Thoughts on 'Autochromes'

[Dave Wilkinson]

On my recent birthday I received a really good book :-'The wonderful world of Albert Kahn, colour photographs from a lost age'. Amazing colour pictures, from all over the world - early in the last century, some of these autochromes are fantastic - considering the infancy of the medium, and photography in general.
Never having been a fan of highly saturated colour photos I've been imagining some of my portraits in this style - probably printed on matte textured paper, they would have that nice 'watercolour' painterly look!. So - any thoughts on the best ways to replicate the autochrome look, a hundred years on, digital or film, would interest me a lot right now!
Cheers, Dave.🙂

 

[photogdave]

I can't answer your question directly but I wanted to say I've been watching a series of Albert Kahn documentaries every Thursday on my local Knowledge Network.
Those autochromes are absolutely amazing! The colors seem to be saturated yet subtle at the same time. Some of the photographs would seem exceptional if they were 35mm but to think they were made on large format with tripods makes them even more astonishing!
I'm inspired to try and visit his museum sometime to see them in person. Seeing these images has also solidified my commitment to film.

 

[JoeV]

Although they're not autochromes, there's a thread over on F295 about a "Trichromy" camera, a 3-chambered pinhole camera using colored filters over each aperture, with panchromatic black & white film. The developed negatives are scanned, then the appropriate colored mask applied over each monochrome image in Photoshop to reveal a life-like color image, the quality of whose color somewhat resembles autochromes. The biggest problem right now with his method is parallax errors, caused by three different apertures with three slightly different perspectives, causing chromatic abberation in the near or far field, depending on how the images are aligned.

I also recall a thread over on APUG about someone wanting to try and replicate the autochrome process, but I don't think much has come of it. In spite of our advanced technology some of these old processes are exceedingly difficult to replicate with the same standards as the originals.

I would guess that, for still-lifes where the subject matter doesn't move much, a three-shot assemblage of B/W negatives, each with the appropriate colored filter, using a single lens camera, could come close to replicating the autochrome look without the parallax issues of using three adjacent camera chambers.

You may recall that autochromes use minute specks of flour dust, dyed the three primary colors, such that they end up self-masking the B/W emulsion behind the color mask layer. Replicating this with three seperate B/W emulsions and colored filters should come close, especially with regard to being able to adjust the tone of each overlay mask in Photoshop.

~Joe

 

[Seele]

Like most early colour processes, Autochrome was an additive process where white is made by the presence of RGB; the subtractive process such as integral tripak films (as in all the reversal films we are familiar with) gives white as the absence of CMYK.

The last additive process film that I am aware of would be the Polaroid 35mm instant colour films: you shot it in an ordinary camera and then process it in a small machine, with the included sachet of chemicals.

While there had been many other additive processes. from the original screen processes using a filter matrix to expose ordinary panchromatic emulsions to those with integral filter matrix screens, many of them had regular patterns for the RGB "pixels", but Autochrome (and its film version "Filmcolor") got its looks, I think, from the random disposition of the RGB micro-filters.

 

[shadowfox]

Excellent discussion, something else to think about.

Regarding the three color filters, what would they be? Red, Green, Blue?

 

[bmattock]

Google books to the rescue:

PICTORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY: ITS PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE BY PAUL K ANDERSON, E.E. 1917

The Autochrome Process.—This is perhaps the simplest of the color processes and is the easiest to manipulate. The plates, which are obtainable commercially, are made in the following manner: Starch grains approximating 1/1500 inch in diameter are dyed in the three primary colors, being afterward mixed in suitable proportion and attached firmly to a glass plate. Pressure is then applied so that the starch grains are flattened out and any interstices are filled by the spreading of the grains. A panchromatic emulsion is then placed over this color screen and the plate is ready...

Etc, etc.

Lots on autochromes on Google Books (books.google.com). I recommend it as a pleasant pastime for those interested in historic photographic processes, complete with instructions on how to do it, since early amateurs often had to make do and do it themselves.

However, it would appear that the key to autochromes was the availability of commercial plates, which are not made currently. Here's a thread on APUG on the subject. "Photo Engineer" is very knowledgeable on photographic processes, being a retired Kodak engineer who has posted here as well.

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum42/19234-autochromes.html