View Full Version : Looking for colour photos of 1950s roundie colour screen shots


Aussie Bloke
12-21-2004, 05:20 PM
Hi all. I've always been curious to see what live colour television looked like when it began and the closest thing I've gotten to it is that 1960 Howdy Doody Show on DVD and some excerpts of Dinah Shore Chevy Show from approx late 50s to 1961.

And I know that colour video recordings don't date any earlier than 1958 and the colour kinescope films from 1956/57 I read are not yet transferrable due to the loss of info on the lenticular process.

But I assume there would be plenty of colour photos of screen shots of various colour TV shows at the time. Or maybe 8mm or 16mm film shots of a colour telly in action. I've only seen a couple of colour shots on the net but they look small plus the 8mm film one of you guys showed us of early 60s NBC logo and other things. So I was wondering if any of you might have or know where to obtain any 1950s colour photo/film shots of a colour telly switched on showing a live colour program by any chance? If you's do then I'd love to see them please :D .

Cheers
Troy

Carmine
12-21-2004, 05:48 PM
How about a totally fake, photoshopped screen shot? :D I kinda doubt if you'll have much luck finding a picture that was actually taken back in the 50s-60s. If anything, the set would likely be in the background. Camera technology back then wasn't very advanced, thus if using a flash, the pic would be totally washed out.

But who knows? This is the internet! :dunno:

http://carmine.5u.com/images/carmine.jpg

polaraman
12-21-2004, 06:06 PM
Nice 61 Imperial!!!! I would love to have a 60 Imperial 2 Door hard top or convert.


polaraman

bgadow
12-22-2004, 08:31 AM
I posted once a shot or two from something one of my in-laws have: 8mm color film from the early 60s with several shots purposely shot of the tv-I think its a CTC-11 or 12. They had the lights off, were obviously proud of it as they shot things like the opening of Bonanza, Johnny Carson, the Disney opening. But between the sloppiness of trying to shoot it, and transfering it to video, and then trying to take a digital image of the screen-its not much to look at. The images are short, too, only lasting a few seconds each.

I would think other proud owner's would have taken pics. Someone who was a good photographer could have come up with something decent.

frenchy
12-22-2004, 09:32 PM
I saw a short film clip off of a color tv screen from the '54 Rose Parade that they showed on the Today show once, found it on the net, if you haven't seen that you can probably dig it up somewhere in cyberspace....

old_tv_nut
12-23-2004, 01:39 PM
Taking good photos off a TV screen was never easy, less so in the 50's. The sets were usually white balanced quite blue (9300 kelvin) for starters, plus the popular color films generally had poor response to the red phosphor. Kodak published suggested filters to use as a starting point. So, if you just pointed your camera at the set, the results weren't likey to correspond to what you saw.

The closest you can come to experiencing what the color looked like is, as you said, replaying one of the early taped programs. The most salient characteristics of these sources have to do with the image-orthicon cameras. (Rather noisy, and the color response determined by the optical filtering, since electronic matrixing wasn't available). I've always thought the Peter Pan special starring Mary Martin is probably typical. :scratch2:

heathkit tv
12-23-2004, 04:57 PM
Another factor that makes most any home movie of a TV shabby at best is the difference between the electronic scan rate and the camera's shutter speed. This results in either flickering picture or a pronounced wide band that scans up the screen. When a Hollywierd movie wants to film a live TV they use a special set that runs at a different scan rate.

Anthony

Aussie Bloke
12-23-2004, 07:34 PM
frenchy wrote:
I saw a short film clip off of a color tv screen from the '54 Rose Parade that they showed on the Today show once, found it on the net, if you haven't seen that you can probably dig it up somewhere in cyberspace....

I've found on this page of a CT-100 site http://home.att.net/~pldexnis/input/news.html there was a 10 second clip of that very footage on the site but unfortunately the link is broken or the file is not there. So I've sent an email to the bloke about this.

Telecolor 3007
12-25-2004, 03:17 PM
Try these:
http://www.earlytelevision.org/early_color.html
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/newpics.htm
http://www.big13.net/Adrian%20Snow/adrian_snow3.htm
www.ev1.pair.com/colortv/index.html

old_tv_nut
12-27-2004, 10:45 AM
Unfortunately, that clip appears to be from a color film of the parade itself, not taken from the color broadcast.

Sandy G
12-27-2004, 01:07 PM
Another thing-Most folks didn't feel the TV was "worth" taking pics of. grandma? Yes. The house? Certainly. The new '57 Chevy? Sure, as long as Mom & Mamaw were posin' behind it. But the TV? Nah.. It's just an appliabnce...even one of them newfangled colored ones. How much did Buck pay for that thing?!? It's always tearing up...nothing's in color anyway. The Knoxville station promises they'll have color by 1960 or '61... Screen sure is funny-lookin' on it. Reminds me of them old TVs back in '47, '48...How much did Buck pay for that thing ?....-Sandy G.

wa2ise
12-27-2004, 04:19 PM
Another thing-Most folks didn't feel the TV was "worth" taking pics of. grandma? Yes. The house? Certainly. The new '57 Chevy? Sure, as long as Mom & Mamaw were posin' behind it. But the TV? Nah..

Most old pictures I've seen that show an old TV set the TV was incidential. The photographer was interested in a picture of grandma sitting in the easy chair that happened to be next to the TV (obviously most of the seating in that living room was intended for family and friend gatherings and only a few seats were suitable for TV watching). In my case the Christmas tree from 1951 was next to the table with the Philco tabletop TV in an old picture in the family album. And the picture cropped a small portion of the TV. You've seen it in another thread in one of these TV forums.

Besides, trying to photograph the TV with an image on the CRT almost never worked out anyway.

Steve D.
12-27-2004, 09:42 PM
Aussie,

There was a thread that showed the cover of the Sept. 1955 Radio & Television News: NBC 21ct55 color monitors in action. I can't grab it but go to this html and scroll to item #6.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?p=27045&postcount=6



Steve

rca2000
12-28-2004, 01:30 AM
Looked at it the other day. It does look inviting, with all of those roundies on the cover.

Captain Video
12-29-2004, 06:07 AM
One thing I noticed, that's almost like a pattern in 50's photos is that there's a "casual" presence of TV sets in family pictures...I mean, to have a TV was a big thing in those days, so, when people took pictures of relatives in the living room the people who were to be photographed managed to be near the TV set...in an unconcious way of showing to everybody that they had TV in their house. I've seen a 1954 photo of a middle aged couple, they were very well dressed, and the TV set was clearly visible in the shot.

Aussie Bloke
12-29-2004, 06:26 AM
Hi. Thanks for the pics, I've definitely seen that 1955 one, seen a few of those pics, though I've always wondered if they were real photos or graphic designs as the picture looks surreal like half photographic and half art-like. Anyways I assume that 55 pic is real. Also question the picture of a CT-100 screen with some chick with red hair in a light blue background too which I saw on a CT-100 site because seeing a few other pics above it one was a 1964 colour photo of a colour telly screen with some bloke forecasting the weather which looks like a fair dinkum photo opposed to the others. I guess it's the colour printing press of the 50s which kind of makes photos look a little surreal.

Anyways I'm hoping one day to come across a large colour photo of the 50s right in front of a colour telly screen showing some live colour broadcast complete with the picture characteristics of a 3 tube colour IO with a bit of haloing around the really bright objects, though I'm dreaming :lmao: . Then again I suppose seeing the 1960 Howdy Doody colour special on DVD and bits of colour footage of Dinah Shore Chevy Show the earliest colour shows from 1953/54 using NTSC system would look exactly the same only varying by the camera techo's adjustment on the TK-40/41 colour settings.

Aussie Bloke
12-29-2004, 06:35 AM
Those 1964 photos I was talking about can be found here:
http://home.att.net/~pldexnis/potpourri/21CYP22A_1964.html

Aussie Bloke
12-29-2004, 06:56 AM
Have to also show these which are the best examples I found of early screen shots. Though I'm still not content :lmao: and want to find even better examples with all the spotlight halos and everything :lmao: .

Anyways I have seen on the earlytelevision.org site a great example of the early 1941 CBS colour experimental broadcast http://www.earlytelevision.org/life_9-22-41.html .

And here's 3 of the best examples I've come across so far, one being the chick with the red hair, one with a ski girl (which looks like a true looking photo) and a magazine pic of a 1949 CBS colour wheel medical casts:

frenchy
12-31-2004, 11:51 PM
<<<Unfortunately, that clip appears to be from a color film of the parade itself, not taken from the color broadcast.>>>

Hmmm, when I watched it a few years ago it sure looked like a filmed tv screen cuz you could see little noise blips on the screen (didn't look like just dirty film but tv noise)....Frenchy