off topic. Fake gun camera film?

[Coyote Chris]

I am being send all sorts of color footage of WWII aerial action and carrier action that claims to be NOT colored B and W. Just do a youtube search for color gun camera footage and you will see what I mean. Does anyone know beyond a shadow of a doubt that lots of gun camera footage was shot in Kodachrome? I always assumed since my family had a black and white TV that gun camera film was also black and white.

[AirDOGGe]

Re: off topic. Fake gun camera film?

A lot of colored film was shot during WWII, so I don't see why at least SOME aircraft cams couldn't have shot color footage.


I found this little bit of information on the web:

For so many years, historians and casual observers alike have observed the events of World War II through faded black and white images. What most people do not know is the fact that color photography was initially experimented with 100 years BEFORE World War II.


The first color film, Autochrome, did not reach the market until 1907 and was based on dyed dots of potato starch. The first modern color film, Kodachrome, was introduced in 1935 based on three colored emulsions. Most modern color films, except Kodachrome, are based on technology developed for Agfacolor (as 'Agfacolor Neue') in 1936. Instant color film was introduced by Polaroid in 1963.


Unfortunately, when WWII came along, color photography was still a novelty. The first batches of color film from Kodak were hard to find, leaving combat and civilian photographers with little choice but to record events in black and white.


Despite these shortcomings, photographic color technology improved throughout the 1940s and a generous number of people did record the events of WWII on colored film.

Many intelligence agencies saw the value of color and therefore classified and censored many of the photos during the war years.

Not just Youtube, but just search the web via GOOGLE and you will see many sites concerning color gun cam footage
.

[Coyote Chris]

Re: off topic. Fake gun camera film?

Thanks! I saw one article in a magazine (maybe air classics or aviation history?) about shooting kodachrome in aircraft factories during the war, etc and evidently there was an art to it and I think developing the film wasnt so simple....this from Wiki....
"Kodachrome, and other non-substantive films, required complex processing that could not practicably be carried out by amateurs.[29"
It certainly was available....I just wonder how extensively if at all it was used in gun camera footage and how or where it was developed after shooting.

[ignomini]

Re: off topic. Fake gun camera film?

The way to tell if film has been colorized is to pause it and study the individual frames. They usually employ a limited color pallate, and unimportant details will be left untouched. You see this all the time on the WWII in Color series. Tanks, smoke from explosions, German uniforms, etc., are regularly left in b&w. The mind is not good at assessing motion, but if you stop the video, you can often see how the colorization is done.

Although this relates to still images, here's some samples of colorized photos.

http://www.ignomini.com/photographica/stereophotovintage/kaiserpanorama/kaiserpanorama.html

Looking at the back of the trench photo, one can see the soldier's pants and boots were left untinted.

[Coyote Chris]

Re: off topic. Fake gun camera film?

OK here is a for real Govt movie about the bombing of Japan.

http://www.archive.org/details/TheLastBomb1945

At the 25 minute point, they show lots of gun camera footage in color.
What do you think? Colored or not?