WWI color footage?

[Greybeard]

Is it real?

World War I in Color | TimeLife.com | Definitive Documentary of WWI

GB

[rednev]

The first experiments with filming in colour go back to around 1895.
Probable the first publicly shown colour film shown ' a visit to the seaside ' was realeased in 1908.
This was not colour film as we know it today it required a special camera with alternating filters synchronised with the shutter and a similar specialised projector.

Was any frontline footaged captured in colour hmmmmmmm maybe.
A victory parade in paris was filmed using the Gaumont process in 1919.

[Thomas Trauner]

Very real. It’s based on a French system, working with potato starch spread over the glass plates. As far as I know no special camera was needed. But maybe there was more then one system. The Brits had it too, I don’t know about Germany, but nevertheless there are some Germans too, PoWs in Algeria for example.
(Their various coloured hatbands are astonishing.)

These are “real” colour photos, not coloured after the development.

It took rather long to expose the glass plate, so, no real “front-line” photos where found till today.
But they’re a lot of the results of war, including dead people, ruins, some (French) backward trenches, planes and tanks
Some are extra taken because of the colourful subject, French Zuaves for example.

One shows an exploded Mk. IV in German markings, revealing greenish grey, yellowish ochre and reddish brown in irregular batches.
I have seen three photos of planes meanwhile.
A Ni.17, wonderful in it’s silver doped livery, with chestnut brown struts and the highly colourful roundels. Really wonderful…
Wings of a Caudron (?) in the factory in straw yellow, the blue of the (French) Roundel a greyish light blue.
And a F2B, 1918 in Palestine in PC 10….well, well, At least on this photo it was a middle green, no traces of brown.
The engine hood is clearly another sort of green, more in the direction of grass green, Wheels white, Struts in light grey. No Marking or Serial number readable….

Those photos cannot be taken as the bible. Not all of the colours are really correct; the shades are a bit shady. Some others (the Ni 17) looked perfect. But they give a good impression.

And – the time gap is suddenly away. Looking on horizon-blue French soldiers peeping out of their holes in the trench, including red poppies, blue sky and white birch stumps ….
Amazing and moving….

Thomas

PS: There is a pre-war coloured film footage from Germany, showing some birthday of Wilhelm, the Kaiser with the head-prosthesis, around 1910. Made by three different cameras, one with a blue, one with a red and one with green filter…worked well and looks amazing.
The oldest coloured film I´ve seen was “Masque of the Red Death” (E.A.Poe) from 1916. The scene in which the Red Death (the Plague) appeared in the middle of the costume ball, was in colour. Amazing, amazing. The skeleton in red clothing – I just stared onto the movie screen…. And it was in an old cinema, where it was still allowed to have a beer and a cigarette…great.

[Gregvan]

Yes, there were real still color photos, and possibly some very rare color motion picture film before/during WWI.

However, the DVD set Greybeard refers to has been seen on the History Channel and elsewhere. It is made up of black/white film that has been "colorized". For my money, none too convincingly. For instance, the classic Tony Fokker film of Richthofen climbing into Fokker F.I 102/17 is there, and - of course - they show the streaky camouflaged Fokker triplane as all red.

[Balloon_Buster]

I agree with Greg. I had a copy of this when it was released earlier, and it is colorized footage. Some of it is very familiar footage seen in B&W. They don't come out and say that in the description, either.

[Hans]

Most of that can be found at youtube

YouTube - WORLD WAR 1 IN COLOUR BLOOD IN THE AIR PART 1

[Willi Von Klugerman]

Here are some of those spectacular photos!



You can hardly tell that this is a photo from WWI because of the crisp detail,almost as though your seeing it through your own eyes!





This one is my personal favorite!

['14-'18aviationcollector]

Originally Posted by Thomas Trauner

And a F2B, 1918 in Palestine in PC 10….well, well, At least on this photo it was a middle green, no traces of brown.
The engine hood is clearly another sort of green, more in the direction of grass green, Wheels white, Struts in light grey. No Marking or Serial number readable….

Those photos cannot be taken as the bible. Not all of the colours are really correct; the shades are a bit shady. Some others (the Ni 17) looked perfect. But they give a good impression.

Hi Thomas,

Thank you very much for the confirmation. I have also seen colour photos which show that PC 10 was green. Original samples I have been lucky enough to find and purchase have confirmed this, as have some technical explanations by members such as Sheppo (there are others of you and I haven't forgotten you, I just don't have access to that information at the moment) combined with the article by Ian Huntley. People such as Sheppo have a better understanding of the pigments than I have, and their posts are very informative. I would like to do some experiments with the actual pigments, and see how they turn out. I will ask Sheppo for some guidance as to where I will be able to obtain the pigments, since from what he has told me he knows where to purchase them.

As you said Thomas First World War colour photographs cannot be taken as the bible, but they do give us a very good indication of what the correct colours were. I happen to think that generally the colours are reasonably accurate.

Cheers,

David.

[Greybeard]

Originally Posted by rednev

The first experiments with filming in colour go back to around 1895.
Probable the first publicly shown colour film shown ' a visit to the seaside ' was realeased in 1908.
This was not colour film as we know it today it required a special camera with alternating filters synchronised with the shutter and a similar specialised projector.

Was any frontline footaged captured in colour hmmmmmmm maybe.
A victory parade in paris was filmed using the Gaumont process in 1919.

Thanks Rednev, I didn't know (and couldn't believe) there was color film so far ago (1895: in practice, contemporary of B&W one, if I'm not wrong). I did know from when I was a kid from my grandfather's encyclopedia there was a "trichromatic" technique at least in 1912 for color photo and lately saw lots of really wonderful examples (e.g.: those c/o Library of Congress, available on the internet), but didn't realize that, at least in theory, same technology could be applied to a flexible support (film) - celluloid was there...

GB

[Froggy]

Bonjour à tous

Here is a site with hundred of real colour photos

Cordialement
Bruno

Gallica 81-2 H