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vol. title: Miscellaneous Scraps from January 1st 1878 vol. period: 1875-1878 pages in vol.: 153 |
The Soul Spectroscope
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Photographing In Colors
To the Editor of The Sun—Sir: The Sun for Nov. 24 contained an article headed “Can We Ever Photograph Colors?” I know that the general belief is that we cannot, but I would like to know your opinion of the feasibility of the following, which appears in the British Mail for Dec. 1:
Among the coming novelties for which the world has long been prepared are photographic pictures, which shall represent not merely light and shade, but color also. Such pictures have again and again been announced, but hitherto the announcements have proved somewhat premature. It is now reported from Munich that a gentleman whose name carries some weight in matters of practical science has devised a method of producing photographic pictures in colors by a process which has long been considered to be among the possibilities of the future, but which has thus far baffled all attempts to prove its practicability. The reported invention consists, it is said, in a process for photographing and printing the three primitive colors of a picture by three distinct operations. One photograph is taken on a plate chemically prepared so as to be sensitive to yellow rays only, and the negative of this plate is printed by a photo-lithographic process in yellow ink. In the same way a second plate will be subjected to the action of the blue rays and the negative printed over in blue ink, to be followed in due course by the complementary red, all these colors uniting to produce the infinite variety of tints and gradations which may come within the range of the camera. The inventor has no hesitation, it would seem, in making known the general nature of his process, its real secret consisting in the means to be adopted for this rendering plates equally sensitive to either one of the three primitive colors, and not only. A great revolution is likely to occur in the photographic world, and all existing sun pictures will soon be put in the shade.
Dec. 29.
Our opinion is that the product of such a process as is here described would be, in effect, a chromo-lithograph and not a picture painted in colors by the sun. Even if the Munich pho- tographer can do all that he claims to be able to do, he has not solved the problem of fixing na- ture’s colors upon collodion. The yellow that appeared upon his impressions would be the artificial yellow of the ink employed, not the fixation of the yellow ray. The same would be true of his red and his blue. If the pigments used happened to be poor, muddy colors, the picture would be printed in poor, muddy col- ors. If the pigments were good the result would be more satisfactory, and might approxi- mate in naturalness the chromos of Mr. Prang or the colored prints of Messrs. Currier & Ives. An equally good effect might be attained by lay- ing on the red, yellow, and blue ink with a paint brush. But this would not be photographing color.
Editor's notes