Colourisation: problems ahead.

[Pacific231G]

1 hour ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

Original

Photoshop conversion to B+W using default settings

Photoshop colourisation using default settings

 

 

You can definitely see how far Da Vinci got it wrong. How much better his paintings would have been if only he'd had the support of Adobe. 🤣

A few years ago I wanted to know what shade of green a typically weathered French post box would have been in the 1950s. So, when I got hold of the colour (not colourised)* version of Jacques Tati's 1949 Jour de Fête I thought a scene where the local kids are taking the mick out of François the local postman around a post box would provide some kind of answer. How wrong I was.  The scene involves about half a dozen different camera angles and in every one of them the colour looks significantly different thanks to different angle of the sun, lighting, background etc. 

I actually think that contemporary paintings might be a better guide to colours pre reliable colour film stock as though a professional painter may not have got the details right they probably would have been able to get the colours right as they saw them.

 

 

*Tati shot the film using the new and unproved  "Thomson colour" 3-colour process but had the good sense to also film it in parallel in black and white. Wisely as it turned out as Thomson could never get the colour to print properly so Tati edited and printed the filmfrom the B&W negative.

Forty years late Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff, who was herself a film editor and director, and the cinematographer François Ede, were able to use digital techniques to recreate the film in authentic colour from the original colour negatives. The edit was somewhat different as colour films require a different cutting rate than B&W.      

Edited March 18 by Pacific231G

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

12 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

You can definitely see how far Da Vinci got it wrong. How much better his paintings would have been if only he'd had the support of Adobe.

N.B.The funny response is specifically for the above.

 

Five hundred year old materials and work, and the current curators likely inhibited from attempting to take off the ancient varnish to reveal what truly lies beneath. 

[BernardTPM]

19 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

A few years ago I wanted to know what shade of green a typically weathered French post box would have been in the 1950s. So, when I got hold of the colour (not colourised)* version of Jacques Tati's 1949 Jour de Fête I thought a scene where the local kids are taking the mick out of François the local postman around a post box would provide some kind of answer. How wrong I was.

Of course, everyone knows post boxes are red, as this old postcard* proves:

 

 

*or not 😈

[Pacific231G]

On 18/03/2024 at 21:16, BernardTPM said:

Of course, everyone knows post boxes are red, as this old postcard* proves:

 

 

*or not 😈

These are screen grabs from the colour (not colourised) version of Jour de Fête note how the shades of green vary between different shots of the same box. 

I'd probably go for the shade of green in the third and fourth frames but perhaps let down a bit. 

 

Tati's first feature film also includes a rather nice sequence of shunting on the metre gauge SE Centre at Marçais (a once important junction on the metre gauge network- it had all closed by 1951 - just a few years later- and the station building is now a farmhouse.   

More screen shots of that sequence here https://fdelaitre.org/lpf2/Jdf.htm

SainteSainte-Sévère-sur-Indre never actually had a railway but the level crossing scene was shot where the now long dismantled line from La Châtre to Montluçon crossed the D917 road about eight kilometres north of the village while Marçais is about thirty three kilometres to the north-east in Allier.

Edited March 20 by Pacific231G

[bécasse]

There are a number of photos on the internet showing BR-era locos, both steam and diesel shunter, which appear in the photos (and in at least one case apparently in reality) to be black but are in fact BR loco green. This would seem to be the result of the atmospheric conversion of the lead compounds in the green paint (which the 1956 green undoubtedly contained) to lead sulphide which, although actually a dark grey colour, appears to be black - the same effect that lead (pun, sorry!) to the darkening of white canvas roofs on rolling stock.

[Pacific231G]

5 minutes ago, bécasse said:

There are a number of photos on the internet showing BR-era locos, both steam and diesel shunter, which appear in the photos (and in at least one case apparently in reality) to be black but are in fact BR loco green. This would seem to be the result of the atmospheric conversion of the lead compounds in the green paint (which the 1956 green undoubtedly contained) to lead sulphide which, although actually a dark grey colour, appears to be black - the same effect that lead (pun, sorry!) to the darkening of white canvas roofs on rolling stock.

It's very hard to tell the colour of SE Centre 3549. The side tank appears to be black but the front of the right hand tank appears to be green. That may be a reflection of local greenery but I'd guess that dark green was the actual colour. 

 

[kevinlms]

Discussing coloured locos, try this page. 😱

 

https://www.steamlocomotive.com/types/colored/