Thomas Sutton (photographer)

"Tartan ribbon", the first permanent color photograph, taken by Sutton under the direction of James Clerk Maxwell in 1861.

Thomas Sutton (1819 - 19 March 1875, Pwllheli) was an English photographer, author, and inventor.

Life

Thomas Sutton went to school in Newington Butts and studied architecture for four years before studying at Caius College, Cambridge graduating in 1846 as the twenty-seventh wrangler. He opened a photographic studio in Jersey the following year under the patronage of Prince Albert. In 1855 he set up a photographic company in Jersey with business partner Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard that produced prints from calotype negatives. The following year, Sutton and Blanquart-Evrard founded the journal "Photographic Notes", which Sutton edited for eleven years. A prolific author, Sutton wrote a number of books on the subject of photography, including the Dictionary of Photography in 1858.

In 1859, Sutton developed the earliest panoramic camera with a wide-angle lens. The lens consisted of a glass sphere filled with water, which projected an image onto a curved plate. The camera was capable of capturing an image in a 120 degree arc. Another photographic development was the first Single Lens Reflex camera, in 1861. He was also the photographer for James Clerk Maxwell's early experiments in color photography and in 1861 took the world's first permanent color photograph of a Tartan ribbon. Maxwell directed Sutton to take three photographs of the ribbon, through a red, green, and blue filter, respectively. The plates were developed and projected on a screen by three projectors, each with the same color filter used to take its photograph. When brought together in focus, a full-color image was formed. He also worked on the development of dry photographic plates.