120 THREE-DIMENSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHYhe made three positives, maybe dye masters for imbibition,
maybe carbons for carbro, perhaps in some other medium, but
he made them. Then he superimposed them and if anything had
gone wrong the whole thing was ruined.
Can you, without being ashamed, refuse to spend five short
minutes, perhaps less, to improve that color film you are making?
Think of it! There was a time when you would work, work hard
for two or three days or more to make just one color print. Now,
by adding four minutes to the time spent, you can bring your
color films up to a quality level you never dreamed of. Isn’t it
worth it? Particularly when you think of the great influence of
color upon the stereogram, isn’t it worth it?
Color films are balanced for a certain kind of light, a light
which has a certain color balance. Daylight films are balanced
for “normal daylight,” but that is a kind of daylight which we
rarely if ever see. It is just another non-existent average condi-
tion, or almost non-existent. Fortunately color film or our color
perception or both have such great latitude that the actual light
used may be considerably off-standard and still give color results
which are satisfactory. But there is a limit, and much of our day-
light-I should say offhand about 50 percent of it-is beyond the
limit. So, a lot of amateur color exposures are not satisfactory.
The truth is that daylight film does reproduce the color which
existed at the time, but we find it unacceptable because we did
not see it that way. In other words, with the exception of lights
which are deeply and brilliantly colored, our color perception
rapidly adapts itself to any color and when the adaptation is com-
plete, that predominating color is “white” to us.
The purpose in having two types of film is based upon this
fact. Daylight film reproduces color naturally under normal or
average daylight, but if we use that film for artificial light, even
the brilliantly “white” photoflood, the film comes out definitely
red. The actual appearance of the scene, to eyes adjusted to day-
light, is that shown by the film; but because, as soon as the lights
are turned on our color standard shifts to make the red-yellow
artificial light “white,” the daylight standard is not acceptable.
You are familiar with the deep yellow color of any light bulb
which burns in daylight. It does not change color at night, only