Here's a nice presentation on the subject of Lippmann photography vs. holography:
http://nobelprize.org/physics/articles/biedermann/
Lippmann photography vs. holography
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Colin Kaminski
Lippmann photography vs. holography
This is from the above link and is a good description:
Lippmann's Color Photography
How could Gabriel Lippmann make use of interference effects to achieve color photography? The primer on wave optics and interference told us that light of different wavelengths will generate standing wave patterns at corresponding period lengths. Lippmann started out with a pattern of standing waves, where a wavefield meets itself again after it is reflected in a mirror. He projected an optical image as usual onto a photographic plate, but through its glass plate with the almost transparent emulsion of extremely fine grains on the backside. Then he added the interference effect by placing a mercury mirror in contact with the emulsion. The image went through the emulsion, hit the mirror, and then returned the light back into the emulsion. A suitable thickness of this photographic layer corresponds to around ten or more wavelengths. The image projected onto the plate did not plainly expose the emulsion according to the local distribution of irradiance. Rather, the exposure was encoded when the wave field returned within the emulsion and created standing waves, whose nodes gave little exposure, whereas the bulges gave maximum effect. Hence, after development, the photographic layer contained some twenty or more lamellae of silver grains with different periods for different colors in the image.
Gabriel Lippmann
When, after development, white light is shone on the plate in reflection, it will be scattered at these silver grains in all directions. Into the direction from which the standing wave pattern had been generated, the scattered light fields having the same wavelength as the period of the lamellae will be in phase, interfere constructively, and together create a strong color image. Certain elegant insects and butterflies have created such periodic lamellae without having been taught the optics of scattering or diffraction.
We see that in essence, this form of imaging builds on a symmetric two-step process of interference and diffraction: first by encoding the image into an interference pattern, and then reconstructing the image by diffraction at this pattern.
Lippmann's Color Photography
How could Gabriel Lippmann make use of interference effects to achieve color photography? The primer on wave optics and interference told us that light of different wavelengths will generate standing wave patterns at corresponding period lengths. Lippmann started out with a pattern of standing waves, where a wavefield meets itself again after it is reflected in a mirror. He projected an optical image as usual onto a photographic plate, but through its glass plate with the almost transparent emulsion of extremely fine grains on the backside. Then he added the interference effect by placing a mercury mirror in contact with the emulsion. The image went through the emulsion, hit the mirror, and then returned the light back into the emulsion. A suitable thickness of this photographic layer corresponds to around ten or more wavelengths. The image projected onto the plate did not plainly expose the emulsion according to the local distribution of irradiance. Rather, the exposure was encoded when the wave field returned within the emulsion and created standing waves, whose nodes gave little exposure, whereas the bulges gave maximum effect. Hence, after development, the photographic layer contained some twenty or more lamellae of silver grains with different periods for different colors in the image.
Gabriel Lippmann
When, after development, white light is shone on the plate in reflection, it will be scattered at these silver grains in all directions. Into the direction from which the standing wave pattern had been generated, the scattered light fields having the same wavelength as the period of the lamellae will be in phase, interfere constructively, and together create a strong color image. Certain elegant insects and butterflies have created such periodic lamellae without having been taught the optics of scattering or diffraction.
We see that in essence, this form of imaging builds on a symmetric two-step process of interference and diffraction: first by encoding the image into an interference pattern, and then reconstructing the image by diffraction at this pattern.