Tri-chrome

Farside · Expire: 2013-12-27

Following on from a short exchange between Nesster and myself, I downloaded a sample image from the Prokudin-Gorskii Collection http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/, held by the Library of Congress, to practice on.
This one,

This is the small set, the full size scans are freely available, but are 68mb, so I left them alone.

The technique in PS is simple.
1. Crop out each frame and rename it for the colours. In this P-G collection, he shot them as Blue, Green, Red, from the top down.
2. Create a new blank image, sized to easily accomodate the individual frames, to allow for movement during alignment.
3. Open each coloured monochrome in turn and import it into the relevant Channel of the new frame. Do this by using the Crop tool and Copy/Paste.
4. Align each image on top of the other, this is a bit time-consuming, and on this small one wasn't perfect.
5. Once they are in alignment, lock them, using the 'lock' padlock symbol on the RGB layer of the new image.
6. You can then carry out any other PP work on it you care to do and 'save as' anything you like.

This is the result of my messing around - took ages because I was farting about with layers and going up blind alleys.

Upscaled with Genuine Fractals, you can more easily see the slight misalignment, but now I've practised a bit, the time to do it will be much shorter and better. Ignore the GF artifacts, they are inconsequential for the purposes of this illustration.

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

Interesting !!
Aesthetically speaking, the photo reminds me of the early Autochromes (for those who don't know, autochrome was one of the first processes for colour photography, I think it used grains made out of potatoes)

Nesster · Expire: 2014-02-20

Remarkable, well done!

Xpres · Expire: 2014-10-28

Well done indeed. I wonder if you could use a 3D camera to create the negs? A little modification of an old Nimslo perhaps? Not sure about lining the results up though as they'd never quite match. Oh well just a thought.

Sevo · Expire: 2012-12-03

3D cameras explicitly create a distance between the lenses - something which you positively do not want here. For b&w trichrome processes, a camera with beam splitters is used, e.g. http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Bermpohl_Naturfarbenkamera.

Xpres · Expire: 2014-10-28

Mmmm.. A major modification then.. Very Happy

Farside · Expire: 2013-12-27

I'd thought about that - I have drawer full of M42 cams and the lenses for 'em, like everybody here Smile

, so a trio arrangement of cams suggested itself, but registration would be a problem - they'd be ok in the middle but the images would gradually get out of register moving away from the centre point.
The neatest solution so far is one I have - a Sigma Filtermatic 24mm with three dial-in filters. Not quite RGB, but O, Y, Light Blue. Enough for experimentation.
If I get a Cokin frame and make a colour wheel, I will be able to change colours quickly.

Nesster · Expire: 2014-02-20

of course, one may be a Purposeful Luddite: take a digital pic, do the B&W conversions, one per color channel, and there you are.

Using film - get the three required filters - Red, Green, Blue - and take three successive shots, one per. Of course this requires stationary subjects - and should make for some interesting clouds!

Laurence · Expire: 2016-06-19

What a nice result from experimentation! The colors really "meshed" together beautifully. Would love to see more as you refine the technique.

Farside · Expire: 2013-12-27

Farside · Expire: 2013-12-27

I also found this - very interesting.
http://www.butkus.org/chinon/devin/devin.htm

Xpres · Expire: 2014-10-28

Now where do you get one of those?

Katastrofo · Expire: 2013-11-19

I like the vintage look to this.

Farside · Expire: 2013-12-27

Seele · Joined: 17 Apr 2009 Posts: 741 Location: Sydney Australia

There had been a lot of those "one-shot" cameras over the years, they carried on being developed and used well after the advent of integral tripack colour films, especially by news photographers since they could make the colour separation plates much quicker than having to do the colour separations during the plate-making phase. A popular later camera for field use was the Curtiss, if memory serves, but Meopta (then Optikotechna) made one using 35mm film after that.