K40 pinhole camera test

Post by **VideoFred** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 3:32 pm

tlatosmd wrote:
Autochrome was followed by Pre-WWI Cinecolor, living color motion pictures of Wilhelm II and Teddy Roosevelt!

Yes, there must be lots of interesting color 1900 pictures (films?) out there.

If my information is correct, they also used biologic material (something with potatos) for the Autochrome process.

Fred.

Post by **tlatosmd** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 3:37 pm

Yes, potatoe flour, mixed equally with the three colors RGB so it all became a neutral grey, then this paste was smeared in a thin layer on a glass plate, et voila, a positive photographic plate!

As much as I know, the very first natural color photography ever taken was made by Sir James Clark Maxwell in 1867 yet the Lumiere's Autochrome process was the first industrial one on the market.

Post by **reedsturtevant** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 5:12 pm

timdrage wrote:
Sparky wrote:Do you know what caused the dark stripe along the perfs?
On closer examination (I've just rescanned at a higher rez) I've realised that that dark stripe is actually not on the film at all... it's an artifact of scanning I guess, not sure why other than my scanner is a bit poor... some kind of lens-flare-ish effect from the backlight shining uninterrupted thru the sprocket holes maybe?

My flatbed scanner (Umax Mirage II) has a calibration area at the head where a pixel-by-pixel compensation table is set for the linear image sensor array. If I cover that when I lay a strip of film lengthwise I get that kind of artifact but if I lay the strip sideways that works fine.

Post by **audadvnc** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 5:29 pm

I'd not heard of Autochromes before, thanks for the info. Here's some more information:

http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english ... hrome.html

Post by **timdrage** » Wed Aug 31, 2005 5:37 pm

reedsturtevant wrote:My flatbed scanner (Umax Mirage II) has a calibration area at the head where a pixel-by-pixel compensation table is set for the linear image sensor array. If I cover that when I lay a strip of film lengthwise I get that kind of artifact but if I lay the strip sideways that works fine.

Ahh.... that might well be the problem... I'll test and see if I can find a way around it... Possibly just calibrate without anything obsctructing, then set it to not recalibrate when it scans?... Thanks for the info!!!

Post by **tlatosmd** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 12:42 am

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/index.htm

More on early color cinematography up to Technicolor, Kodachrome included. I'm sorry, I got it wrong, it was 'Kinemacolor', not 'Cinecolor'.

Post by **timdrage** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 12:52 am

yep, that does indeed seem to be the case... if there's anything obstructing the top of the slide scanning area it goes stripey or even refuses to scan at all... annnnoying... sideways or not reaching the top seems OK but of course that's not much help when it comes to scanning decently long segments from the middle of a reel...

Anyway, got sidetracked scanning some of the heap of tiny clippings + outtakes from my films which I've obsessively horded over the years !

Some pretty mysterious images in there!

Concrete evidence of moon landing hoax! 8O Secretly filmed on covert 8mm Svema by Russian psi-spys!!

A monster with a monster for a foot; the latter dividing into a third monster! Plus, a finger.

TERMINATOR! (Nighttime K40, good job I had a XL camera all those years without really understanding what that meant!)

The annoyance of stripiness aside, I'm surprised how well these tiny frames scan... I've been doing them at pretty high resolution and tho the scanner isn't super sharp (and may be simply interpolating when I set it to very high rez for all I know?) I'm pretty pleased with some of the results... with a bit of sharpening and levels correcting I should be able to make some nice images. I'll scan a load some time and put up a page on my site of stills from my various ancient works, been meaning to do that for ages...

Post by **VideoFred** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 3:06 pm

tlatosmd wrote:Yes, potatoe flour, mixed equally with the three colors RGB so it all became a neutral grey, then this paste was smeared in a thin layer on a glass plate, et voila, a positive photographic plate!

That simple, realy? We could do this at home!

Have you seen this link?
http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english ... hrome.html

My God these soft awesome colors! And overall quality of the photos is remarkable, too.

BW photos always look old, but these..
It's like walking into a time machine, like it was taken yesterday(all my troubles etc :lol: )

Fred.

Post by **timdrage** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 3:44 pm

potato film!!? I like the idea of that!

The pictures look really amazing... OK, who's gonna manufacture some Autochrome super-8 film!?

more info + pics:
http://www.autochrome.com
http://www.autochrome.org (good explanation of the process)
http://www.bway.net/~jscruggs/auto.html (more explanation with diagrams)

Post by **VideoFred** » Thu Sep 01, 2005 3:48 pm

P40 (Potato 40)
A40 (Autochrome 40)

Fred. :lol:

Post by **tlatosmd** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:16 am

Well, that link says it's as easy as this...

http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english/lumiere/sautochrome.html wrote:Louis LumiÃƒÂ¨re, however, devised a method of filtering light by using a single three-colour screen made up of millions of grains of potato starch dyed in three different colours. This mixture was then laid out on a varnished glass plate, which would be ready for use once it was coated in a black and white emulsion. Developing the plate entailed applying the same process as was used for black and white photographs at the time, with the impression being processed to reversal.

Maybe someone would call Pro8mm on it? ;)

VideoFred wrote:P40 (Potato 40)
A40 (Autochrome 40)

:lol:

As much as I know, there's some giant Russian project on making all photos net-available that were shot by a pre-WWI Russian autochrome pioneer, those were the very best examples of autochrome that I've seen, not as dirty and faded as those that have been linked to before.

Post by **reedsturtevant** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:47 am

tlatosmd wrote:As much as I know, there's some giant Russian project on making all photos net-available that were shot by a pre-WWI Russian autochrome pioneer, those were the very best examples of autochrome that I've seen, not as dirty and faded as those that have been linked to before.

These ones aren't Autochrome but the US Library of Congress has some nice pre-WW1 Russian 3-color photos online here: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Factory
Interior Showing Electrical Generators, ca. 1907-1915.

Post by **tlatosmd** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 6:43 am

Oh yes, that's the series I meant.

Post by **timdrage** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 7:44 pm

Those russian photos look astonishing...

Back on topic, here's my re-scanned version of the whole thing...

- scanned in short sections and joined laboriously together this time. I found that scanning sideways (ie not blocking the afforementioned calibrating area at the top) got rid of the weird streaks, but of course is more annoying + time consuming.

I think it's possibly better to scan the shiney side? I assumed the emulsion site would make more sense but the scans (at high rez) exhibit a kind of stripey glare on them. I've tried both sides with no apparent difference in focus etc (ie it's horribly fuzzy and requires sharpening either way!) so i'll try base side down in future.

I think my scanner has some stupid auto malarrky of some kind that operates over and above actually setting all the preferences to manual settings... i've found it hard to get consistant results, especially colour-wize... some normal k40 frames i was trying to scan came out really blue-tinted while other frames looked pretty good... despite the fact that they both looked fine on the actual film!

Aaaanyway.

Post by **film_idaho** » Mon Sep 05, 2005 8:05 pm

timdrage wrote:potato film!!? I like the idea of that!

The pictures look really amazing... OK, who's gonna manufacture some Autochrome super-8 film!?

more info + pics:
http://www.autochrome.com
http://www.autochrome.org (good explanation of the process)
http://www.bway.net/~jscruggs/auto.html (more explanation with diagrams)

Well I live in Idaho we have plenty of Potatos! Idaho Capital of Autochrome!

LOL :lol:

-Alex Mason