Curtis Color Scout

[Bolshoi]

Hello, guys, i've recently finished my most difficult project. This is a Curtis Color-Scout 4x5 fully restored with custom made dichroic beamsplitters. I thought it might be of some interest for you.
Curtis Color Scout is a famous color separation camera brand. which was quite popular in 40s. When i bought this camera it was just a piece of rubbish. The camera came in without holders and with both pellicles destroyed (Unfortunatelly, pellicles rarely make it to this day). So i had to make new frames and ordered a customized set of dichroic beamspitters (which increase camera's efficiency quite substantially). Beamsplitters were multi-coated to avoid image doubling.






And a first self-portrait as a test shot


(cant attach full size photo, use link https://www.flickr.com/photos/132081...-92087504@N00/ )

[Bolshoi]

[Tin Can]

Very impressive!

[Drew Wiley]

There's a miserably mauled one of those on the shelf of the local camera store just for sake of decor; not for sale, would be hell to refurbish it. Devin also made tricolor cameras, and a number of people have gone through the effort and expense to give them another life. A labor of love, I guess. Congratulations on your own effort! Hoya Industrial Division can remake the pellicles but at high cost; beam-splitters make more sense anyway.

[David Lindquist]

Yes, very very impressive work, including the test shot.
What are you using as the lens? I suppose back in the day it would have been an Apochromat Artar.

David

[Duolab123]

Very, very nice. Archival color. Polyester base black and white films.

[profvandegraf]

Wow! Very cool!

[Havoc]

Great job! I'm interested in those dichroic splitters. That must be a great step up from beamsplitters and color filters.

National Photocolour can stll provide new beamsplitters for their cameras. Sadly they cannot provide the color filters.

Got to move on with my Devin.

[John Layton]

An old schoolmate of mine, Jim Browning, has done this also (I believe with a modified Linhof?) - as well as dye transfer prints . Pretty amazing stuff!

[Bolshoi]

Thank you all very much!
I have to thank Scott Bilotta ( http://www.vintagephoto.tv/) without whose support the project would have been impossible to complete. He sent me a geniune Curtis holder for free so i was able to reproduce my own holders. I believe he also has the largest collection of color separation camera around the world. Thank you very much, Scott!

Yes, very very impressive work, including the test shot.
What are you using as the lens? I suppose back in the day it would have been an Apochromat Artar.

David

I use Rodenstock Geronar 210 f/6.8. The standard lens for the camera was Kodak Commerical Ektar 8 1/2 inch f/6.3. Some cameras were equipped with extremely rare Curtiss Colar Stellar 135mm, which i believe was the only large format truly retrofocus lens desing ever produced.

Great job! I'm interested in those dichroic splitters. That must be a great step up from beamsplitters and color filters.

National Photocolour can stll provide new beamsplitters for their cameras. Sadly they cannot provide the color filters.

Got to move on with my Devin.

Actually i've made a pair of pellicle splitters, but they do lose a lot of light. Original Curtiss pellicles were made of nickel-coated cellulose with more than 20% of light being lost on each of those splitters. Dichroic beamsplitters is much more modern solution to the problem. Some design changes had to be introduced into the camera's body of course. And yes, you still have to use filters (for sake of color balance), but the amount of light lost there is quite negligible due to light already been separated. My camera only increases exposure time from 4 to 5 times compared to conventional camera.



(sorry for those color strips framing the shot, i use old Tasma 9x12 film for my experiments, which i have in unlimited supply. 9x12 cm is smaller than 4x5 inches so i can't align 3 negatives perfectly)