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The Autochrome Lumière is an early color photography process. Patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907, it remained the principal color photography process available, until it was superceded by the advent of color film during the mid-1930s.
Autochrome is an additive color 'screen-plate' process: the media contains a glass plate, overlaying random mosaic of microscopic grains of potato starch, with lampblack filling the space between grains, and an impermeable black-and-white, panchromatic silver halide emulsion. The grains are a mixture of those dyed orange, green and blue, which act as color filters. The plate is processed as a slide -- that is, the plate is first developed to a negative image and then reversed to a positive image -- and the starch grains remain in alignment with the emulsion after processing in order to allow the colors to be seen properly.
To create the Autochrome plates, a slightly concave glass plate was coated with a mixture of pitch (crude pine sap), and beeswax. The starch grains, graded to between 5 and 10 microns in size, were coated on top of the plate. The exact methods by which they were coated still remain unclear, although it is known that approximately four million grains per square inch coated the filter in a single layer. It was later discovered that applying extreme pressure to the plate -- around 5,00Kg/cm² -- would improve the quality of the image, as the starch grains would be flattened slightly, reducing graininess and transmitting more light to the emulsion. Lampblack was then applied by a machine, in order to fill the clear spaces between the grains. After this, the plate was coated with shellac. This served to protect the color mosaic and provided a flat surface for the emulsion, which was spread on the plate once the shellac dried.
The patent application describes the process somewhat differently: the grains are Red, Yellow and Blue (no lampblack filling) and there are two layers of them, therefore when grains of different colors superimpose, this creates Orange, Violet and Green zones as well. The total surface is therefore covered with 6 different tints. It is still necessary to invert the image to obtain a positive.
Small autochromes could be viewed using a hand-held transparency viewer, but large ones required the use of a special device. Called a "Diascope", this was a flat case holding the autochrome image and a ground glass diffuser in one side, with a mirror positioned in the other. A user would let light pass through the autochrome and view the image in the mirror. Stereoscopic autochromes were particularly successful, the combined colour and depth proving a bewitching experience to early 20th century eyes. Projectors, or "magic lanterns" as they were then known, were a less common but effective display technique, more commonly used for public viewing.
If an Autochrome is well made, color values can be very good. Unfortunately, the dyed starch grains are often somewhat coarse, giving a hazy effect with stray colors often appearing, especially in open light areas like skies. Nonetheless, this "dream-like", impressionist quality was a major reason behind the enduring popularity of the medium over a thirty-year period.
Although difficult to manufacture and relatively expensive, autochomes were relatively easy to use and were immensely popular amongst enthusiastic amateur photographers. However, they failed to sustain the initial interest of more serious "artistic" practitioners, largely due to their inflexibility. Not only did the need for diascopes and projectors make them extremely difficult to publicly exhibit, they allowed little in the way of the manipulation much loved by aficionados of the then-popular pictorialist approach.[1]
Autochromes continued to be produced as glass plates until the early 1930s when a film-based medium was introduced, marketed as Filmcolor. While it almost completely replaced glass-plate autochromes within three years, its success was short-lived, as manufacturers like Kodak began in earnest to produce the multi-layer, subtractive colour films (such as Kodachrome, Agfacolor Neue and Kodacolor) which we know today.
Between 1909 and 1931 a collection of 72,000 autochrome photographs, documenting life at the time in 50 countries around the world, was created by French banker Albert Kahn. One of the biggest of its kind in the world, the collection is housed in The Albert-Kahn Museum on the outskirts of Paris.
In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in the process by some groups. Groups in France, working with the original Lumiere machinery and notes, and a few individuals in the United States, are attempting to recreate the process. Very few complete successes have resulted.