Science: Easier Color Photography

“The greatest achievement in photography since George Eastman pioneered and introduced the first black and white roll film in 1889—”With this demure panchromatic blush Eastman Kodak Co. last week announced a new, simple film with which any dub shutter-snapper can obtain full color prints instead of black-&-whites from his negatives. The new film (called “Kodacolor”) differs from former color films in that it makes a transparent negative from which prints can easily be made on paper.* As a negative, not only are its light-&-shade effects reversed but its colors appear complementary to those of nature.

Blue skies appear yellow in the negative; red lips are blue-green; grass is red. Eastman’s color photography has until now been limited to transparent positives (“Kodachromes”), which could, however, be printed on a sort of celluloid at greater cost by another recent Eastman process (TIME, Sept. 1).

Within a month the new color film will be marketed for the use of any amateur who has $3.90 to cover factory development & printing of its six exposures.

Though costly, this is $1.50 cheaper than the average cost of six kodachrome positives with their prints, and new prints are bigger.

* This improvement is made possible by a process in which the couplers—chemical agents which bring together the film’s red, blue-and green-sensitive emulsions in the proper blends when the film is developed—are contained in the emulsion layers and not merely in the protective gelatin layer itself.