I know somebody who lives in Brisbane who makes Lippmann plates for
astronomers. They're highly valued for this application because of the
accuracy of their colour rendition. Some observatories maintain a collection
of Lippmann plates exposed at set intervals from earlier this century for
comparative purposes. Of course there are no problems with fading, unlike
any processes involving dyes!
He does a batch once or twice a year, depending on the number of orders that
come in.
I haven't actually seen any of the results, but they're supposed to be quite
hard to see and have to be viewed with a bulb either side inside something
like a camera bellows to cut down reflections. The plates used to be backed
by a mercury reservoir that filled a tank behind the plate; a mirroring
process is used nowadays instead.
The special fine grain emulsion used for the plates (which are on special
optical glass with both surfaces perfectly flat and parallel to one another)
is quite slow, and could only be used for still lifes.
So, to answer your question, the process is feasible, and is still in use on
a very limited scale.
Philip Jackson
pjackson@nla.gov.au
----------
>From: alt-photo-process
>To: Multiple recipients of list
>Subject: Heliochromes (Lippmann process)
>Date: Sunday, 3 November 1996 2:02PM
>
>Return-Path: <alt-photo-process@cse.unsw.edu.au>
>From: Jim Browning <james.browning@valley.net>
>Sender: alt-photo-process@cse.unsw.edu.au
>To: Multiple recipients of list <alt-photo-process@cse.unsw.edu.au>
>Date: Sun, 3 Nov 96 14:02:45 +1100
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>Subject: Heliochromes (Lippmann process)
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---
>Has anyone ever made a Lippmann process Heliochrome? I have been studying
>this technique for some time now - mostly from old books from the turn of
>the century. The process uses a very fine grain emulsion, with a mirror
>backing. The emulsion is exposed by light which bounces off of the backing
>mirror, setting up an interference pattern inside the emulsion. The plate
>is then developed, and the image is reconstructed by shining white light
at
>the plate, which reconstructs the exact spectral image, not just a
>tri-color approximation, but the actual spectrum of the original image.
>I'm planning on trying this sometime before I die - just wondering if
anyone
>has made a Heliochrome in the last 80 years or so. - Jim
>
>james.browning@valley.net
>
>