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KODACOLOR - the colorless color film
Mike Trickett

The quest for color motion pictures can be traced back to the very early days of the
film industry. Tinting of the image, either by dying the film or by projecting via a color
filter was very common. Enterprising film makers such as Pathe, Melies, Gaumont
developed techniques to hand color the individual frames to produce realistic color
images.

Other ‘natural color’ processes were introduced
progressively through the teens and twenties years.
All were quite involved and required specialised
cameras and projectors.

In the late 1920s, Kodak introduced their Kodacolor
proces to the 16mm film user. The process had been
know for quite some time, but it was in 1928, that
Kodak utilised it under their Kodacolor* brand.

It required a special tri-color filter for both taking and projecting pictures, and it
required special treatment for exposure, however, it did produce natural color motion
pictures.

The film was a regular
panchromatic black and white
film, but the base side of the film
was embossed with vertical
cylindrical “lenses” covering the
width of the image area. Unlike
regular film, the film was loaded
into the camera with the
sensitive emulsion furtherest
from the lens, and with the film
base containing the lenticular
lenses closest to the camera’s
lens. This meant that the image
was exposed through the
embossed lenses on the base
side of the film.

Left: The Kodacolor set of filters.
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