{"id":494758,"date":"2026-05-20T21:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/494758\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T21:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:22:09","slug":"youve-probably-never-seen-a-full-spectrum-color-photo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/494758\/","title":{"rendered":"You’ve Probably Never Seen a Full-Spectrum Color Photo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Science educator Steve Mould<\/a>\u2018s newest video sheds fascinating light on an oft-forgotten color photography process. Mould\u2019s video has the grabby title, \u201cYou\u2019ve Never Seen a Real Photo,\u201d which is closer to the truth than it sounds. <\/p>\n

As is often the case, it is best to start at the very beginning. Back in 1891, Luxembourg-born French scientist and inventor Gabriel Lippmann developed an early color photography process, eponymously named the Lippmann process. <\/p>\n

The process works based on interference. As Jon Hilty<\/a>, a preeminent autochromist<\/a> and all-around exceptional alternative process color photographer explains<\/a>, \u201cWhen a panchromatic fine grained black and white emulsion is put in direct contact with a mirror, the reflected light interferes with itself and creates an interference pattern.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"AStill life by Gabriel Lippmann | Public domain <\/p>\n

\u201cThe maxima of this pattern activate the silver halides in the emulsion. When developed, the silver in the emulsion reconstructs this pattern when exposed to white light, giving us a color image,\u201d Hilty continues. <\/p>\n

What makes Lippmann plates so special, aside from the fact that they represent a pioneering color photography technique that won Lippmann the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physics, is that they are \u201cthe only known way to permanently reproduce a full spectrum of color.\u201d <\/p>\n

To that end, it\u2019s not possible to see the true effect of a Lippmann plate in a video on a screen. Displays show color using combinations of red, green, and blue pixels, just like how a digital image sensor captures color through its color filter. To overcome this, Mould inspects typical photographs and Lippmann plates provided to him by Hilty using a spectrometer. The difference is immediately clear. <\/p>\n

When exposing a Lippmann plate, the actual, physical spectral data is essentially encoded in the photosensitive surface, creating an array of teeny-tiny mirrors. The distance between these mirrors is determined by the wavelength of light that strikes the photosensitive materials, and then preserved through chemical development. This is structural color<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even today, Lippmann\u2019s invention attracts very serious scientific attention and research<\/a>. Lippmann plates are \u201cthe earliest multi-spectral light measurements on record<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

So why isn\u2019t color analog photography done today using Lippmann\u2019s groundbreaking technique? <\/p>\n

\u201cLippmann plates have their drawbacks,\u201d Mould explains. \u201cReprints are basically impossible. Exposure times run to minutes, the restricted viewing angle is less than ideal, and they can get a bit washed out if you don\u2019t get the process exactly right. Which is probably why pigment-based RGB photography eventually came to dominate.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"AInterferential photograph, or Lippmann plate, by Lippmann\u2019s student and colleague, Auguste Ponsot, c. 1906 | Creative Commons, CC0 1.0 Universal<\/a> <\/p>\n

Somewhat ironically, the very same photographer who provided Mould with the Lippmann plates for his new video, Jon Hilty, may be the world\u2019s only living photographer to use the autochrome process that spelled the swift end of Lippmann\u2019s photography. The French Lumi\u00e8re brothers invented the autochrome process in 1903 and brought it to market four years later. In nearly every practical way, it was a superior color photography process. <\/p>\n

Photographers with some serious time on their hands can try Lippmann plate photography<\/a> and autochrome photography<\/a> for themselves, thanks to Jon Hilty\u2019s exhaustive guides linked just above. <\/p>\n

\u2028Image credits:<\/strong> Steve Mould. Featured Lippmann plates created by photographer Jon Hilty. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Science educator Steve Mould\u2018s newest video sheds fascinating light on an oft-forgotten color photography process. Mould\u2019s video has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,215659,2591,163048,366,18,117,5489,19,17,215660,215661,215662,452,133,215663],"class_list":["post-494758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-autochrome","tag-color","tag-colorphotography","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-history","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jonhilty","tag-lippmann","tag-lippmannplate","tag-physics","tag-science","tag-stevemould"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116609008107066359","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}