The principle was basically the same: take impressions of different wavelengths of light as separate photographs, and combine them into a full-color photo. Photo by Sergey Prokudin GorskyĬolor film was invented quite a bit later.
The black-and-white photos taken through a red, green, and blue filters, comprising an early color photograph. The three black and white photos were then combined either by projecting colored light through them and fine-tuning the composite or by turning them into single-colored cells which could be stacked, illuminated, and manipulated in a device called a chromoscope or by mechanically turning them into colored prints. A red filter only let red light through, resulting in a photo that was brightest where the source reflected the most red light. Color filters do just what it sounds like - they filter light by color. The earliest color photographs were actually made up of three separate black and white photographs, one taken through a red color filter, one taken through a green color filter, and one taken through a blue color filter.
Developing the film makes the image visible (as a negative - the parts that were exposed to the most light are the darkest, this is inverted in the printing process).Ĭolor film is coated with many layers of chemicals, with chemicals keyed to different colors in the different layers. When exposed to a very small amount of light - like the tiny amount that hits it when a photographer presses the camera’s shutter button - a subtle image, invisible to the naked eye, forms on the film. Color photo of the emir of Bukhara Sergey Prokudin Gorsky, 1911Īt a very, very basic level, this is how common photographic film works: film is thin plastic covered in a layer or layers of photosensitive chemicals.