Color photography with black and white film

[Don Hutton]

Have a look around for Sinar filters - they used to make a 25, 58 and 47 in 100mm square resin filters which conveniently fit Lee holders. I bought a set on Ebay a while back which were unused.

[Eirik Berger]

[QUOTE=sanking;506469]

Here is my first attempt in tricolor work. T-max 400 using a 6x9 rollfilm holder and 25, 58, 47 filters.
It is of a walrus skull taken on Svalbard earlier this summer. This was great fun and I am happy with the result. And the subject haven´t moved in 400 years so that did not cause any problems at all.


Eirik,

Great work.

What was your exposure time for the shots with the R, G and B filters? And how closely balanced were the separations after development?

I am also thinking of doing some separation work with a 6X9 camera so your technical notes would be appreciated.

Sandy King

Sorry I haven´t been around the forum for a while. Since this was my very first attempt and I did not remember exactly how much to compensate the green and blue filter (the red one I am familiar with ), I went for a three stop compensation for all three filters. The plan was to evaluate the negatives when I came home. Both red and green looked ok, but the blue negative was underexposed. When merging the scans I needed to make a pretty steep curve for the blue-filtered negative. I have not had the opportunity to refine the technique since we entered the dark season in october. The sun is returning in march, so I will work more with this way of imagemaking then.

I guess I will do some testing with grey patches (I use this one a lot with digital photography http://www.qpcard.se/BizPart.aspx?ta...prod=1&catId=1) to adjust the compensation factor for each filter. I will try to get a color balanced set of negatives right out of the jobo-drum

I made a large (ca 60x90 cm) inkjet print of this image, and the texture and colors look great. I should have worked more with aligning the layers though. Color "fringing" is quite noticeable around the edges of the scull. I will do some more work on the digital image and make another print. It is amazing to see the typical BW-texture and sharpness in a color print. It sure beats scanning trannies, which I normally have done when making color prints.

I liked working with the 6x9 back, because it is never any doubt which negative is with what filter. The first is unfiltered, and the three following negatives are with red, green and blue filters. And with 8 exposures on each film you get 2 images on each roll. Neat.

[David Hedley]

This looks fascinating, and I'm going to give it a go with a box of TMax400 that needs to be used. Can I ask a couple of basic questions;

- how are the negatives scanned? In other words, are the three negatives scanned as greyscale, or is the Red negative scanned to the R channel, the Blue Negative to the B channel, etc?
- if scanned as greyscale, how are colours then derived?
- if scanned as R, G and B, are the three separate scans simply combined onto a 'rough' colour image which can then be adjusted using normal photoshop tools?

Sorry for the basic questions, but I know relatively little about photoshop and colour, as most of my work is in normal monochrome photography.

[Noeyedear]

The Technicolor process involved something quite similar - except that the Technicolor camera took all 3 exposures at the same time, by the use of semi-transparent mirrors. As a result, it was possible to control colors quite nicely, and Technicolor used very rich colors when producing their final blend.

T

Sometime ago on ebay a 5x4 contraption was being sold that did exactly this, it fitted onto a 5x4 camera. It looked a bit big to fit in the kit bag, although I was tempted.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Can I ask a couple of basic questions;

Hello from France !
May be you'll find answers to your question in Henri Gaud's blog
Henri Gaud lives near Paris and is one of the proselytes for this strange technique
This is the google translation from French, I hope it will be useful

About combining the 3 B&W scans into a single coulour image
http://translate.google.com/translat...te-des-calques

Henri Gaud's blog translated by google, with many examples of images & links to other aficionados of this technique.

http://translate.google.com/translat...r%2Ftrichromie

Note that you do not need any computer if you have access to a RA-4 coulour paper processing machine.
This is nothing new and was alredy used in the past in the printing industry.
After several years doing tricolor images by computer, Henri Gaud has recently re-played the old game of coulour additive printing with an enlarger! 0% digital ! 100% photo-chemical and optical !!
And it seems easier than expected !

http://translate.google.com/translat...3%2FTrichroR4A

http://translate.google.com/translat...A-Chapitre-III

It the google translation, simply replace the funny "drawing" by "printing"
In French, "tirer" means both "to draw" like a drawer and to print like "tirer une image"

[David Hedley]

Alors, Emmanuel, un grand merci pour votre réponse. Les liens vous avez fournis sont très utiles, et il ya encore un plus qui définit une approche que je vais essayer d'abord, après que je reçoive un filtre bleu (on l'espère dans quelques jours!);

http://photo.guigue.free.fr/1_new_07...trichromie.htm

[stephenhunter57]

Yep works great but it is a lot of messing about, we did it in college amonst lots of other really interesting stuff

[r_a_feldman]

Just got this link through the Internet Directory of Camera Collectors list. It has some nice pictures of the 1929-vintage german "Bermpohl Naturfarbenkameras" and a discussion of printing the B/W negatives: http://www.vintagephoto.tv/color1.shtml. The owner of the site also has started a Yahoo group on the subject, at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/h...r_photography/.

Bob

[Paul Kierstead]

Just tried my first one (shh, 6x9, not LF, but close enough for fooling around). I was unable to align the three layers well enough; clearly the camera moved enough to introduce distortion, since when one part, for example, was aligned perfectly something higher up would not be. Rotation could also not correct it. Aperture was the same for all shots.

I think the problem is my filter holder; I am using polyester filters by Lee, in holders, slid into a holder. They are a pretty tight fit and a little bit of a battle. On my lightweight CF tripod, it seems destined to move the rig (I suppose I could weight it down).

Do you just hold the filter in front? They were long exposures, I forsee it waving about a little. Not sure if that matters. Or should I just weigh down that tripod, lock the head really well and slide those filters in an out?

If I am using film holders especially, I could see that easily introducing very small movements too.

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Just tried my first one ....
Do you just hold the filter in front?

Hello from France !
Yes Paul in the 3-color technique the main limitation is unwanted displacements of the camera between the 3 shots.
So it is easier to achieve with a rollfilm holder and a camera solidly mounted on a good tripod. Hewever in his first attempts Henri Gaud started by the 8"x10" format ! Outch ! But he used a very heavy thripod

However you do not need to attach the filters to the lens.

A good friend of mine, Philippe Domingos from Nancy, France...
http://www.philippedo.eu/wysiwyg/
...uses the same gelatin filters as advertised by Henri Gaud on his blog. Size is about 10cm (4") square
Philippe has made a kind of a cardboard-mounted "booklet" of filters and he simply holds the "booklet" open to proper the Red, Green or Blue "page" in front of the lens, simply hand-held, no screw, no support of any kind.
In fact gelatin filters are very thin and they do not need to be perfectly positioned perpendicular to the optical axis. In fact thin gelatin filters can be used slanted without damaging the image sharpness too much.
By not touching the camera when switching filters you avoid 3 possibilities of displacing the camera during the exposures. However you still have to wind the film on and touch the back... except with a motor-driven rollfilm back.

About long exposure times, some interesting portraits have been achieved by the 3-color-on-B&W-film process but with a medium format camera.
By H. Gaud with a motor-driven Rollei 600x: http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie...in-un-portrait

By L. Askienazy: http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie...rent-Askienazy
(for this image, some digital post-processing was required for a fine registration of the 3 layers : the "making of" is here: http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie...aire-Askienazy)