1920s London brought back to life through early colour photography by film pioneer Claude Friese-Greene.

1920s London brought back to life through early colour photography –Β Watch this beautiful short film showing what everyday life looked like in British capital in 1926.

The rare colour footage was shot by early film pioneer Claude Friese-Greene, restored by the British Film Institute and the version above was edited by Tim Sparke.

The scenes in the video are part of Claude Friese-Greene’s series of short clips from 1926 titled The Open Road, which were filmed using a technique developed by Claude’s father, William Friese-Greene, called biocolour. By shooting alternative frames on ordinary black and white film with two coloured filters, the method resulted in almost true colour footage, although flickering and fast movement still caused issues. We’ve previously posted a similar technique developed by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky for additive colour photography in the early 1900s, which explains the process.

View more 1920s videos from Claude’s The Open Road on YouTube, and read more about the pioneer on Wikipedia.

Via BFI and Death And Taxes. Thanks for sharing, Richard!

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