Autochrome pixs from early 1900's - not colorized

[packman]

More pixs and explanation about the process:

https://imgur.com/gallery/kklOB6T

[Drum]

1. Phenomenal!

[rurallib]

2. somehow those pics look deeper and fuller

[frazzled]

3. Here's how it worked

Auguste and Lois Lumiere were geniuses. They virtually invented cinema.

HOW DO AUTOCHROMES WORK?

Autochrome plates are covered in microscopic red, green and blue coloured potato starch grains (about four million per square inch). When the photograph is taken, light passes through these colour filters to the photographic emulsion. The plate is processed to produce a positive transparency. Light, passing through the coloured starch grains, combines to recreate a full colour image of the original subject.

HOW WERE AUTOCHROMES MADE?

The manufacture of autochrome plates was undertaken at the Lumière factory in Lyon, and was a complex industrial process. First, transparent starch grains were passed through a series of sieves to isolate grains between ten and fifteen microns (thousandths of a millimetre) in diameter. These microscopic starch grains were separated into batches, dyed red, green and violet, mixed together and then spread over a glass plate coated with a sticky varnish.

Next, carbon black (charcoal powder) was spread over the plate to fill in any gaps between the coloured starch grains. A roller submitted the plate to a pressure of five tons per square centimetre in order to spread the grains and flatten them out. Finally, the plate was coated with a panchromatic photographic emulsion.

HOW WERE AUTOCHROMES TAKEN?

They did not require any special apparatus—photographers could use their existing cameras. However, they did have to remember to place the autochrome plate in the camera with the plain glass side nearest the lens so that light passed through the filter screen before reaching the sensitive emulsion.

Exposures were made through a yellow filter which corrected the excessive blue sensitivity of the emulsion for a more accurate colour rendering. This, combined with the light-filtering effect of the dyed starch grains, meant that exposure times were very long, about thirty times that of monochrome plates.

HOW WERE AUTOCHROMES VIEWED?

For private viewing, autochromes could simply be held up to the light. However, for ease and comfort, they were usually viewed using special stands, called diascopes, which incorporated a mirror.

https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/autochromes-the-dawn-of-colour-photography/

[packman]

4. Thanks for posting - Amazing process

[bucolic_frolic]

9. Museum needs to rework their explanation

"The plate is processed to produce a positive transparency. Light, passing through the coloured starch grains, combines to recreate a full colour image of the original subject."

I understand preparing the plate of potato starch grains, dyed, with coal powder in-between. But here we have "processed" with light passing through the grains again.

[whopis01]

17. I'm surprised by the sharpness

Given that it said the exposure time was 30 times that of other techniques.

[Hekate]

5. KnR

[packman]

7. Just a terrible combination of intellectual laziness and trying to be cute

Silly me

[Pepsidog]

10. I love this stuff.

[OnlinePoker]

11. I always get melancholy when I look at photos like this that are 100 or more years old

Maybe it's just me getting older, but it makes me sad to think that everyone I'm looking at has shuffled off this mortal coil. Then I get to thinking of what hardships Europe went through in the first half of the 20th century and wonder about the lives they lived.

[packman]

12. Take it for what it is

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream

[FSogol]

13. Or,

“We do, doodley do, doodley do, doodely do,
What we must, muddily must, muddily must, muddily must;
Muddily do, muddily do, muddily do,muddily do,
Until we bust, bodily bust, bodily bust, bodily bust.” - Kurt Vonnegut

[OnlinePoker]

14. I've been there.

The funny thing is they charge to go inside and all it is is the inside of a bronze statue.

[3catwoman3]

15. You're not alone. I feel exactly the same way, even more so with the color photographs than...

...those in black and white. Not sure why this is - maybe because the color ones look more contemporary, as if those pictured could still be here, whereas the black and white, especially with the old style clothing, definitely speak of times gone by.

I often also wonder about the many, many generations of ancestors about whom I will never know anything - the cave dwellers, those from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. How many thousands of lives have intersected over the millenia to result in the happenstance of me?

[Goonch]

16. ;-{)🖖