm copies of us documents and sendin the extra copy to nazi berlin in diplomatic pouches. the us govt. essentially owned ansco

during ww2. they had the beginnings of anscochrome ..based on agfa

color slide technology? it was deveeloped to become " high speed color reversal film" for aerial photography. the speed may have been as high as asa 64. kodachrome was asa 10.

 

remember high speed B&W was asa 100 ( super xx)

the intro of ektachrome came at the end or after ww2.

ektachome. agfachrome( originally called agfacolor) and anscochrome were all similar and were processed similarly. but not in the same solutions.

 

I believe roll film sized of kodacolor ( color negative) film started at the beinning of the 1940's I used it in 120 in the late 1940-s and 1950-s

my first 35mm cameras were in 1960 and i shot slide film.

 

I do not believe 35mm color neg was available until a bit later.

the quality was not there and the photos. especial;ly those shot on roll film in th early '50's turned very yellow. even the edges.

 

people then shot scenics ( 35mm kodachrome)

for people pictures that shot roll film , often with flashbulbs.

 

quality of film has improves a lot, and old cameras are able to take even better photos than they could them.

 

unless you develop your own B&W 120 ( the last surviving size)

and are able by mail or a real camera store, to get roll film

these old cameras are only shelf queens. 127 and 620/120

can sometimnes be found, but the smaller FAD kodak sizes are just about gone away, the big sizes and the disk totally gone.

110 and 126( mail order) but only color neg)

I don't think I would have like living in Alex's B&W world of the yesteryears.

 

Better now.

 

As is with most things, it wasn't "discovered" but developed after a lot of hard work and money (as Stephen said).

Funny. When I think about the 1950s, when I was a kid, most of my memories seem to be in black and white. Of course that may be because the photos I look at to reinforce those memories are black and white, too.

I found this book a a car boot sale - fascinating, beautiful images and very informative!! Have a look in your local library for it.

 

Colour Photography: the first hundred years 1840-1940 by Brian Coe

 

Nick

Money was the main issue, the first color film and development were veyr expensive, not so black and white film+development.

 

I have a few hunderds of old stereo plates from my grandfather and 99% of those are black and white. There are a counted few incolor, but they look funky.

1727 Johann Schulze discovered that a mixture of chalk, silver and nitric acid turned deep purple and could form basic images when exposed to light.

 

1802 Thomas Wedgwood, the son of Wedgwood pottery's founder, made negative prints by bathing paper in a silver nitrate solution then exposing it to light. He was able to record half tones as well as pure black & white, but the image was not permanent.

 

1827 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced the first photograph on a highly polished pewter plate coated in bitumen of Judea. After an eight hour exposure in the camera, the plate was washed in a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum to produce the first permanent positive image.

 

'And now the rest of the story;

http://www.ephotozine.com/equipment/buyersguide/fullbuyersguide.cfm?buyersguideid=11

Richard,

 

I assume you jest. The first permanent color photograph didn't come along until the 1860s by which time the daguerreotype was basically dead. Prior to 1861 color images couldn't be fixed and faded rapidly.

For the same reason that all early TVs were black and white. It was all that was available until colour technology developed. Oddly some people still prefer it to colour. I dont know of anyone who still prefers black and white TVs though. Strange!

Lots of colorful cars in the mid 30's. Two tone model B fords and Rolls Royces. GM and Chrysler had some beautiful greens, blues and reds. Kodachrome came along in the late 30's.

Ernst Leitz was an eager experimenter with early Kodachrome film perhaps even a "beta site" user for Kodak.

 

Some histories of Leitz and the Leica describe Ernst Leitz rushing exposed rolls of Kodachrome back to Kodak via Zepplin for processing. Early FEDEX.

<i>"the 2 musicians who invented kodachome on a nyc hotel room originally told gerorge eastman to hold up! they had a better 3 color process."</i><br><br>The two musicians had great trouble to produce a three colour film, and their product nearly made it to the market in a two colour form.<br>At the end of their three year contract, they hadn't progressed at all. They were given a one year extension, and then came up with a two colour home movie film... Kodak decided to put that on the market, and really at the very last moment, before the two colour thing started shipping, Mannes and Godowski came up with the three colour version.<br><br>I wouldn't be surprised at all if the name "Kodachrome" was chosen as the one for the Mannes and Godowski product as a result of their near-failure to deliver: the one and only original "Kodachrome", after all, was a two colour (!) proces invented much earlier (invented before WW1, introduced in the market in 1915) by John Capstaff (one of the people who Mees brought over to Kodak from Wratten and Wainwright in 1912).

Ridiculous...the world has been proven to have color since around 7,000 BC. It's been the lens' ability to transmit the color to the film plane that provides the limitation.

 

Not until lenses like the "Color-Apotar," "Color-Ultron," etc came along was the average photographer able to take color photos. Of course modern lenses no longer have the "Color" designation because they are all made to transmit the full visible spectrum.

 

Try putting color film in one of these old cameras and you'll see you pics come out in B&W. See the a sample below. The top photo was taken with an Autographic 3A (circa 1915) using Velvia (RVP50). The bottom photo was taken using T-Max using a Pentax H3 w/ 50mm Color Ultron. See how the Ultron is able to get perfect color even on B&W film?<div></div>

"...It's been the lens' ability to transmit the color to the film plane that provides the limitation..." [Chris]

 

I tend to think you are right on this one, Chris.

 

For example, in the movie Wizard of Oz, shot in 1939, it's obvious that they started filming with an old kinda sepia-ish black and white lens, then partway into the production someone suggested they try one of the new "color-coated" lenses.

 

If anyone out there doubts that explanation, just rent the movie and see for yourself ;-)

more proof:<div></div>

Calculations by by Bishop Ussher in the seventeenth century clearly indicate that colour arrived in 4721 B.C.. This has been independently confirmed by paleontologists who have proved that, before that date, human retinas were composed entirely of rods and so could not perceive colour - there being none to see.<div></div>

Actually the history of color photography is a bit more complicated. First approaches to color photography (on plates) were made in the 19th century but almost all of those methods were very difficult and hard to handle, and were never used widely. The problem was that early photographic emulsions were almost insensitive to red, and even with a three-plate process with filters it was very difficult to get acceptable results.

 

A great leap forward was made when orthochromatic and panchromatic emulsions were available (i.e. emulsions sensitive to blue and green or to blue, green and red respectively), this made it much easier to expose three plates with different color filters. Some early approaches replaced the full-frame (or lens covering) filters by tiny particles of color filters (actually colored starch particles) in the emulsion, and even the first color films used that method.

 

Modern color photography begins shortly before WWII when both Kodak and Agfa of Germany released color slide films with color separating layers.

during the 1950's, they still made camerras that exposed 3 pieceds of film at the same time. each was exposed thru a different filter.

the camera was cumbersome and , i think, used a prism to separate the 3 images.

 

each image was later printed using a different dye to form a full color photo. not what you used to snap photos of the family.

mostly for product still life photos.

the original tecnicolor was 3 bw films that were combined in a compicated process to form a full color image.

I think the cameras used the 3 film and filters method .

 

later movies were shot in "eastman color"

 

in the 1980's there was a popular thing about " prints and negs and slides" from thje same film/.

this was ends and surplus movie ( color negative) film.

the yellow masking on the film was different from kodacolor and the film had a black backing that had to be mechanically removed.

it recieved mixed reviews.

 

 

One of the early serious problems was making prints from slides.

kodachrome system resisted a direct printing. but kodak first made kodachrome prints on plastic and later made an internagative from each slide to make prints. quite costly.

 

it is so much easier today. even tho there is only one wet print from slide process left.

 

early lens had the logo "color corected" on them as all colors did not focus at quite the same plane because of the different wavelenghts of light sometimes I think that either they don't care anymore or somehow that problem has been overcome.

but i am suspicious that disposable cameras have a lens no better than the average 1920's or 1930's camera lens.