Otto Pfenninger

Otto Pfenninger
Born(1855-04-05)5 April 1855
Died20 March 1929(1929-03-20) (aged 73)
Mitcham, Surrey, England
NationalitySwiss
Known forPhotography
Colour photograph taken by Pfenninger in Brighton and registered for copyright in 1910
Three colour lantern slide of children playing on a Brighton beach 6 August 1906

Otto Pfenninger (5 April 1855 – 20 March 1929)[1] was a founding member of the Swiss Photographers Association (1886) and a pioneer of colour photography. He moved to Brighton, England where he developed his career as a photographer.

In 1906, Pfenninger built a special camera to his own design using 3-colour separated plates from which full-colour photographic images could be created. That summer Pfenninger used this tri-colour, single exposure camera to create some of the first colour photographs, using the parks and beaches of Brighton as scenes.[2] His camera was based upon J.W. Bennetto's one-shot camera of 1897 in which three separation negatives were obtained at a single exposure. Pfenninger tried to use the same system but found that the refracted image was shorter from top to bottom,[3] his solution was to add a glass plate at the same angle, but opposite direction, to the Bennetto reflector.

In 1921,[4] under the pseudonym O. Reg, he wrote Byepaths of Colour Photography in which he discusses in technical detail, the history and theory of developments in subtractive colour photography.

References

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  1. ^ GRO Croydon Vol. 2a Page 912
  2. ^ "Otto Pfenninger - Brighton Photo". www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk. Retrieved 2022-09-15.
  3. ^ Brighton and Hove Natural History and Philosophical Society, Abstracts of Papers, Pfenninger lecture 6 December 1907, accessed 17 September 2011
  4. ^ E.P. Dutton & Co., New York. The book bears no publication date and other sources state 1924
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