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

[sanking]

BTW, if you can put up with the hassle it is possible to make great color prints from three-color separations on B&W film. Many years ago I spent a lot of time making three color separations with 4X5 and 5X7 view cameras, making three shots through Red, Green and Blue filters. At the time I printed these negative directly by contact with three-color carbon, and that process being as complicated as it is I probably have only printed about .5% of the negatives I made back in that period.

Today I pulled out one of the three-color separation sets and scanned the negatives, then combined them as Cyan/Magenta/Yellow layers in Photoshop, and registered manually the layers. The attached image, which is the first one I have ever made from the many negatives I made in the early 1980s, is attached. It was originally made with a 4X5 view camera on an old Ansco Superpan 400 film in 1982. The scene is White Water Falls in North Carolina. Given that I knew almost nothing about combining separations in Photoshop before today, I don't think the image is half bad.

Sandy

[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.

[D. Bryant]

BTW, if you can put up with the hassle it is possible to make great color prints from three-color separations on B&W film. Many years ago I spent a lot of time making three color separations with 4X5 and 5X7 view cameras, making three shots through Red, Green and Blue filters. At the time I printed these negative directly by contact with three-color carbon, and that process being as complicated as it is I probably have only printed about .5% of the negatives I made back in that period.

Today I pulled out one of the three-color separation sets and scanned the negatives, then combined them as Cyan/Magenta/Yellow layers in Photoshop, and registered manually the layers. The attached image, which is the first one I have ever made from the many negatives I made in the early 1980s, is attached. It was originally made with a 4X5 view camera on an old Ansco Superpan 400 film in 1982. The scene is White Water Falls in North Carolina. Given that I knew almost nothing about combining separations in Photoshop before today, I don't think the image is half bad.

Sandy

[dazedgonebye]

BTW, if you can put up with the hassle it is possible to make great color prints from three-color separations on B&W film. Many years ago I spent a lot of time making three color separations with 4X5 and 5X7 view cameras, making three shots through Red, Green and Blue filters. At the time I printed these negative directly by contact with three-color carbon, and that process being as complicated as it is I probably have only printed about .5% of the negatives I made back in that period.

Today I pulled out one of the three-color separation sets and scanned the negatives, then combined them as Cyan/Magenta/Yellow layers in Photoshop, and registered manually the layers. The attached image, which is the first one I have ever made from the many negatives I made in the early 1980s, is attached. It was originally made with a 4X5 view camera on an old Ansco Superpan 400 film in 1982. The scene is White Water Falls in North Carolina. Given that I knew almost nothing about combining separations in Photoshop before today, I don't think the image is half bad.

Sandy

This is quite striking. Can someone explain to me how it works? I can't seem to get my poor mind around it.

[sanking]

It works this way. You make three negatives of the original scene through a tricolor filter set, usually 25 Red, 58 Green, and 47 Blue. From these three separations the entire range of the spectrum can created with subtractive printing, which involves converting the Red negative to a cyan printer, the Green negative to a magenta printer, and the Blue negative to a yellow printer. The first color printing processes were subtractive assembly processes, three-color carbon and later dye transfer. In three-color carbon the Red negative is used to make a cyan relief, the green negative to make a magenta relief, and the blue negative makes a yellow relief. The three reliefs are then assembled together to give full color. In three color carbon the reliefs consisted of pigmented gelatin. Dye transfer used a similar concept but the colors were dyes, not pigmented reliefs, transferred to the paper by dyed matrixes.

Today with software like Photoshop you can take the RGB negative separations, scan them, then convert the files to CMY. You then assemble them with layers, moving them about to get good registration, and you basiclaly create a subtractive image. The concept is similar to old printing methods, but much more powerful. I found a tutorial on the web about this but everything is done manually and takes a lot of time. I assume there must be a faster way to do this with the automatic merging tools in Photoshop but for a first time this one worked oki.

Sandy

This is quite striking. Can someone explain to me how it works? I can't seem to get my poor mind around it.