FURTHER PROGRESS IN COLOUR PHOTOGAPHY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 51, 23 April 1897, Page 29

FURTHER PROGRESS IN COLOUR PHOTOGAPHY.

INVENTIONS for photography in colours seem to increase and multiply. The latest is that of a Cornish gentleman, Mr. Bennetto, the results attained by which were recently shown at a private exhibition. The process employed, elaborated after eight years' labour, is a secret, but the inventor claims to have succeeded in discovering the first direct method of colour photography, by which the natural colours of tie object can be reproduced on a photographic negative, and thence printed on glass or paper. He uses neither pigments, washes in coloured solutions, nor apparatus of tinted glasses through which to view his pictures. While in his first attempts he was unable to obtain satisfactory results without an exposure of three minutes, he can now do so with an exposure of sixteen seconds. The genuineness of the invention has been subjected to very severe tests, such as seemingly to render imposture impossible. He was, for instance, blindfolded after focussing his instrument on an easel, on which a picture was then placed, combining the most glaring and improbable colours. Still, without seeing the original, he then developed the photograph, in which its colours were reproduced with, sufficient distinctness. The pictures exhibited as the results of the process have high artistic merit. A summer sunrise on the Cornish coast is one specimen, and here the various tints of sky and cloud with the reflections in the pools, were very faithfully given. In one of the sea-shore pictures, each individual mussel on fixe rocks can be detected under the microscope, with the irridescent hues of their shells repeated on the plate.