Tag Archives: Kodachrome

colour home movies in 1929

Posted on September 2, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. Even today, we use ways to separate and re-combine primary colours to create realistic viewable colour images, be they prints, computer screens, smartphones, or TV. The concept itself is over a century and a half old. James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated … Continue reading →

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a hint to the future of colour photography

Posted on August 26, 2020 by Robert

Toronto. In February 1931, the magazine Science and Invention had this brief note on the status of a new colour process taken on by Kodak. It modestly states, “These processes are said to be as simple as those involved in … Continue reading →

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remember Kodachrome?

Posted on June 22, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. It’s been a decade now since Kodak shut down the Kodachrome film line and nearly nine years since the last Kodachrome processing facility closed.  In its glory days, people used Kodachrome for their best work. It was contrasty, slow, … Continue reading →

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50 ways to lose a lover

Posted on June 8, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. In the 1950s the marketeers at the camera companies struggled to make their products stand out from the herd. No item was too tiny to be touted as the biggest improvement ever in photography. Some changes where indeed useful, … Continue reading →

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sliding into focus

Posted on January 29, 2019 by Robert

Toronto. As we casually view the colour images on front of our smartphones, we may forget the long torturous route taken from crude monochrome glass slides projected on a sheet or screen in a darkened room to 35mm or 2×2 … Continue reading →

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International Radio Corporation

Posted on December 18, 2018 by Robert

Toronto. In the 1930s, a small company in Ann Arbor, Michigan began manufacture of the latest, greatest thing – home radios. Their fresh egg was using Bakelite plastic for cabinets instead of expensive wood or metal cabinets. Their less expensive … Continue reading →

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a colourful book

Posted on December 16, 2018 by Robert

Toronto. It was the 1970s and photography was growing in popularity with magazines, books, chemicals, printing paper, retailers, camera collecting societies, galleries, and studios popping up everywhere. In March of 1972, I stopped by the local Classics bookshop in Montreal … Continue reading →

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Ansco camera ad in 1953

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Robert

Toronto. Ah! Ansco. This ad appeared in 1953, about 25 years before Ansco became GAF (it was a subsidiary of GAF since 1939).  Never strong up here, one bought Ansco to avoid the leader of good inexpensive cameras – Kodak. … Continue reading →

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David Granick’s lost London on Kodachrome

Posted on April 7, 2018 by Robert

Toronto. Thanks to ex-pat and past PHSC president Mo Patz now in BC for the link to recently discovered London East End photographs on Kodachrome taken by the late photographer David Granick. Mo’s link to BBC news is just one … Continue reading →

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Colour for the masses

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Robert

Toronto. In its 1947 LIFE magazine ad, Kodak tried to gain customers using two emerging themes: the growing popularity of 35mm; and the inroads of colour (both transparencies and prints). If a customer wasn’t ready to embrace colour, he could … Continue reading →

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