Re: Colored Dags?
Ray wrote: > But there IS such a process, is there not.... > Please explain! > Which process are you referring to, who debunked it and when? The Hill "Heliochrome" process (c. 1850), (also sometimes known as "Hillochrome") which was the subject of the Reverend Levi Hill's "Treatise on Heliochromy," was debunked by Marcus Root in 1851. If I recall correctly, this is all discussed in Phil Davis's "Photography," 7th ed., Brown & Benchmark, Madison, Wisconsin 1995. I saw something written by Root at one time, but those neurons won't fire anymore! Some researchers in the later 20th century did, in fact, succeed in making "color-ish" Daguerrotypes. There was a thread about color dags on the list about 3 years ago. Here's what I posted then: "I think the sensitive plate was prepared using very close to standard Dag practice, but development was not chemical, perhaps Becquerel, and there was something very fragile or fugitive about the image -- perhaps, as has been said by others on this thread, that fixing destroyed the colors. In any event, the color mechanism was found to be interference -- the light waves recording the image produced chroic (probably dichroic, but I do not recall) interference filters by creating some sort of layered structure of the image deposit. [This suggests that pure, monochromatic colors, such as the color spectrum from a prism, would give much better results than the impure, polychromatic reflected colors of real-world objects.] Wish I 'membered more, but alas that's all I retain today." A fellow named Boudreau recently claimed to have made Hill's process work, but I do not believe that Hill's Treatise gave sufficient details to practice the process, so whatever Boudreau did, it may well not have been what Hill claimed to have done. Boudreau published an account, which I have not seen: Boudreau, J., Color Daguerreotypes: Hillotypes Recreated. Pioneers of Photography: Their Achievements in Science and Technology. Springfield, VA: The Society of Imaging Science and Technology, 1997, distributed by the Northeastern University Press. Best regards, etienne
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