National Fotocolor One-Shot Camera

[sanking]

I know this is a long shot but I am looking for information about National Fotocolor one-shot cameras. These cameras were made in the 1940s and were used to make three-color separations on B&W film. By information I mean any brochures or literature about these cameras from the period and/or any modern literature. My interest in this is that I have one of these cameras, a 5X7 model, and am about to restore it to working order.

Interestingly, the company that originally produced these cameras, National Fotocolor, is still in business selling pellicle bean splitters and other optical products, and they can supply me with replacements for the old pellicles in my camera. However, because of change of ownership over the years they have no history and little knowledge of these cameras.

Any information provided will be greatly appreciated.

Sandy King

[Dan Fromm]

Sandy, Henri Gaud, who hangs out here http://www.galerie-photo.info/forum/list.php?f=1 and whose blog is here http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie/index.php/ may be able to help you.

Good luck, have fun,

Dan

[Gord Robinson]

Sandy - try the Dye Transfer Group on Yahoo. There is information on the site about the National Photocolor One Shot Camera there as well as some pictures and data about the replacement of the filters and pellicle mirrors. I have a 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 model of the NPC one shot that I hope to use this summer.
Gord

[sanking]

Gord,

Thanks for the information. I have been in touch for some time with dye transfer artist Jim Browning about the NPC 5X7 one-shot camera and am currently in the process of replacing the pellicle beam splitters. My 5X7 outfit, which consists of the camera, 24 matching holders, and carrying cases for the camera and holders, is in rather remarkable shape, easily EX+, and must have been stored in ideal conditions for several decades. The only problem is the pellicles, which were stiff and brittle, and also designed for tungsten film, so they must be replaced for the work I want to do with the the camera.

Best,

Sandy

Sandy - try the Dye Transfer Group on Yahoo. There is information on the site about the National Photocolor One Shot Camera there as well as some pictures and data about the replacement of the filters and pellicle mirrors. I have a 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 model of the NPC one shot that I hope to use this summer.
Gord

[PaulRicciardi]

Sandy, that's pretty interesting how the rocks are almost entirely monochrome but the trees are colour.

I remember seeing a thread about the colour combination process using filters a while back (probably at least a year ago)...IIRC there might have been some information about the camera in there.

If I can find that thread I'll post it here.

[sanking]

It is not entirely photo-realistic (as that means see what you saw) as I am taking advantages of the very wide tonal range of the separations to interpret the scene. The possibilities with B&W separations are so great one hardly knows where to stop!

Sandy King

Sandy, that's pretty interesting how the rocks are almost entirely monochrome but the trees are colour.

I remember seeing a thread about the colour combination process using filters a while back (probably at least a year ago)...IIRC there might have been some information about the camera in there.

If I can find that thread I'll post it here.

[Gord Robinson]

Sandy that is a striking image made from the separations. From what I understand (this is not gospel) Photoshop has some type of automatic registration program in it's newer versions which would make aligning the negatives a lot less time consuming. My original quest for this summer is to make tests to see if the pellicles in my NPC One Shot Camera and still in good enough shape to make separations for Dye Transfer prints but now that I have seen what you have done in Photoshop I am wondering that if the negs are not acceptable for Dye Transfer than I could use PS to correct them to make digital prints. My camera came with a set of 30 matched glass plate film holders and I am now using a set of septums and TMAX 100 and Tri X cut down to 3x4
to make the camera useable. I have a couple packs of HP3 glass plates but I would think that they are well beyond the "best before date" to be usable for any separation work. Thanks for directing me PS for an alternative method of combining the separations.

Gord

[sanking]

Gord,

The color separations layers can be aligned in Photoshop CS3 or CS4 by use of the File>Script>Load Files into Stacks. Use Browse to load the files, check auto-align, and then click to go. Since the files should be grayscale at ths point it goes pretty fast, even with large files. I processed another old three-color separation set today using the above method and alignment of the three files was perfect. The image is attached. The separations from this set are among the first ones I ever made, on an old Ansco ASA 400 Superpan film, and are very mismatched in terms of both density and contrast but as you can see it was possible to adjust this in Photoshop to make a pretty pleasing image.

The amount of correction that can be done in Photoshop for good in-camera separations will astonish you. In the old days it was very important that the three color records have the same density and contrast. However, with Photoshop one can correct very large density and contrast mismatches.

Sandy King

Sandy that is a striking image made from the separations. From what I understand (this is not gospel) Photoshop has some type of automatic registration program in it's newer versions which would make aligning the negatives a lot less time consuming. My original quest for this summer is to make tests to see if the pellicles in my NPC One Shot Camera and still in good enough shape to make separations for Dye Transfer prints but now that I have seen what you have done in Photoshop I am wondering that if the negs are not acceptable for Dye Transfer than I could use PS to correct them to make digital prints. My camera came with a set of 30 matched glass plate film holders and I am now using a set of septums and TMAX 100 and Tri X cut down to 3x4
to make the camera useable. I have a couple packs of HP3 glass plates but I would think that they are well beyond the "best before date" to be usable for any separation work. Thanks for directing me PS for an alternative method of combining the separations.

Gord

[Gord Robinson]

Thanks Sandy for the PS alignment info - I will dig out some old separation negs when I have some time and give this a try. I don't use PS a lot so it will take some time to figure it all out.

Gord

[dazedgonebye]

Fascinating idea. I'll have to try it at least once.