Click here for complete Site Map

This page was inspired by the recent (2012) discovery of the early work of Edward Raymond Turner who invented a working colour movie film process over a hundred years ago.

Prior to seeing the restored footage on Youtube - the capturing of colour using black and white film was something I had read about - but not really seriously thought of trying.

First problem was the filters. I needed a red, blue and green one - and after eating a few Quality Street chocolates - realised that the cellophane wrappers might work!

The other issue was what camera to use. Much as I wanted to do moving pictures I thought I try a still picture first. The sweet wrappers weren’t  very big so I used a simple 4 Megapixel camera.

The above picture shows the LED ring lamp which I mounted the wrappers on. These lamps are available very cheaply in all sorts of bargain shops. The extra light helps but is not necessary.

The wrappers were stuck down at one edge only so that each one could be held in turn over the central hole. I mounted the camera on a tripod and set it to B&W and turned off the flash. Then I took 3 pictures of the same subject.

Below are the 3 photos - taken  through red, green and blue wrappers, respectively.

Then using my trusty copy of Coral Photo Paint I combined the photos back into one colour photo. I’m sure there must be better ways but I found the following worked for me:

Create a bank image same size as the photos
Split it into channels (Photo Paint will create a red, green and blue blank image)
Cut and past each of the photos from the camera into the respective blank image
Ask Photo Paint to recombine the channels

Then - as if by magic - a colour image appears even though we started with 3 B&W images. The filters have encoded the colour image into the B&W image:

The colours don’t look too bad - but compared to a shot in the camera’s colour mode - leave a little to be desired. The colour fringing is mainly to do with the poor/simple  mounting of the wrappers. The fact they were quite crumpled seems to have had little or no impact.

I would like to try moving pictures - and have a few ideas how that might be achieved. However that will have to wait for another day ...

Got a question or can't find the info you are looking for? Click HERE to contact us.

Click here for complete Site Map
 

All text and images Copyright © 2000-2014 Roland Givan, unless otherwise stated. All Rights Reserved.

[Home Page] [3 Colour Photography]