Willow
06-25-2008, 04:55 PM
Gina Cho Daniels originally asked:
Since a couple of people, including Gina, have cameras, and we had a flood of photo paper the other night.. I realized I have a slight history problem.
When I wrote up a couple of photos, I forgot to take the color words out of the examines that I based them on. Thankfully I only made a couple.. so I could do them in black and white from now on.
Except, I'm confused.. I figured alot of people might not think of the color issue immediately, so I researched color film to be sure I was right about being wrong (heh) .. and I now have no clue.
This is what I think I have found:
Because of cost, convenience, simplicity, etc, black and white was definately the "default" of what a photo would be in the 1930s.
However, color photos DID exist in the 1930s..
-Using plates, it'd been around for awhile.. but since our props are Kodak Brownies, I don't think I can say that Gina uses plates instead of film (although that would be her IC preference).
-Kodachrome color film was commercially available in 1935. But it required really complicated chemistry and equipment. It was sold with an envelope to put it in and send it off to Kodak when you were done. So we could get color photos that way, but I guess realistically we wouldn't be printing them ourselves so we'd have to remember turn around time. And again, I don't know if Kodak Brownies could use Kodachrome.
-In 1936 the German company Agfa introduced Agfacolor-Neu transparency film, which was like Kodachrome but much easier to develop. But I can find no information about whether it was easy -enough- to develop on your own. And yet again.. can a Kodak Brownie use it?
-Older than any of those, is the color seperation method, where pictures were taken three times - each with a different color filter (red, blue, and green) and then ..some stuff I don't have the patience to summarize, but you get the basic premise. It involves light I don't know if photos could be *printed* this way, or just projected..
So.. anyway, all of this nonsense is to pose the question..
For photos taken at school (not photos brought or sent from home, cause no one knows or cares how you got those developed : Should we all just pretend everyone's photos are actually black and white? Should color photos just be really special and hard to get? Or should we fudge history a bit and allow our characters to develop color photos in their bathrooms or whatever?
I ask for general consensus because despite all the researching I just did, I have no real clue how photography worked back then, and I don't want to look like an idiot to you all in game >.>
Oliver White responded:
Gina,
If it's any consolation, Oliver got a black and white photograph in a care package 2 years ago... in which someone had green eyes. So, even our illustrious staff can make that mistake.
As you point out color photos were definitely possible. There's a great source of period photos that the Library of Congress has put up on Flickr, from the late 30s through the 40s almost entirely in color. However, when you start searching for 1930s photos, most of them appear in black and white. So in terms of our game, we're pretty much in the transition period. And since we've stopped advancing in time and are somewhere between '33 and '39, I'd wager that sticking with black and white is best. Besides, given the cost and technical skill associated with color photographs, they have to be pretty rare.
That said, at some point in the distant past, staff were working on cameras and implementing a system for them. Which if my memory serves correctly was going to be based on black and white photography. I have no idea how far they ever got. It was announced and then never spoken of again. (Although given the complexities of it, that just seems an incredibly daunting task.)
Suede also responded:
Even in the 1950s Kodak Brownies worked only in black and white. VP127 or VP120 film, depending on the size of the resultant negative. (VP = "Verichrome Panchromatic" or Verichrome Pan".)
Color film, even if it existed for the Brownies (which I'm pretty sure it didn't) was horribly fiddly, and demanded something of a CDC style laboratory for developing. Nobody but the dedicated pros developed their own color photos.
Developing black and white Verichrome Pan film consisted of removing the spool of film from the camera in a pitch black darkroom, unrolling the spool and removing the film from the backing paper, spooling it onto a holder which was then inserted into a cylindrical and lightproof developing tank, then pouring in your developer, waiting, pouring out the developer, pouring in your stop bath, waiting, pouring out the stop bath, removing and rinsing, and looking at the negatives (which were about 2" on a side, or smaller) with a light box to determine which you wanted to print.
Selected negatives were mounted in an enlarger. Under a safety light (red) the enlarger projected the negatives onto a piece of photosensitive paper for a given amount of time, depending on the sensitivity of the paper. "Dodging" could be done if you wanted some parts of the print to be lighter. No Photoshop here: you used a piece of paper or a wad of cotton on a stick to block the light from the enlarger over given parts of the paper, moving the paper or the wad around carefully so as to prevent any noticeable edges in the dodged area. The paper then went through the same process as the film: developer bath, stop bath, rinse.
If you didn't want an enlarged print, you could make contact prints with another kind of light box. This was a box with a glass top, a light bulb inside, and a hinged cover with a switch. The negative went onto the glass, the photo paper was placed face down over the negative (making "contact" with the negative), and when the cover was closed over the two and pressed down, the light would go on and expose the paper through the negative, making a positive print. Developing went as above.
Developed paper had a matte finish. If a glossy print was desired, the damp picture was applied, face down, to a polished metal drying mirror. The prints would peel off, Dead Sea Scroll-style, when they were dry, and would have a glossy finish. You had to straighten them out yourself with the edge of a table top.
Since a couple of people, including Gina, have cameras, and we had a flood of photo paper the other night.. I realized I have a slight history problem.
When I wrote up a couple of photos, I forgot to take the color words out of the examines that I based them on. Thankfully I only made a couple.. so I could do them in black and white from now on.
Except, I'm confused.. I figured alot of people might not think of the color issue immediately, so I researched color film to be sure I was right about being wrong (heh) .. and I now have no clue.
This is what I think I have found:
Because of cost, convenience, simplicity, etc, black and white was definately the "default" of what a photo would be in the 1930s.
However, color photos DID exist in the 1930s..
-Using plates, it'd been around for awhile.. but since our props are Kodak Brownies, I don't think I can say that Gina uses plates instead of film (although that would be her IC preference).
-Kodachrome color film was commercially available in 1935. But it required really complicated chemistry and equipment. It was sold with an envelope to put it in and send it off to Kodak when you were done. So we could get color photos that way, but I guess realistically we wouldn't be printing them ourselves so we'd have to remember turn around time. And again, I don't know if Kodak Brownies could use Kodachrome.
-In 1936 the German company Agfa introduced Agfacolor-Neu transparency film, which was like Kodachrome but much easier to develop. But I can find no information about whether it was easy -enough- to develop on your own. And yet again.. can a Kodak Brownie use it?
-Older than any of those, is the color seperation method, where pictures were taken three times - each with a different color filter (red, blue, and green) and then ..some stuff I don't have the patience to summarize, but you get the basic premise. It involves light I don't know if photos could be *printed* this way, or just projected..
So.. anyway, all of this nonsense is to pose the question..
For photos taken at school (not photos brought or sent from home, cause no one knows or cares how you got those developed : Should we all just pretend everyone's photos are actually black and white? Should color photos just be really special and hard to get? Or should we fudge history a bit and allow our characters to develop color photos in their bathrooms or whatever?
I ask for general consensus because despite all the researching I just did, I have no real clue how photography worked back then, and I don't want to look like an idiot to you all in game >.>
Oliver White responded:
Gina,
If it's any consolation, Oliver got a black and white photograph in a care package 2 years ago... in which someone had green eyes. So, even our illustrious staff can make that mistake.
As you point out color photos were definitely possible. There's a great source of period photos that the Library of Congress has put up on Flickr, from the late 30s through the 40s almost entirely in color. However, when you start searching for 1930s photos, most of them appear in black and white. So in terms of our game, we're pretty much in the transition period. And since we've stopped advancing in time and are somewhere between '33 and '39, I'd wager that sticking with black and white is best. Besides, given the cost and technical skill associated with color photographs, they have to be pretty rare.
That said, at some point in the distant past, staff were working on cameras and implementing a system for them. Which if my memory serves correctly was going to be based on black and white photography. I have no idea how far they ever got. It was announced and then never spoken of again. (Although given the complexities of it, that just seems an incredibly daunting task.)
Suede also responded:
Even in the 1950s Kodak Brownies worked only in black and white. VP127 or VP120 film, depending on the size of the resultant negative. (VP = "Verichrome Panchromatic" or Verichrome Pan".)
Color film, even if it existed for the Brownies (which I'm pretty sure it didn't) was horribly fiddly, and demanded something of a CDC style laboratory for developing. Nobody but the dedicated pros developed their own color photos.
Developing black and white Verichrome Pan film consisted of removing the spool of film from the camera in a pitch black darkroom, unrolling the spool and removing the film from the backing paper, spooling it onto a holder which was then inserted into a cylindrical and lightproof developing tank, then pouring in your developer, waiting, pouring out the developer, pouring in your stop bath, waiting, pouring out the stop bath, removing and rinsing, and looking at the negatives (which were about 2" on a side, or smaller) with a light box to determine which you wanted to print.
Selected negatives were mounted in an enlarger. Under a safety light (red) the enlarger projected the negatives onto a piece of photosensitive paper for a given amount of time, depending on the sensitivity of the paper. "Dodging" could be done if you wanted some parts of the print to be lighter. No Photoshop here: you used a piece of paper or a wad of cotton on a stick to block the light from the enlarger over given parts of the paper, moving the paper or the wad around carefully so as to prevent any noticeable edges in the dodged area. The paper then went through the same process as the film: developer bath, stop bath, rinse.
If you didn't want an enlarged print, you could make contact prints with another kind of light box. This was a box with a glass top, a light bulb inside, and a hinged cover with a switch. The negative went onto the glass, the photo paper was placed face down over the negative (making "contact" with the negative), and when the cover was closed over the two and pressed down, the light would go on and expose the paper through the negative, making a positive print. Developing went as above.
Developed paper had a matte finish. If a glossy print was desired, the damp picture was applied, face down, to a polished metal drying mirror. The prints would peel off, Dead Sea Scroll-style, when they were dry, and would have a glossy finish. You had to straighten them out yourself with the edge of a table top.