Moving Picture News (Jan-Jun 1913)

12 THE MOVING PICTURE NEWS COLOR IN PHOTOGRAPHY The Photography of the Future — Natural Color Discovered for the First Time By F. W. Hochstetter For a proper realization of the astounding advance made in natural color photography in the art of the camera, it must be clearly emphasized that the colors are due to light and certain chemical formulas absolutely. No painting, handwork, stencil-work or similar devices are used. Photographers have known from time immemorial that the different colors made themselves known in any photographic plate in different gradation of a bluish gray appearance. These values have always lain latent in the plate, and time, money and experimentation has been going on for years with the purpose of realizing them on positive film or paper. The manufacturers of photographic papers and films have large forces of chemists constantly experimenting with the hope of achieving this philosopher's stone of photography. They have made orthochromatic plates and panchromatic plates and have succeeded in accentuating the gray gradation of F. W. HOCHSTETTER color. .The Lumiere Company of Lyons, France, have succeeded in making a plate whereby with colored particles of starch, it is possible with a time exposure to obtain color negatives. The Natural Color Company of London, by means of Panchromatic films and colored screens and by increasing or doubling the optic possibilities, have succeeded in making by means of red and green screens, a color illusion which has been called Kinemacolor. The inventors, Messrs. Urban and Smith, have been very fair in their claim, as they announce in their literature that their results are obtained by means of a color filter wheel and persistence of vision on the part of the auditor. Admitting very frankly that probably the first man who, although he did not know it, discovered Kinemacolor, was Sir John Herschel, who demonstrated by spinning a coin that it was' possible to see heads and tails at the same time. Freeze, Green and Ives have made some interesting experiments in the production of colors by the use of belts and filters. These, however, cannot by any means be termed color photography, as the colors in the film, as stated above, are merely a more accentuated bluish gray and any colors possessed are obtained by means of outside agencies of color belts, filter wheels or screens of some kind or quality. Up to the coming of the Hochstetter (Expm) Process, no one had succeeded in putting the colors into actual visibility in the film appearing to the naked eye the same as at the moment of projection. All other means of obtaining color outside of these mentioned, have been found to be obsolete and impractical and not even capable of conveying an illusion effect in colors. It is true, by the older methods, that colored moving pictures could be obtained and are still obtained, but only by the costly process of employing numerous persons to paint the pictures, a process often taking months in the case of long reels. Even by this costly and slow process, only certain classes of subects are capable of being dealt with. Under the Hochstetter (Expm) Process, the colors of nature are photographically recorded simultaneously with the taking of the picture. The completed picture with all its glowing radiance of color can be exhibited and duplicates made as quickly as with black and white. Another marvelous thing in this process and one that has been the "Pons Asinorum" of all photographic experimenters is the fact that they have not been able to make the red rays sensitive enough to work with the same rapidity as the other rays. According to the "Law and the Prophets" as laid down in the text books, and the so-called color experts, it is necessary to find a way of making red light work as fast as the other rays. It has been an accepted fact that the photographic film known to commerce is not sensitive to red rays and only very slightly to yellow and green rays. For this reason a red light is used in dark rooms by which development of negatives is watched. Under the Hochstetter (Expm) Process the film used is the ordinary film of commerce used by photographers throughout the length and breadth of the civilized world, and this is treated by Mr. Hochstetter in a diametrically opposite manner to the ordinary amateur or professional photographer ; and while susceptible of developments under any of the processes of the big photographic manufacturers, such as Eastman, Ansco, and others, in fact will develop and show better results than any of the ordinary developing processes that will develop a black and white plate. The improvement is so marked that even the most carping critic cannot doubt the result. Under the treatment of Mr. Hochstetter's, results can safely be said to be doubled and under his formula made to contain all the colors of the spectrum in their intrinsic values properly registered. One of the great claims of the color experts is their ability to handle the red ray. According to them, in working out their process one of the most difficult problems is, that of making the photographic film sensitive to red light. They claim that in the making of a color sensitive film experiments covering a period of ten years have been made and that only of late they have been able to obtain a product which is sensitive to color waves in ordinary sun light from the brightest violets to the darkest reds. In the Hochstetter (Expm) Process the film is so sensitized that the ordinary professional is capable of handling it with the ease of an amateur with a kodak. It is not the intention here to give a description of the process that would necessitate scientific disquisition of a lengthy character, and it would scarcely be in place in this article, as the experiment was publicly given on December 13th and 18th at Carnegie Hall, New York, and at the Boston Academy of Music on January 1st. For the present it is sufficient to say, that when Mr. Hochstetter is at work with his camera with the film prepared under his direction, there are no outside agencies of legerdemain of any kind used. When the film bearing these records is subsequently run through a motion picture machine or held to the light in front of the naked eye, the colors are seen absolutely in their naturalness exactly as they appear on the ground glass of a photographer's camera. It must be repeated that the process is so easy to set forth and its terms so simple that those unacquainted with the phenomena of light and color can immediately understand the scientific principles involved. Those doing so, will become so inter