WWI in TRUE color

[Willi Von Klugerman]

I believe I did a thread like this before but I wanted to show you all more WWI color photographs and some you probably never seen.In short their all real gems!

[redintheskies]

that's amazing! where is the other thread?

[wingandprop]

When I first saw these I thought they must surely be skillfully hand tinted prints, but that is not the case. Per Wikipedia:

"The first commercially successful color [photographic] process, the Lumière Autochrome, invented by the French Lumière brothers, reached the market in 1907....The shortcomings of the Autochrome process were the expense (one plate cost about as much as a dozen black-and-white plates of the same size), the relatively long exposure times which made hand-held "snapshots" and photographs of moving subjects impractical, and the density of the finished image due to the presence of the light-absorbing color screen.

Viewed under optimum conditions and by daylight as intended, a well-made and well-preserved Autochrome can look startlingly fresh and vivid. Unfortunately, modern film and digital copies are usually made with a highly diffused light source, which causes loss of color saturation and other ill effects..., and by fluorescent [if you have fluorescent lights to light your collection, get rid of them as they are very bad news!] or other artificial light which alters the color balance. The capabilities of the process should not be judged by the dull, washed-out, odd-colored reproductions commonly seen.

Millions of Autochrome plates were manufactured and used during the quarter century before the plates were replaced by film-based versions in the 1930s." (Bracketed language in the quote is mine, parentheticals are part of the original quote.)

Thanks very much for posting these, especially the Nieuport with it's camouflage coloring. Until now I had no idea at all that color photography even existed, other than via hand tinting, in 1914. Surely, there must be many, many more such photos out there. Does anyone know of a body or collection of such photos from WW1, for instance, something along the lines of the large collection of photos produced by Matthew Brady during the US War of Northern Aggression?

[Doc]

Originally Posted by wingandprop

Does anyone know of a body or collection of such photos from WW1, for instance, something along the lines of the large collection of photos produced by Matthew Brady during the US War of Northern Aggression?

The French Air and Space Museum at Le Bourget has some of the WWI period (including aircraft) in its collections. I saw a bunch of them several years ago while doing research there. I do not know the extent of their holdings. Doc

[Rittmeister]

THis one of course has been seen several times.

[Scorpiounbound]

What ho all.

There is a very nice section of original colour photography in the middle of 'The First World War' by Hew Strachan, Simon and Schuster, London 2003.

Further to what wingandprop has said, colourized or tinted pictures are much more common in the period with water colours being added to a black and white paper print. Tinting would generally work out cheaper than an original colour print.

Cheer ho.

John

[Willi Von Klugerman]

These ones were taken by Hans Hildenbrand.

[stephen]

Amazing stuff - thank you!