Interesting. I actually just remembered I found some old Lene files in the electrics shop today in the very back of a rarely opened drawer. Mostly gels in the blue, green and cyan ranges.
Dude, you're working my very last brain
cell! IIRC, from 1984, by memory, without any external aid, even google (gasp!):
840 was a mauve or as I recall "Smoky Pink"
827, 828 were the follies pinks
848 was the palest blue, possibly equiv. to X60
849 had more green in it
850 was (I'm cheating by looking at a 2004
Lux book) not as deep as X64.
849 was the deepest Lav
802 was the ubiquitous "Illegitamate Amber."
856 was maybe the deepest primary blue
Two colors, I want to say 828 Pink and 8xx (closest to R87) would act as what we think of today as fibre optic transfer media. The edges of the perimeter would "glow" or flouresce under ordinary incandecent light and in a frame in a
fixture, well, wow. Never observed those two under UV light, but I can imagine.
Lene colors followed a progression similar to
Roscolux in that lower numbers were paler and higher numbers meant more saturation, until one went over the
edge of the cliff and started over with a different part of the visible spectrum.
ROYGBIV and all that.
815 was an amber
820? was primary red. I know that's not right. Someone please post a link to a site listing the 800 color names and SteveB and I and many others can quickly create a Lene to
Lux conversion chart. There were only 60some colors between 801 and I can't recall a number higher than 856, maybe 858. You want to talk old:
Roscogel used 2xx numbers. I never saw a
Brigham gel swatchbook it was dead by 1976.
I've posted before about DevonGlass 146 Blue, I erroneously called it Congo previously, being used around 1984 and in the 1996 Noise/Funk and they're still available
https://grayglass.net/display/2271/0/ , but have been somewhat superceded by
dichroic filters for the longest running of shows: Approx. $100US for a 10"x10" cut and color is measured in center-peak nanometers or some phraseolgy and must allow for a
swing of 20 nanometers on either side of "centerline," and "dye lots" will never match. L181, Congo Blue didn't appear until 1987?
I don't think the word cyan appears in the
Roscolene swatchbook. I don't recall learning the meaning if that word until color mixing moving lights came along. But I do recall trying to convince professors that the primaries of light are
RGB (additive mixing) so the colors of
pigment (ink) HAD to be
CMY. No, No they'd say, in kindergarten you learn if you mix blue paint with yellow paint you get green paint. But I said my father's a printer and they use CMYK, maybe I had heard "cyan" but never associated with light, only printer's ink.
One final tome. Sometime in 1983, I sent this letter to
Rosco Labs: "Gentlemen/Ladies, R77 is Green Blue, and R93 is Blue Green. Yet R77 falls in with the 'blues' and R93 is in the 'greens'. Shouldn't the names/numbers be the other way around?" I don't know the name of the man who wrote me back, I think it was the owner/founder. "Dear Derek, Your letter has found its way to may
desk for response and has caused much consternation among the hallowed halls of our facility in Port Chester, New York. One engineer said 'the first name indicates the
base, the second name, the modifier.' The next engineer said 'the first name indicates the modifier, the second indicates the
base.' ... Here's one of our newly released large format "designer" swatchbooks. Thank you for writing." The designer
swatchbook was a blue vinyl approx. 4"x6", sized such that IIRC one could hold a color in front of a 3.5"
ERS to see the filter's impact on a colored object. The
book included R05, Rose Tint, which was brand new, and described to me by my preferred theatrical supplier as "half of R33." Tastes great, less filling?
SteveB, feel free to correct me on any/all of the above. And I SO regret tossing/losing my Dura 60/70,
Gelatran,
Roscogel, I'm forgetting at least one unknown manufacturer,
Cinemoid (tho all those color became
Lee) I don't really miss any Lene colors, due to burning holes
thru with T/H lamps.
Roscolene and
Cinemoid couldn't take the heat, so they had to get out of the kitchen. Reason was not due to dyes dying (unreproduceable);
that was the reason
Lux started adding the "-A" suffix. SteveB your comments about intuitely visualizing
Lux and
Lee without looking at a
swatchbook are exactly my sentiments. Yes,
Lee Filters color order makes no sense whatsoever, but I can describe the effects of 90% of the L101
thru L211 with my eyes tied behind my back. I've told KELITE (sp?) from
Apollo as much, and he understands.
gafftapegreenia, go to
http://www.derekleffew.com/gelhistory for more information.