Many are familiar with the
history of the Leica and its influence on photography in general. The photographic analog process Leica relied
on essentially was no different from what we are using today. Many of the early Leica photographs are well
known. Quite a few were taken by Oskar
Barnack, the inventor of the Leica, himself.
Wetzlar Eisenmarkt 194
Photo: Oscar Barnack
The earliest permanent
photograph in existence was made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niepce, showing
the roofs and chimneys visible from his workroom. It required an exposure time of eight hours
on a bright, sunny day. He used a pewter
plate with a light sensitive varnish of asphalt (bitumen if Judea) and then
used oils as a fixing agent. During the
exposure, various areas of the asphalt would harden to different degrees. The oils washed away the less hardened areas
of the asphalt, resulting in a recognizable image. The word snapshot doesn’t apply.
Joseph Nicéphore Niepce photograph from 1826
Niepce’s process proved to
be a dead end. Through the company of
Chevalier, the major manufacturer of lenses at the time, he met
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. They
formed a company to research other means to take permanent photographs. Unfortunately, Niepce died before they had
any success. A nephew of his continued
to work with Daguerre, but when a viable process was developed, Daguerre took
the credit all for himself. This was the
famous Daguerreotype, first introduced in 1839 to the French Académie des Sciences. While a lot faster than Niepce’s first
attempts, it still had the drawback of producing just a single picture at the
time. There were no negatives from which
multiple copies could be made.
"Boulevard du Temple", taken by Daguerre in 1838 in Paris, includes the earliest known candid photograph of a
person. The image shows a street, but because of the over ten-minute exposure time the moving traffic does not
appear. At the lower left, however, a man having his boots polished had both men motionless enough
for their images to be captured.
The first successful
negative process was developed by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1840. He used sensitized strips of paper, which,
when developed, resulted in a negative which allowed the contact printing of
multiple images. Thus the photographic
process closest to what we use today, was born.
William Henry Fox Talbot, Laycock Abbey 1847
However, Talbot’s process
still had one drawback, the texture of the paper which held the negative image
easily transferred to the final print.
That problem was solved by the 1850s.
Thin glass plates coated with photographic emulsion became the standard
material for use in the camera. Although fragile and relatively heavy, the
glass used for photographic plates was of better optical quality than early
transparent plastic like materials and was, at first, less expensive. Glass
plates continued to be used long after the introduction of film, and were used
for astrophotography and electron microscopy until the early 2000s.
Box of photographic glass plates
In 1887 Hannibal Goodwin,
a minister, patented a celluloid backed photographic rollfilm. He was motivated to search for a
non-breakable, and clear substance on which he could place the images he
utilized in his Biblical teachings. He
filed a patent for "a photographic pellicle and process of producing same
... especially in connection with roller cameras". George Eastman of Kodak fame tried to get a
patent for a similar film in 1892, only to learn that Goodwin’s patent was five
years older. A bitter court battle
lasted eleven years; the patent right finally were given to Goodwin, but by
that time his health had deteriorated sharply and he assigned his rights to the
Ansco Company. Another court battle
started which was not decided until March, 1914. Eastman Kodak Company ended up paying 5
million dollars of restitution.
Karl Kellner
Ernst Leitz I
Photograph by Oscar Barnack with the Ur-Leica
The middle of the 1800s
saw the establishment of many of the well-known photographic companies. In 1849 Karl Kellner founded the Optical
Institute in Wetzlar. The company was
later taken over by Ernst Leitz and was to become the company that established
35mm photography with the Leica. 1867
saw the founding of AGFA in Germany. It
is interesting to note that one of the company’s founders was Dr.
Mendessohn-Bartholdy, a son of the great composer Felix Mendelssohn. Another giant of the photographic industry,
Eastman Kodak was founded a few years later in 1888.
Early transparent roll
films were made from highly flammable nitrocellulose, commonly known as
celluloid, a highly flammable material. Cellulose
acetate or "safety film" was introduced by Kodak in 1908, but first
it found only a few special applications as an alternative to the hazardous
nitrate film, which had the advantages of being considerably tougher, slightly
more transparent, and cheaper.
Initially, black and white
films were only sensitive to blue, violet and ultraviolet light which posted
quite a few problems. For instance, blue
sky was usually rendered as plain white without detail, while bright yellow and
red appeared almost black.
Isochromatic or
orthochromatic films, depending on the manufacturer, made a more accurate
rendering of colored subject matter possible. Because they were still disproportionately
sensitive to blue, the use of a yellow filter and a consequently longer
exposure time were required to take full advantage of their extended
sensitivity.
Lumière Brothers
In 1894, the Lumière
Brothers of France introduced their Lumière Panchromatic plate, which was made
sensitive to all colors including red, although very unequally. In 1902 the much more evenly color-sensitive
Perchromo panchromatic plate was introdiced by the German manufacturer Perutz.
All of these were
glass-based plate products. Panchromatic emulsions on a film base did not
become available until the 1910s. Many photographers who did
their own darkroom work preferred to go with films not sensitive to red to be
able to process their exposed film with a red safelight. For instance, Kodak's popular Verichrome
black-and-white film remained a red-insensitive orthochromatic product until
1956, when it was replaced by Verichrome Pan.
Early black and white roll films which survived, unused, until today.
The Gevaert film (Gevaert was incorporated into Agfa at a later date) has an expiration date of 1955
The Hauff film expired in 1960 while the Perutz has no expiration date
Virtually as soon as even
early photographic processes became available, the quest for color photographs
started. The earliest color photographs
were actually hand colored daguerreotypes.
Simultaneously, a number of individuals experimented with a variety of
processes to produce color images. Some
were met with limited success while others could not be repeated with any
certainty.
The three color process of
red-green-blue, RGB, was first used by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861. His picture
“Tartan Ribbon” is generally considered the first durable color photograph and
the very first made by the three-color method Maxwell first suggested in 1855.
Maxwell had the photographer Thomas Sutton photograph a tartan ribbon three
times, each time with a different color filter (red, green, and blue-violet)
over the lens. The three photographs were developed, printed on glass, and then
projected onto a screen with three different projectors, each equipped with the
same color filter used to photograph it. When superimposed on the screen, the
three images formed a full-color image. Maxwell's three-color approach
underlies nearly all forms of color photography, whether film-based, analogue
video, or digital.
James Clerk Maxwell,
"Tartan Ribbon" 1861
The credit for a valid
color process goes to John Joly. He was
aware that a color image could be formed by mixing just three colors, red,
green and blue, a process still used today in all types of color imaging. He used a glass plate which contained a ruling
of alternating RGB filters, about 200 per inch.
This was placed against the glass negative plate in the camera during
exposure. After developing, the same
glass plate was put in register with the negative, resulting in a color
transparency which could even be projected.
John Joly
"Butterflies" 1893
The process worked, but
was relatively cumbersome. Obviously, it
would be a lot easier to do away with the RGB plate and combine the RGB filters
with the emulsion. Such a process was
developed by the Lumière brothers. They
patented their Autochrome process in 1903 and began marketing it in 1907.
Just like Joly’s process,
Autochrome is an additive color process. The medium consists of a glass plate
coated on one side with a random mosaic of microscopic grains of potato starch
dyed red-orange, green, and blue-violet (an unusual but functional variant of
the standard RGB additive colors) which act as color filters. Carbon particles
fill the spaces between grains, and a black-and-white panchromatic silver halide
emulsion is coated on top of the filter layer.
The glass plates were loaded with the filter layer facing the lens. After developing, a color transparency was
the result. Autochrome was one of the
most widely used color photography process in use before the advent of
subtractive color film in the mid-1930s.
RGB colored starch
particles function as a filter
Autochrome Photographs by Lumiere brothers
A similar process was
developed by Agfa in the 1920s. Instead
of the dyed starch particles, they developed a very fine RGB screen with also
was attached to the glass plate. It too
produced color transparencies. In 1932
Agfa was the first company to offer a film-based version of their
Agfa-Farbenplatte (Agfa color plate), enabling Leica owners for the first time
to take color photographs.
Agfacolor
But there were still
drawbacks. The Autochrome and Agfa
systems were notoriously slow. The RGB
filters absorbed a huge amount of light.
Another process was needed to solve that problem.
In 1912 Rudolph Fisher at
Agfa discovered chemicals would react to the silver halides in the emulsion and
convert other compounds into insoluble dyes.
These color forming ingredients, called dye couplers, could be included
in the emulsion. Fisher’s work resulted
in researching three emulsion layers in films to form a color image. Initial trials were unsuccessful because some
of the color dyes migrated from one emulsion layer to the other during
development.
This was also the case
with Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, who worked at the Kodak laboratories
in Rochester, New York. To solve the
problem, they switched to incorporating the dyes in the developer. This resulted in a breakthrough, and in 1935
the first three emulsion layer color film became reality, the Kodachrome. Because the dye couplers of this film were
added during the developing stage, this was a very complicated process and it
was necessary to send the film to Kodak to have it processed.
The original 18 exposure
35mm Kodachrome
The first color film to
incorporate the dye couplers in the emulsion was the Agfacolor Neu (new) in
1936. It was the first time that
photographers were able develop their own color film. The Neu designation was used to distinguish
these Agfacolor films from the previous Agfacolor films. Both Kodachrome and Agfacolor very quickly
spelled the end of Autochrome and other, similar films.
Both Kodachrome and
Agfacolor were available as 35mm films giving Leica owners and owners of other
35mm cameras for the first time a convenient and reliable means to take color
photographs. It is interesting to note
that both companies initially marketed their films with the reference to Leica
and other 35mm cameras. Thus we have a
further indication how important the Leica was in creating photography as we
know it today.
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Do you have any idea how Agfa finally solved the problem of color coupler migration to the other emulsion layers? I understand Kodak's solution with the Kodachrome, but that turned out to be somewhat of a hassle since it required for the film to be sent to a processing lab.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Kodachrome was a bit of a hassle to get processed. That obviously is the very reason why all the other Kodak transparency films later on used essentially the same process as initially developed by Agfa.
DeleteI am not a chemist, but as I understand it, Agfa's solution was in a way ingeniously simple. The emulsion structure of film at that time was relatively coarse as far as the silver halides are concerned. To prevent color coupler migration, they simply made the resulting color couplers large enough that they could not pass the general structure of the emulsion. With other words, the color couplers got stuck in their respective emulsion layers.
I have heard of Gevaert as in Agfa-Gevaert, but Perutz and Hauff are unknown to me.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Agfa Gevaert is by far the best known German photographic company. Otto Perutz founded his own company in 1880 he, a factory for making dry plates. This became the Perutz-Photowerke. The company was bought in 1964 by Agfa. I am not certain of what became of Perutz, but I believe they were bought out by Agfa as well. Another well known German photographic company was Dr C. Schleussner Fotowerke GmbH. They operated under the ADOX label. Adox films are available to this day.
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