<P> Otherwise simple cameras with multiple color - filtered lenses were sometimes tried, but unless everything in the scene was at a great distance, or all in a plane at the same distance, the difference in the viewpoints of the lenses (parallax) made it impossible to completely "register" all parts of the resulting images at the same time . </P> <P> Prior to the late 1890s color photography was strictly the domain of a very few intrepid experimenters willing to build their own equipment, do their own color - sensitizing of photographic emulsions, make and test their own color filters and otherwise devote a large amount of time and effort to their pursuits . There were many opportunities for something to go wrong during the series of operations required and problem - free results were rare . Most photographers still regarded the whole idea of color photography as a pipe dream, something only madmen and swindlers would claim to have accomplished . </P> <P> In 1898, however, it was possible to buy the required equipment and supplies ready - made . Two adequately red - sensitive photographic plates were already on the market, and two very different systems of color photography with which to use them, tantalizingly described in photographic magazines for several years past, were finally available to the public . </P> <P> The most extensive and expensive of the two was the "Kromskop" (pronounced "chrome - scope") system developed by Frederic Eugene Ives . This was a straightforward additive system and its essential elements had been described by James Clerk Maxwell, Louis Ducos du Hauron and Charles Cros much earlier, but Ives invested years of careful work and ingenuity in refining the methods and materials to optimize color quality, in overcoming problems inherent in the optical systems involved, and in simplifying the apparatus to bring down the cost of producing it commercially . The color images, dubbed "Kromograms," were in the form of sets of three black - and - white transparencies on glass, mounted onto special cloth - tape - hinged triple cardboard frames . To see a Kromogram in color it had to be inserted into a "Kromskop" (generic name "chromoscope" or "photochromoscope"), a viewing device which used an arrangement of colored glass filters to illuminate each slide with the correct color of light and transparent reflectors to visually combine them into a single full - color image . The most popular model was stereoscopic . By looking through its pair of lenses, an image in full natural color and 3 - D was seen, a startling novelty in the late Victorian age . </P>

When did the first colour camera come out