AMAZING color shots from 1905!

Baldy

Man, where have I been!? :huh If you're like me and didn't know there was a fabulous photographer in Russia who shot in COLOR from 1905-1916...taking beautiful plates of the Russian Empire, you're in for an incredible treat.

I'm so unused to seeing shots like this in color -- it's as if the world was sepia-toned to me back then:







They were shot in color, not colorized. The scans are typically 9-10 megapixels.

See more, read more (and buy prints) at http://www.gridenko.com/pg/index.htm (I have nothing to do with them, I'm just an avid admirer).

Baldy

John Macdonald

Wow, thanks baldy...
Those are great.
It's soooo neat to see that era in color, it's really cool to see it in original photographic color.
wow.

John Macdonald

Any idea of what equipment they were using?
I'd like to see the camera and especially would like to see the lens.
Neat chromatic abberations, I wonder if any of that is from the scanning process or if it's all from the vintage process.

Baldy

John Macdonald wrote:

Any idea of what equipment they were using?

Here's the Library of Congress site with more info (speculation) on the camera:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html

pathfinder

Baldy wrote:

Here's the Library of Congress site with more info (speculation) on the camera:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html

Fantastic find Baldy - these are just lovely pictures and a great demonstration of the use of three black and white images to capture color images. Thanks

Pathfinder

cmr164

I did not know the technique went back so far. My Dad was doing colour from B/W images in the 50's and I remember him talking about the technique that he used (but did not invent). I am hazy on the details but it only used 2 images. I think one with a red filter and the other with no filter. I had a hard time at the time understanding how it could work with only 2 (vs 3) but I do remember that the projection used a different colour filter set so that combination of both subtracting and adding gave the permutations.

wxwax

Awesome. I too have trouble thinking of past times in color, although I have made a conscious effort to do so at times. I'm amazed at how fast the camera had to be to catch the people without any blur, I thought they were much slower then.

Great post!

fish

wow