Posted on 01/18/2015 7:34:25 AM PST by virgil283
Color photos are made up of up to three or four layers. The primary colors and a base.
Because of this, the colors are in the layers, not imbedded into the paper. If they are kept in the least amount of UV light, they will fade.
The Black and White stuff is embedded into the fiber of the paper. It is still reactive to UV light, but it is more about the paper than the print itself. Crappy paper = crapy prints.
The other thing about black and white is that they were generally processed by hand. The chemicals were handled with a lot more care.
A fiber based black and white photo was washed thoroughly, getting all of the chemicals out of the paper. Otherwise it would turn brown pretty quickly.
Color prints of “snapshots” would have gone through automated printers. The process was quick and cheap. And you got a quick and cheap result.
Finally, the new archival prints made from digital photos are done with better inks and they are embedded into the paper—as the black and white silver was. That is way current prints, done on high end ink jets, will last about 500 years without significant fading.
Thanks for posting this. Very interesting.
bfl
Great pictures and web site. There were some pictures of Fort Indiantown Gap (back then it was Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, IGMR). They still have some of the old barracks as shown in the picture.
I do the same thing. I had one really faded color picture of my Dad taken during WWII and was able to make it look fresh and new with Photoshop. A lot easier than the old days when I did everything in the darkroom (dodging, over developing, etc.).
in the distance, is that more soldiers or shrubbery?
My son has bought old cameras overseas and found undeveloped film in them. He’s developed the rolls at home, and has found some interesting pics on them. So far, nothing of historical significance though.
Now you’ve done it. You must cut down a tree with a herring!
And kudos to the guy leading that project.
I went to the Rescued Film website.
I would like to have seen all the pictures, but the crap editing of the video was too annoying. Is there a logical reason the frame/scene has to change every 1/2 second? I’d like to actually have time to focus on what is happening.
I guess they will fill up the entire train
B&W vs. Color is a big factor for sure. But even bigger is the quality of the film and chemicals used in development.
Your early tintypes gave way to glass plates not because of bad quality so much as because oxidation caused the quality to deteriorate. The next big advance was paper film then, by the 1880s, roll film. Even then it took about 30 years to help photography to make the leap from the studio/professional market into the home/amateur market.
Great quality film from the World War II era was probably a combination of response to higher resolution demands to meet wartime needs and, at the same time, an attempt to slow the consumer stampede into the color market which really heated up after the war.
Excellent comments to go with my post #52. Few people really understand just how major of a role quality paper and processing method lays. It ain`t just the processing chemicals.
Ping!
As I recall, Kodachrome was different, in that it was developed more like black and white film, and the color dyes were added during processing. This is why Kodachrome could not be developed by home processors, and it’s also why properly stored Kodachromes (save for the first couple of years from the 1930s, where the dyes have decomposed and the images have become mostly black-and-white) have held their colors well for decades.
OK, I looked at all 100 plus pics at the web site. I am a WW2 history fanatic. I can kind of understand why the film was never developed years ago. There is almost nothing going on, seriously, except for G.I.’s getting ready to be de-mobilized to be sent back to the states, and waiting in line at the chow hall. The WW1 French Renault tank with WW2 German markings was kind of interesting. It was nice to see some of the old WW2 wooden barracks, I lived in some of those for a while when I was in the Army 40 years ago. But all in all, this group of pics isn’t going to change history.
You are correct sir.
Now it is possible to do color developing at home using the c41 process.
It is shame so much of the photo world is just going away. So much progress in relatively little time.
These are snapshots.
They look like the pictures I’ve seen in scrapbooks for years. Without some type of caption they mean nothing.
Look at someone’s vacation pictures, even today, and they are the same thing.
Says a lot for a little composition and some understanding of photojournalism.
Kudos to you. Ansel Adams was one one of the truly great artists of the 20th century. I never got as far as sheet film (large format) photography (too expensive for me at the time), but even at 35mm level I tried to apply the concepts. Still have all the equipment, but no darkroom, alas.
“But all in all, this group of pics isn’t going to change history”
don’t think it was meant to change anything,
title of thread sez 31 Rolls of Undeveloped Film..Not, fantastic pictures of WW II never before scene.The link if followed will show its more of an archival thing for this producer and about black and whites done by amateurs not photo journalists as alluded to in post 58
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