Question about autopsy photographs - color positive camera film and color negative camera film

[Micah Mileto]

It is possible to take a piece of color positive transparency film and make a copy of it in the form of a piece of color negative film, but I can't find any witness specifically described doing this (Robert Bouck, James Fox, Robert Knudsen, Vincent Madonia, Saundra Spencer).

Could all of the color negative film in the official collection of autopsy photos just be copies made from color positive film?

Is there any acknowledgement of this in any source I'm missing? The Sibert and O'Neill report lists "22 4 X 5 color photographs", but the official collection has over 40 total pieces of both positive and negative color film (excluding the later brain photos). So are all of the negatives somehow just copies of the positives? I don't remember seeing any source that bothers to explain how 22 pieces of color film became over 40. Can somebody like Mantik with access to the official autopsy photos confirm whether the images on the negatives are identical to the images on the positives?

 

 

Edited July 13, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[Guest]

I think you are referring to the Ilfochrome process (also commonly known as Cibachrome, Ciba took over Ilford in the late 1960's I believe) 

From : http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Ilford/Chronology.html

...the year of 1953 saw the launch of a service to provide colour prints from transparencies, both from Ilford's Colour "D" transparency film (launched in 1948) and also from Kodachrome. This was the operation that Jack Coote had been hired to manage (see 1952 'slot', above) and was based in Richmond (Surrey, UK). Ciba independently chose to use the same process to formulate the eventual industry leading Cibachrome process. Cibachrome enabled professionals and home workers to make excellent colour prints directly from colour transparencies....

[Micah Mileto]

From John Stringer's ARRB deposition: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/stringer.htm

 

Q: In autopsy photography, did you ever use color negative film around 1963?

 

A: I don't think so.

 

[...] 

 

Q: Mr. Stringer, are you able to determine whether the negatives that are below each of the positive transparencies are internegatives taken from the positive transparencies?

 

A: I think they are.

 

Q: Is there any question in your mind whether the negative - the color negatives might have been the camera originals that you took on November 22nd? Right now, again, speaking of the color negatives.

 

A: Color negatives?

 

Q: Yes.

 

A: That they were taken at the time of the autopsy?

 

Q: Could those have been camera originals?

 

A: I don't think so.

 

"internegative" means copy.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[Micah Mileto]

17 minutes ago, Jean Paul Ceulemans said:

I think you are referring to the Ilfochrome process (also commonly known as Cibachrome, Ciba took over Ilford in the late 1960's I believe) 

From : http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Ilford/Chronology.html

...the year of 1953 saw the launch of a service to provide colour prints from transparencies, both from Ilford's Colour "D" transparency film (launched in 1948) and also from Kodachrome. This was the operation that Jack Coote had been hired to manage (see 1952 'slot', above) and was based in Richmond (Surrey, UK). Ciba independently chose to use the same process to formulate the eventual industry leading Cibachrome process. Cibachrome enabled professionals and home workers to make excellent colour prints directly from colour transparencies....

When it says "prints", does that mean a frame of negative film made by copying a piece of positive film?

[Micah Mileto]

Here's why I'm confused - A memo from James Fox, dated 2/16/1967, reads “... On November 27th, 1963, I was instructed by my supervisor, SAIC Robert I. Bouck, Protective Research Section, to make arrangements with the Naval Processing Center located in Anacostia to have processed both black and white negatives and color positives made during the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital” (ARRB MD 121), And a 2/23/1967 statement, signed by Roy Kellerman, Fox, Bouck, Bouck's secretary Edith Duncan, and Assistant Director for the Secret Service Thomas J. Kelley, reads “...The black and white film was processed, black and white negatives were developed, and color positives were made from the colored film. ” (ARRB MD 122). When Robert Knudsen talked to the HSCA, he said that only black and white and color negative film was involved, no color positive. Saundra Spencer told the ARRB that there was only color negative film involved, and that she didn't think the room she was in charge of (the White House laboratory) had the capability of processing color negative film.

 

What happened here?

Edited July 13, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[Guest]

I am not 100% sure about the terms they use in the testimony, e.g. in Europe we use different names like a "dia" (for a color positive transparancy)I have always assumed an "internegative" was only needed since Ilfochrome was discontinued.    But I think before that it was indeed possible to make a color negative film from a color positive transparancy.   And I can imagine it being usefull, as once you have a color negative film you can enhance/improve it rather easy in the developping process (for good or bad intentions....).

From Wiki :

• Color reversal film produces positive transparencies, also known as diapositives. Transparencies can be reviewed with the aid of a magnifying loupe and a lightbox. If mounted in small metal, plastic or cardboard frames for use in a slide projector or slide viewer they are commonly called slides. Reversal film is often marketed as "slide film". Large-format color reversal sheet film is used by some professional photographers, typically to originate very-high-resolution imagery for digital scanning into color separations for mass photomechanical reproduction. Photographic prints can be produced from reversal film transparencies, but positive-to-positive print materials for doing this directly (e.g. Ektachrome paper, Cibachrome/Ilfochrome) have all been discontinued, so it now requires the use of an internegative to convert the positive transparency image into a negative transparency, which is then printed as a positive print.

[Guest]

46 minutes ago, Micah Mileto said:

Here's why I'm confused - A memo from James Fox, dated 2/16/1967, reads “... On November 27th, 1963, I was instructed by my supervisor, SAIC Robert I. Bouck, Protective Research Section, to make arrangements with the Naval Processing Center located in Anacostia to have processed both black and white negatives and color positives made during the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital” (ARRB MD 121), And a 2/23/1967 statement, signed by Roy Kellerman, Fox, Bouck, Bouck's secretary Edith Duncan, and Assistant Director for the Secret Service Thomas J. Kelley, reads “...The black and white film was processed, black and white negatives were developed, and color positives were made from the colored film. ” (ARRB MD 122). When Robert Knudsen talked to the HSCA, he said that only black and white and color negative film was involved, no color positive. Saundra Spencer told the ARRB that there was only color negative film involved, and that she didn't think the room she was in charge of (the White House laboratory) had the capability of processing color negative film.

 

What happened here?

Perhaps the color negatives were made at a later moment in another plant, no idea...

[Guest]

Was looking at the timeframe and by 1963 the experimental or high-end lab's were pretty much capable of making everything out of anything.  I can see having the White House laboratory developping the films, to take them to another lab for further processing, I don't know how high-end the White House lab was 

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A little off topic, but there are some interesting bits and bytes on how the WH lab worked by the 1970's:

https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0204/1511867.pdf

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[Micah Mileto]

Yes, it would seem that the color negatives in the official collection are just copies of the color positives. The issue would probably seem settled enough to not bother asking somebody with access to the autopsy photos to go back and check that the negatives are identical to the positives.

 

The source of confusion is that two witnesses - Robert Knudsen and Saundra Spencer - explicitly denied seeing any color positive film when they were at the NPC.

 

Spencer claimed that the white house lab was incapable of developing color positive film.

 

I am aware of no witness that specifically describes the making of color negatives by copying from a color positive.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Micah Mileto

[Micah Mileto]

From Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi:

 

Conspiracy theorist Dr. David Mantik makes much of the fact that Fox showed up with color negatives, rather than color transparencies, pointing out that only color transparencies were exposed at the autopsy. Mantik then erroneously reports that “only color transparencies exist in the Archives today—there are no color negatives” (David W. Mantik, “Paradoxes of the JFK Assassination: The Medical Evidence Decoded,” in Fetzer, Murder in Dealey Plaza, p.241). However, the 1966 inventory clearly lists numerous color negatives among the autopsy materials (ARRB MD 13, “Report of Inspection by Naval Medical Staff on November 1, 1966 at National Archives of X-Rays and Photographs of Autopsy of President John F. Kennedy,” November 1, 1966, pp.7–10), the same negatives noted by the Clark Panel in 1968 and the HSCA in 1978 (7 HSCA 46–47). These color negatives are, of course, the internegatives (i.e., a negative created from slide or transparency film in order to produce photographic prints) created by Fox on November 27, 1963.

[Guest]

Thank you for that, I had no idea about all of those things (the medical investigation is beyond me I have to admit)