Scanning Dufaycolor?

ChrisR

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Visiting my sister over the past week, we found a wooden box full of my father's prints, 6*9 black and white negatives, and packs of 6*9 Dufaycolor transparencies. I assumed that "Dufaycolor" was simply the name for a processing shop (it was on the envelopes, not the transparencies), but there was a letter to my father that referred to the good results with his Dufaycolors. That letter was dated 1948, I think.

So today I did a search for it, see for example http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Ilford/Dufaycolor.html :

"Dufaycolor film had a speed rating of around 10ASA, a third of a conventional b&w film of the day. (Ref: Brian Coe, "Colour Photography, The first hundred years 1840-1940", page 72).

Dufaycolor film consisted of a transparent, non-inflammable base on which was printed a very fine transparent colour pattern consisting of alternating blue and green squares and red lines. This pattern was called the 'réseau' and the complete pattern of 3 colours was reproduced 20 to 23 times per mm. On top of the réseau was a coating of high sensitivity panchromatic emulsion.

The film was exposed through the base so that light passed through the colour réseau before reaching the emulsion. In this way the image was broken up into minute areas representing the red, green and blue components of the subject."

Very interesting! It appears to be a bit like a precursor to modern digical Bayer arrays!

Does anyone know if this film structure will make scanning difficult? I'm looking to buy a MF scanner so I can share some of these with the rest of the family....
 
Eeek, thanks David. I guess the answer is, buy the scanner, suck it and see!
 
Visiting my sister over the past week, we found a wooden box full of my father's prints, 6*9 black and white negatives, and packs of 6*9 Dufaycolor transparencies. I assumed that "Dufaycolor" was simply the name for a processing shop (it was on the envelopes, not the transparencies), but there was a letter to my father that referred to the good results with his Dufaycolors. That letter was dated 1948, I think.

So today I did a search for it, see for example http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Ilford/Dufaycolor.html :



Very interesting! It appears to be a bit like a precursor to modern digical Bayer arrays!

Does anyone know if this film structure will make scanning difficult? I'm looking to buy a MF scanner so I can share some of these with the rest of the family....

Chris if you want to send me one (or bring one to the Wales meet) I can run it through the V750 and the Coolscan and see what results I can get out of it before you go spending your hard earned if that would be helpful.
 
Thanks Nick, and may do to see how others get on. But I think I'm going to get a scanner anyway; there are tons of black and white 6*9 negs as well, and a quick glance at some of the haphazard prints in the box suggests there may be some of family interest. If he'd been a bit more careful about documenting where they are taken (definitely including India, Jordan and West Africa as well as UK) they could have been of wider interest, too...
 
If he'd been a bit more careful about documenting where they are taken (definitely including India, Jordan and West Africa as well as UK) they could have been of wider interest, too...

That's all too familiar, I've got boxes of prints and negs from my parents and I have no idea who most of the people in the shots are or where they were taken, I can see ultimately they will be consigned to the bin :( But with no point of reference they are just old photos of people I don't know.
 
That's all too familiar, I've got boxes of prints and negs from my parents and I have no idea who most of the people in the shots are or where they were taken, I can see ultimately they will be consigned to the bin :( But with no point of reference they are just old photos of people I don't know.

Nick, that is so true, when I was growing up, one Sunday a month all my Auntie's would get together and with all the Children go through all of the photo collections, it was just great to hear all their stories.

My Mum passed away 18 months ago and having the fore site of a very canny lady, Mum noted on the back of each photo the place,date and who was in the photo.(y)
 
OK, I've bought my V500, scanned a 120 roll from the loaner Mamiya 645, and then I've had a go last night at the first DufayColor packet. I didn't scan them all; there were quite a number of distant harbour breakwaters that I left out!

The packet had the date 11.1.39 on the front, but since most were taken in summer I assume they were from 1938. At that time my parents had returned from India (where they met, married and had their first child, my elder brother), and I remember being told my father had been stationed at Dover (he was a REME engineer). This is the first one I scanned:

FDufayA01sm.jpg

EDIT: in replacing Photobucket, I've had to reduce the "JPEG quality" of some of these shots...

The "resau" was clearly visible when scanning, but seems slightly less so in the finished piece. I scanned with Vuescan at 3200 dpi but with a 2x reduction (ie effectively 1600 dpi). There was a really bad red shift, presumably from complementary dye fading. After fiddling about a bit with the white balance and tint sliders in Aperture, this is the result of a 1-click colour-auto-levels adjustment. You'll see from some of the others below that further work is needed on the colour shifts, but I'm pretty much at the limit of my current understanding!

The 6*9 transparencies are mounted in card mounts that won't go into the V500's MF mount frame. In the end I decided the thickness of the card wasn't that far from that of the mount frame, so placed the slides on the glass with the mount frame over as a guide. None of the pics are that sharp, which I guess could be the camera (I suspect a Zeiss Ikonta that my sister found a couple of days after my visit), the Dufay process, or (most likely) my technique.

Here are a few more of the less people-focused shots:

FDufayA06sm.jpg

FDufayA14sm.jpg

The main focus for me is photos of my family. I'll maybe share some of these later, after my siblings have seen them, but here's just one. I was born after the war, some 8 years after this was taken, and I always thought of my own parents as "old". It was quite a shock to see this:

FDufayA12.jpg

So, lots of fun!
 
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Absolutely classic, where's the harbourside warehouse? It looks familiar.
 
Well I'me guessing those are the white cliffs of Dover, would that make sense? I don't know that area.
 
Well I'me guessing those are the white cliffs of Dover, would that make sense? I don't know that area.

Mmm, could be. I'm not sure there are any old waterfront warehouses left in Dover so I'm probably confusing it with somewhere else.

Still great shots though.
 
Having looked at the cliffs and more importantly the houses at sea level it is more typical of the Isle of Wright. Maybe Ventor or some where else on the Island.

On investigation maybe Sandown?
 
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Having looked at the cliffs and more importantly the houses at sea level it is more typical of the Isle of Wright. Maybe Ventor or some where else on the Island.

On investigation maybe Sandown?

I don't know anywhere here which would have that many houses on the beach.


Steve.
 
Its really amazing looking back at history through these, I hope you don't mind but I ran one of them through the Kodak Digital ROC plugin which is designed to help recover faded/shifted images and I got the following result (I will take it down if you want)

 
Another one in the packet that I didn't include shows an oblique view from the top of white cliffs in the foreground, a harbour in the centre with side entrance that looks very much like the Google Earth view of Dover harbour, and more white cliffs just visible beyond, so I'm going with Dover...
 
Samuel, no need to take that down, a definite improvement! I'd never heard of Kodak Digital ROC, but it seems it's only for Photoshop versions 2 and 3?

I tried a white balance based on the warehouse roof as a neutral grey, the result is much improved and actually gets a faded blue sky, with no other offensive colour casts...

(BTW I've read somewhere that grass is about "neutral grey" in a black and white sense; wshould it still work to click on grass in a colour shot?)
 
If you want I can run them through the Kodak plugin I mentioned above? It can recover colour information from images so shifted/faded that you would think it was impossible. I'll PM you my email address if your interested?

The grass is not suitable in a colour shot unfortunately, you need a clear patch of grey/white.
 
I don't know anywhere here which would have that many houses on the beach.


Steve.

Look at Sandown IOW then at the turn of the century.
 
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Chris, if you want a few drum scanning, fire me a PM and I'll sort you a few out.
 
Another one in the packet that I didn't include shows an oblique view from the top of white cliffs in the foreground, a harbour in the centre with side entrance that looks very much like the Google Earth view of Dover harbour, and more white cliffs just visible beyond, so I'm going with Dover...

OK. I had some time to kill over lunch and hadn't seen this reply, but it looks like the second image with the two-funnel ship in is definitely Dover, approximately where the car parking is on the Western Dock Google Map

You can see the location in the photo 33 Aerial View of Dover Harbour in this collection

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=149061&postcount=20

there's a ship moored up in about the same spot as in your photo. The give-aways are that, the step back in the line of the quay and the tall building about the middle top of frame (you can just see the sunlight catching the chimney gable)
 
maybe I should bring a couple to the film meet if I make it...

Rob T, I agree with you, interesting set that!

The second packet appears to be holiday shots somewhere in the UK. I'm guessing Pembrokeshire from some of the cliff scenery... Not much that would make identification easy. I think there's a total of 12 packets, of quite varying sizes.
 
maybe I should bring a couple to the film meet if I make it...

Rob T, I agree with you, interesting set that!

The second packet appears to be holiday shots somewhere in the UK. I'm guessing Pembrokeshire from some of the cliff scenery... Not much that would make identification easy. I think there's a total of 12 packets, of quite varying sizes.

Bring a few along Chris, would be good to see some of them in the flesh. (y)
 
I think this is the area you are comparing it to: http://www.northlancing.org/NLCA/Images/IOW May 2011/Andy/Sandown-bay.jpg

The cliff between Sandown and Shanklin is not chalk like in the OP's picture.


Steve.

Yes I think you are right Steve, I have tried all combinations of the scene elements to try and identify the location, houses on the beach and cliff top the chalk cliffs and the beach itself with the what looks like sand and then the bedrock further out without success, it must be the south east somewhere I would think.
 
Pretty certain it was Dover.

I've now scanned (or passed over) nearly all the packets. As mentioned, the second packet was UK holiday snaps, another was in West Africa (I believe my father went there for a year post-war), and one was Petra in current Jordan (they were posted to Egypt and then Palestine, as was, during the war... actually my mother nearly got my father courtmartialed as he had been sent to Palestine from Egypt on his own because of the Jewish terrorist situation, and my mother upped sticks and followed him with my brother and baby elder sister!). Most other packets are similar location to the first. There is one packet of 6*6 that is just flower pictures; I haven't scanned this.

One pic is head and shoulders above the rest in lighting and sharpness, of my mother arranging a bunch of gladioli. Oh, and my elder sister and I decided that the cart-wheeling person wasn't our mother but another younger mysery girl who appears in several shots. The order of the universe is restored...
 
Pretty certain it was Dover.

Hi Chris, One of the great who took it and there lay's the mysteries. I am certain that based on the time frame and style of houses particularly on the cliff top it is not Dover or any place near Dover, proceeding north up the coast line towards London the reason is as you plot the coastline there are no other beaches with groins until you reach Faversham and then no cliffs. so it must be if in the south east Channel based. Around the Kent white cliffs it is easy to identify the area based on the houses at cliff top around the White cliff of Dover there has never in my search been and Edwardian build at cliff top level, either frightened or then prevented.

The next question would be where else, for the moment excluding any other part of the country other than the south east I am at a loss, but, what I would say is that the loss of any houses built on a beach location in the south east is not as far as I can find been recorded.

This is for me is brilliant and can enable me to send wonderful time in investigating the exact spot of the photo.

Anal, Yes, Historical absolutely.

All help gratefully received, I am already looking on the East Coast, up and down from Hunstanton.
 
Perhaps we have two separate issues here? First, the general location and the harbour; second, the beach scene with the houses. Despite the white cliffs, you're right that it could be somewhere else.

We do know my father was posted to Dover before the war. My mother told me he was posted from there to Egypt at short notice when war was declared, and the house was packed up into storage.

Here's another shot from that packet that I didn't include before:

FDufayA09sm.jpg

I found this Panoramio image of Dover from a very simiar viewpoint: https://ssl.panoramio.com/photo/19733615 taken from St Margaret's at Cliffe. I think that's pretty conclusive (plus the evidence that Rob T found).

I have't been through again, but I don't remember other shots with those houses; other beach shots have fewer location hints, IIRC.
 
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I'm pretty certain I've identified the building in the shot with the small boats

FDufayA06_zpse2d33899.jpg


There's a shot in the post I linked to earlier

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y129/major-setback/album 2/dover20090215114008.jpg

which looks to have been taken some years earlier (decades? - I'd hazard a guess it's 19th centrury).

The building square in the middle of frame is the same one above has the same fenestration pattern, with gothic arched tops. Next to it is a smaller three-bay building with an arched entrance on the ground floor, which is also a match for the Chris's photo.

Looks like the Gun Hotel and the building next door had been demolished by the late 30s.

In fact, with that as a reference, I'd now reckon that the buildings in Chris' photo are just in the bottom right corner of this image

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y129/major-setback/album 2/Dover20081220164222.jpg
 
Wow, Rob T, that's really interesting! I also found http://stmargaretspc.co.uk/4.html that says the area was under heavy bombardment during the war. Given the other viewpoint from above St Margaret's Bay that I found, I reckon it's quite conclusive, and explains why medwaygreen wasn't able to identify it on Google Maps. When you look, there are a few newer white buildings where those houses stood.

I don't know where they actually lived, if I remember, I'll ask my brother, but he was only 5 at the time!
 
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Yep, though I was reading on that local history site that the German shelling hit buildings further up the hill.

Edit: BTW, for a local history site, it's brilliantly well put together. I reckon they might appreciate a colour image of the bay before WWII ;)
 
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Hey that's a good idea!
 
Thinking about it a bit more, they would be ideally placed to identify where any of your other local pics were taken.
 
Hi Chris,

I have your DufayColor images here which I'm just about to make a start on scanning, would you like me to post some 1024 examples of how they're looking in this thread or would you rather wait until you have the scans back so you can post yourself?
 
Paul, feel free to post here, especially improved versions of the ones posted earlier, but any others that catch your eye. I'm looking forward to seeing these!
 
Excellent! I'm on my way home now but I have some quick edits with me and I'll post them in a couple of hours. I haven't spent a huge amount of time with the edits beyond a little basic cleaning up so they could be improved further working from the original scan, but hopefully they'll give a decent guide as to how they can look.

I have to say, I'm loving working with them. They're absolutely fascinating! :)
 
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