Early Colour Photography

All the images on this site and in the archive are original colour images. None are colourised. This may be a surprise to a lot of the viewers of this web site but the first colour process to be widely available to the amateur - as distinct from the professional photographer who had several processes (none very successful) available to him was the Autochrome in 1907. Expensive, slow and not given to capturing moving subjects it was, nevertheless the only process to capture in colour the world around us. Other processes such as the Paget process and Finlaycolor used taking and viewing screens to essentially turn black and white film into colour images.

In the 1930s Kodachrome, Agfacolor and Dufaycolor became available and modern colour photography began. The history of colour photography is a complex one and these few words can only give a very brief overview and to show that colour photography has been around for much longer than most people realise.

Knaresborough in 1913 on an Autochrome glass plate

Duchess Class 6232 at Euston Station 1938 on Dufaycolor film

Venice 1950 on Kodachrome film