Did anyone see.........

[technicolour]

Did anyone from the UK here see "the british empire in colour" on ITV last night???

I expect a lot of the Americans here would have loved it, it was amazing! they had colour footage dating back to 1911!!!! and loads of 30s and 40's colour footage with the most incredible defintion and colour reproduction. I think a lot of it was 16mm, and some 8mm shot in Indian and Britain

i think the stuff dating back to about 1907 and 1911 was that three negative system, where they have three strips of b/w film sensetive to red green and blue respectively?

[mattias]

no, but i saw "ww2 in color" or whatever it was called a few months ago. simply amazing and very scary to see hitler, the tanks, bombers and all that in super sharp kodachrome. just so, well, real. makes you wonder why we always get to see only the black and white badly telecined stuff whenever they're showing archival footage on tv...

/matt

[MovieStuff]

Color footage from the turn of the century was generally one of two methods:

1) Sequential color

Sequential color was a very clever way to get full color out of a single strip of black and white film. The camera had a color wheel in front of it that was synchronized with the advance of the film. The wheel was divided into three sections; red, blue and green. Each color filter would cover a single frame in succession. So, the first frame would carry the red color separation, the second frame the blue and the third frame the green. Then the pattern would start all over again.

The black and white positive would be projected the same way, with a synchronized color wheel in front of the projection lens. Obviously, the wheel had to start on the right frame or the colors would be out of phase. For stationary objects, the color was darned good. Moving objects suffered from color fringing like SECAM did in the early days of video (some things never change, eh?).

Here's a fun experiment that illustrates the technique: Use a cheap black and white video camera; preferrably one with manual exposure. Mount it on one end of a short board pointed one direction and, on the opposite end of the board, put a small black and white monitor facing the opposite direction. The two should be in line but facing away from each other like duelists.

Parallel to the camera and monitor, mount an axle with matching color disks on each end. The disks should be divided into red, blue and green colors equally and should overlap both the camera lens and the black and white monitor precisely the same.

Now, give the disk a rapid spin and view the black and white monitor through the spinning color disk. Low and behold! You will see perfect full color images! I built one for a childrens' museum and it's a lot of fun.


2) multiplexed color

Mulitplexing was the same idea of using color separations but the camera actually had three lenses making three small images on a single frame of film. Each lens had an appropriate red, blue or green filter. The projector had the same arrangment (actually the camera probably was the projector!). The three images were overlapped on the projection screen to get back full color.

Now, here is a really cool experiment you can do with black and white slides. I've done this many times and I am always amazed at how well it works.

Put 35mm black and white film in your camera that you intend to process up as black and white transparencies. Lock your camera on a tripod and set up a still life subject that has lots of nice color. You will need three color filters. Gels will work just as well for the experiment. You need a red, blue and green gel. Shoot three different b&w slides of the same subject without moving the camera. Shoot the first slide with the red filter; advance the film, then shoot the blue; advance and shoot with the green.

Process as positive transparencies and put in three different slide projectors. Overlap the three images on the screen and put the very same filters over each respective projector that carries the matching image. You will get perfect color every time. Again, I have done this many times when teaching photography classes and my students are always amazed at the simplicity of it.

Roger

[technicolour]

and there you have it!

Rodger, I think the footage on the program had the "colour fringing" effect you described, where on the edges of moving objects you could see a sort of ghosting effect of red green and blue?

I saw what you meant about the still images though! in the film where not many people are moving the colour reproduction is amazing.