# Oldest surviving "high resolution" colour photograph?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-surviving-high-resolution-colour-photograph/638702>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 24, 2012, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-surviving-high-resolution-colour-photograph/638702 "2012-10-24T04:14:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-surviving-high-resolution-colour-photograph/638702/21 "2012-10-26T04:29:08Z")

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It’s almost eerie seeing these photos in color from times past. We are so used to seeing them in black and white that it almost seems “wrong” to see them in color. Very interesting emotions.

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**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-surviving-high-resolution-colour-photograph/638702/22 "2012-10-26T12:22:31Z")

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> [@aruvqan](#):
>
> Swing dancing - unless you freeze a manic grin on your face, active dancing can give one some pretty funky facial expressions in still shots. I would guess the guys in khakis are in the CCC or WPA work battalions, these would be the organized dances to entertain them instead of them heading out to bars to get drunk and find hookers.

Wow-notice how skinny everybody is? No big macs back then! Also noted: why the reddish cast to the prints? Last time I looked at my family album, Kodachrome prints from the late 1940’s have a yellowish cast, and many are bluish-I take that the red dyes used in Kodachrome were unstable, and break down with time. The Prokudin-Gorskii prints are wonderful-and due to the process used, totally stable. They really give us a nice look into a vanished world!

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**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\
**Post date:** [October 26, 2012, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oldest-surviving-high-resolution-colour-photograph/638702/23 "2012-10-26T12:56:17Z")

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How d you define “high resolution”? Is Maxwell’s “first color photograph” high enough?

[http://www.amazon.com/First-Color-Photograph-James-Maxwell/dp/B005HYDRS6](http://www.amazon.com/First-Color-Photograph-James-Maxwell/dp/B005HYDRS6)

> **[How a Scottish Physicist Accidentally Invented Color Photography](https://gizmodo.com/how-a-scottish-physicist-accidentally-invented-color-ph-5802785)**
>
> It's been 150 years since Scottish Physicist James Clerk Maxwell showed off the world's first color photograph at a Royal Institution lecture in London. His discovery is incredible but, technically, it shouldn't have worked.

It arguably wasn’t the first color photograph – I’ve read of an example of what would now be called Lippmann photography that was made before this (and before Lipmann ever did it)

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