Looking for colour photos of 1950s roundie colour screen shots
 

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

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

Nice 61 Imperial!!!! I would love to have a 60 Imperial 2 Door hard top or convert.


polaraman

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.

reply
 

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....

color screen shots
 

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:

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

frenchy wrote:
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.

Try these:
http://www.earlytelevision.org/early_color.html
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/har...TV/newpics.htm
http://www.big13.net/Adrian%20Snow/adrian_snow3.htm
www.ev1.pair.com/colortv/index.html

clip of 1954 Rose Parade
 

Unfortunately, that clip appears to be from a color film of the parade itself, not taken from the color broadcast.

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.

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.

Off screen color pix
 

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/sho...45&postcount=6



Steve

Got that one.
 

Looked at it the other day. It does look inviting, with all of those roundies on the cover.

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.