Today we visited the Institut Lumière in the Monplaisir district of Lyon, France. While the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, are famous for their contributions to film-making and the invention of cinema as we know it today, I learned that they also made significant advances in photographic technology.
The brothers worked on several different methods of adding color to pictures, but they didn't achieve widespread success until after the invention of the Autochrome Lumière process was patented in 1903 and eventually marketed in 1907. This was a process that used three different colored dyes - red, blue, and green - which filtered the colors entering the camera with a mosaic filter . After being paired with a different filter, different amounts of light pass through the mosaic to display pictures in color.
Considering our guide said that before this process, women would hand-paint the colors on the film after it was developed, I would say this is definitely a major technological advance. It is also difficult to imagine our current society without colored pictures or movies where the life-like quality of cinema and photography are often so important.
They also invented blue discs that could take pictures instantaneously, up until that time they had to wait ten minutes for exposer time. They really made major advances in photography with their incredible inventions!
ReplyDeleteWhat I found interesting about the Lumiere brothers is that while their panorama wasn't a big hit (mainly because the peoe wanted the pictures to move), it's now used constantly in modern times for more scenic pictures
ReplyDeleteAfter learning about the panorama on the tour I wonder if that technology would've advanced further into something we will now never know, just because it was preceded by motion pictures.
DeleteI thought it was cool that they also had come up with methods for 3d images. I was surprised how early in the history of photography that the techniques for 3d imaging were developed.
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