Talking pictures : how they are made, how to appreciate them (c. 1937)

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Talking Pictures has already increased greatly. A factor which will aid the advance in use of color is a reduction in cost. It is still expensive to make and release a color picture. Of the many color processes fully or partially developed, the most commercial and widely used method at the moment is one in which three separate negatives are used to record the three primary colors, blue, green, and red. The first type of camera employed for this process directed the light to the three films through a complicated system of prisms. The present set-up is simpler, though prisms are still needed. Two of the films are now put in contact, face to face, and run through the camera together. The light passes into the camera through a single lens into a cubical prism very like that used in a Lummer-Brodhun photometer. This cube consists of two right angle prisms cemented together on their hypotenuse surfaces. Before cementing them together one cube is very thinly coated with metallic gold, but the coat is so thin that part of the light passes through it. As the light strikes this gold surface, part of the light is reflected at right angles and part passes straight on through. The part which goes through the gold film has a greenish color, but a green glass is placed between the prism and the film. This prevents blue or red lights from striking the film, to which it is also sensitive. Therefore, this film photographs the green elements of the object. The remainder of the light is reflected through a magenta-colored glass, which permits the blue and red light to pass through, but which stops the green, to the pair of films in contact as described before. [276]