# Photos taken 100 years ago in COLOR



## Dao (Sep 2, 2010)

Russia in color, a century ago - The Big Picture - Boston.com

I am amazed by the photos.  And they really don't looks like photos taken 100 years ago.


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## Scatterbrained (Sep 2, 2010)

Good find.  It's amazing that those are all three exposures.


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## PenguinPhotoWrx (Sep 2, 2010)

Those photos are amazing!  The thing that is slightly unnerving about them is that they don't appear to be 100 years old.  They look like they were taken recently.  The quality is amazing.

When we see photos from a long time ago, we expect to see generally poor focus, washed out colors, imperfections all over the place- and mostly B&W.

The quality of these throws your perception of time way off.


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## Garbz (Sep 2, 2010)

Just goes to show we have come full circle. The film of the time was grey scale, it was what 50s? 60s? Before colour film came out? The pictures here were taken by doing 3 exposures through red green and blue filters and combining the result. 
Fast forward to the late 80s when digital cameras were born and the result was still grey scale. 

The solution to the digital grey scale problem is still used now, 4 pixels red, green, blue, and green laid in a pattern, combining the results through beyer interpolation, not too unlike what is happening here.


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## skieur (Sep 2, 2010)

Kodachrome 25 colour slide film was out by the early 1950s in Canada.

skieur


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## SageMark (Sep 2, 2010)

wow, a picture is worth a thousand words


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## Dominantly (Sep 2, 2010)

Awesome. It's like a brief time machine.


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## usayit (Sep 3, 2010)

Absolutely Stunning..

One thought.... will our photos taken today on this "media" of bits survive as long?

I recall reading a Smithsonian article many years ago regarding their desperation to preserve artifacts of recent years in our "age of plastics and synthetics" all of which are degrading thousands of times faster than traditional raw materials of preview decades (wood, metals, stone etc...).  One particular example was the Apollo space suite that was worn on Man's first moonwalk.  It is literally turning to dust and melting.  Another was their collection of "Barbie" dolls.  Many are melting as the rubber used to make them begins to degrade.

It would be ironic that decades from now we will have more surviving artifacts from 1000s or years ago than 100s years ago to show future children.   Classic cars by today's standards restored but classics of tomorrow literally "unrestorable".

Maybe the "Age of Plastics" should have been more accurately described as "Age of Trash" or the "Disposable Age".


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## ghache (Sep 3, 2010)

its sad that most of pictures wont make 100 year of history.
they are going to be forgotten on hardrives and dvds


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## Aayria (Sep 3, 2010)

These are just amazing. Eerie and breathtaking all at once.  Thanks for sharing!


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## Gruen Photo 7 Design (Sep 3, 2010)

Thanks for posting Dao!  Great images!


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## Garbz (Sep 3, 2010)

ghache said:


> its sad that most of pictures wont make 100 year of history.
> they are going to be forgotten on hardrives and dvds



What makes you think that they wouldn't have been forgotten 50 years ago on film?

The only thing that keeps us remembering a picture is the novelty of the content of the process. In this case it's the process. Here we have remembered pictures from 100 years ago in colour. What about the countless other pictures taken 100 years ago, who's remembering them?

On a similar note if I was taking a photo of the president just as he got shot, and that photo was published in news papers around the world, in 100 years that photo will likely still be remembered. 

The medium has nothing to do with it.


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## Vinny (Sep 3, 2010)

Amazing photos! In photo #23 there were power lines in the scene ... even had to worry about that 100 years ago!


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## PenguinPhotoWrx (Sep 3, 2010)

Vinny said:


> Amazing photos! In photo #23 there were power lines in the scene ... even had to worry about that 100 years ago!


 

Son of a gun- good pickup Vinny!  I looked at that photo ten times and didn't see the power lines.


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## usayit (Sep 3, 2010)

Garbz said:


> The medium has nothing to do with it.



Is it really a factor of whether or not certain mediums will be "remembered"?  Or a factor whether or not the medium survives?

I have an 8" and 5.25" floppy disk that has files (I kept it out just to say I have it).  I don't have a drive to read it... don't even know if its readable.   A problem with technology and its quick to obsolete.  50 year old negatives can still be viewed and printed even thought the format may have long stopped production. 

I would've liked to know more about the medium on which these photographs travelled through the years in such great condition.  These photos are timeless in so many respects... medium.. artistic.. technology (how he did the color photos)... culture.. etc..


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## Garbz (Sep 5, 2010)

You are describing an archival problem. This is also beyond the specific medium. What simple proof? 






That's in GIF. Could also find it in JPEG or TIFF by a simple google search. Your floppy disk problem is related to watching your old medium degrade in obsolescence. 100 years from now this famous hindenburg image will still be available somewhere. The most memorable image will change with formats. It's only the people who let an image become forgotten. The photos are not only timeless, they are now also medium-less as has just been shown since they are digitally archived in the Library of Congress.

Colour negatives so far have lasted about 70 years yet we already discuss the archival stability of films. Kodachrome was known as one of the best, but 100 years from now if not stored in perfect darkness it will also degrade, and even when stored in perfect conditions film negatives too eventually degrade. The problem still exists, it's just over a vastly extended time period.


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## KKJUN (Sep 5, 2010)

That is seriously mind-blowing. Usually, when I see old photos, it looks more like a painting to me. It's the first time I actualy feel like people _lived_ in the time period these pictures were taken in.


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## Bram (Sep 5, 2010)

Don't believe it, there's no chance these photos were taken 100 years ago.


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## Garbz (Sep 6, 2010)

Bram said:


> Don't believe it, there's no chance these photos were taken 100 years ago.



Why? What makes it so unbelievable?


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## Polyphony (Sep 6, 2010)

Bram said:


> Don't believe it, there's no chance these photos were taken 100 years ago.


I don't see why not...


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## PenguinPhotoWrx (Sep 6, 2010)

Bram said:


> Don't believe it, there's no chance these photos were taken 100 years ago.


 
Perhaps you should read this

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

before jumping to that conclusion.


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## Breaux (Sep 6, 2010)

Those are amazing!  It's definitely different seeing things in color, when we're so used to the past being B&W.

There was a true color film/process available by 1910 known as "autochrome" but, from what I've seen, the results were not as clear nor as brightly-colored as these.


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## Silviakilton (Sep 7, 2010)

Really very informative and interesting site.There are many tips who is very useful for me.thanks a lot.


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## Bram (Sep 8, 2010)

I'm sorry that I don't believe these photos were taken during the time they are said to be?
A little piece of information about your beloved Wiki, it's all submitted by regular people like you and I that have their own opinions too. 

On a different note, it's convincing yes but who is to go against my own OPINION? To which I am highly entitled to. In my opinion, as in my thought, I do not personally believe that the photos in the above link were taken at the time they are said to be.


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## PenguinPhotoWrx (Sep 8, 2010)

Right.  Someone actually went through all the trouble to forge a Wiki page on a photographer that died 66 years ago.  Dude, c'mon.  :lmao:

Hey, believe what you will or won't- I personally don't care.  I was just trying to enlighten- maybe you didn't have all the information you should have before you formed your opinion.  Be that as it may, my opinion is that the images are amazing.  You're certainly entitled to your opinion.


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## TJ K (Sep 8, 2010)

Bram said:


> I'm sorry that I don't believe these photos were taken during the time they are said to be?
> A little piece of information about your beloved Wiki, it's all submitted by regular people like you and I that have their own opinions too.
> 
> On a different note, it's convincing yes but who is to go against my own OPINION? To which I am highly entitled to. In my opinion, as in my thought, I do not personally believe that the photos in the above link were taken at the time they are said to be.



It's not an opinion that water is wet or the sun is hot. A fact is a fact and having this entitled "opinion" just makes you sound ignorant I'm sorry but that's the truth.


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## Bram (Sep 8, 2010)

Say whatever you want that's just my opinion and I never said somebody forged the wiki page I said it's random information gathered from multiple people. It's like google, i'll use that as an example. Google gathers information from other websites and puts it together. Wiki does the same by getting let's say the birthday and birthplace from one person and then getting the date of his death from another. It's gathered info. I just find it really hard to believe these are true facts that's all. Just like when I tell people my house in The Netherlands where I used to live is almost 400 years old. Some people find that hard to believe.


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## PenguinPhotoWrx (Sep 8, 2010)

Hard to believe does not make it incorrect.

OK, let's get out of Wicki.

Prokudin-Gorskii Images

Does the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science have more credibility?


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## Dao (Sep 8, 2010)

How about Library of Congress?

The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated (A Library of Congress Exhibition)


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## Garbz (Sep 9, 2010)

Bram said:


> Say whatever you want that's just my opinion.



That's what I'm still waiting on. Please tell me why? If you have an opinion let it out man!

If not I'll just assume that colour is against your religion, or that you're of the opinions all Russians are actually green or something.


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## Bram (Sep 9, 2010)

My opinion goes somethign like this. *I personally *find it hard to believe that in 1910 photos were taken in color. If it was at all possible in that time to get color images, now were talking 1910, imagine 30 years after that time with progressions going as they were. During world war II 95+% of the photos were in black and white, please correct me if i'm wrong. I just think with the advancements in that field they should have been able to create the color photos during WWII. which they did not. *IMO *they should have been able to do that. Now i'm not saying these color photos are not what they are if you read my posts carefully I find it really hard to believe. I am well aware that just because somethign is hard to believe doesn't mean it's not true.


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## PenguinPhotoWrx (Sep 9, 2010)

Actually, a very large percentage of WWII photos and film were in color. They were converted to B&W later because the quality was better and probably a host of other reasons that are now lost to the history buffs. (Newspapers and movie houses were all B&W anyway.)

If you look at the process that he used in 1910- he did not really take color photographs. He took three separate B&W images through 3 separate color filters- with a camera that did this in quick succession. The images were then colored separately and registered (aligned) later, thus producing the color image.

I believe that's how a lot of NASA satellites work when taking pictures of Mars and other celestial bodies- they take B&W through various filters, and combine them later. It gives them more latitude, I imagine, because they can easily make filters for anything they want. Making image _sensors_ for the same stuff is probably hard (infrared, X-rays, etc.).


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## Bram (Sep 9, 2010)

Well then PenguinPhotoWrx, you just made some very valid points there.


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## PenguinPhotoWrx (Sep 9, 2010)

Spoken like a true gentelman!

When you realize what is truly there, it's really amazing.  This guy was a pioneer in the process of color photography.  If you think about it, advanced films later on were just three layers that all responded to an individual color (obviously, we all know that)- he just had the 'manual transmission' version!


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## Bram (Sep 9, 2010)

Aaaah I see now. It all makes sense actually. I guess if you do use the main three color and three different shots and then combine the three. You would end up with a colored photo.


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## Garbz (Sep 10, 2010)

*facepalm* Every single link in this thread explained the process. Even wikipedia. Could you at least read the link next time please before attacking the site XD


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## fezephoto (Sep 11, 2010)

These are so interesting, thanks for posting them


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## Josh66 (Sep 11, 2010)

PenguinPhotoWrx said:


> Actually, a very large percentage of WWII photos and film were in color. They were converted to B&W later because the quality was better and probably a host of other reasons that are now lost to the history buffs. (Newspapers and movie houses were all B&W anyway.)


I don't think it was necessarily because it was better quality, I think they just didn't want to show all of the bloodshed.  B&W was a way of making it less horrific to some extent.


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## videochicke (Sep 12, 2010)

Wow. Just wow!


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## rock3ralex (Sep 14, 2010)

very interesting, great find!


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## Bram (Sep 22, 2010)

Garbz said:


> *facepalm* Every single link in this thread explained the process. Even wikipedia. Could you at least read the link next time please before attacking the site XD


 

My goodness Harbz strike again. I know it was explained it was my personal *OPINION*  , you would have known this if you would have read the previous threads. Oh, wait it's Garbz, he would never think of something like that. I read it all yes it's wonderful I myself found it hard to believe. Like I stated earlier it was my personal *OPINION.*


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