One-shot Cameras... any resources?

[holmburgers]

Heck ya!

I wonder how difficult it would be to do. Obviously the machining would have to be exceptionally good, but other than that, it's just a big box, right?

If you made some that were good, I bet you could sell them at a reasonable rate. $5k?

 

[michaelbsc]

Heck ya!

I wonder how difficult it would be to do. Obviously the machining would have to be exceptionally good, but other than that, it's just a big box, right?

If you made some that were good, I bet you could sell them at a reasonable rate. $5k?

I don't thank it needs to be all that tight unless one really were trying to sell them as a commercial product.


My thoughts were that you could make the beam splitters and film holders fit with a small screw adjustment so you could adjust the parallels and perpendiculars by trial and error.

That makes it one of a kind instead of a mass production item. But its a start.

Now, if I could clone myself I'd have time.

 

[holmburgers]

As per cloning... we have the technology. But you'd be in charge of raising yourself up to, oh, whaddyou think?, 14 or so, before you could start buildling stuff. That's 14 years of maintaining the cellar, making sure it puts the lotion on the skin, etc... you don't want to do that!

Ok, back to reality (that was creepy)...

I think that these Curtis and Devin one-shots used half-silvered mirrors, but I know you're set on the beam splitter idea and that indeed could be a great route to take. I've just read numerous accounts in old books about how tight the tolerances need to be to ensure that the 3 negatives are in the identical plane of focus.

 

[michaelbsc]

...I think that these Curtis and Devin one-shots used half-silvered mirrors, but I know you're set on the beam splitter idea and that indeed could be a great route to take....

That's all a beam splitter is, a half silvered mirror. Take a look at the Edmund's Scientific stuff.

... I've just read numerous accounts in old books about how tight the tolerances need to be to ensure that the 3 negatives are in the identical plane of focus.

That's why I think building to tolerance is a tough plan. You have to build with the plan to shim as required, and do it empirically.

I'm sure someone here knows how, but truth be told I'm certain I cannot calculate how the wavefront of the image changes with some parts going through one sheet of glass, and other parts going through two sheets. I know that affects the physical distance because of the transmission medium differences in the paths. But not in any way that I can predict.

So, you build adjustment into the device, and you tweak!

 

[holmburgers]

Ok... I must've been confuzzed on the beam splitter thing.. I seem to recall a discussion about beam splitters inside CRT TV's, but, regardless..

That kind of calculation should be quite easy to do, and although I can't currently tell you how.. I guarantee we could figure it out.

In fact, I believe that some designs used a "dummy" glass in the optical path to compensate for discrepancies of this sort.

Imagine a one-shot 35mm or 120 camera! You could have 3 rolls of film in 1 camera. That would be awesome...

 

[michaelbsc]

Ok... I must've been confuzzed on the beam splitter thing.. I seem to recall a discussion about beam splitters inside CRT TV's, but, regardless..

...

Imagine a one-shot 35mm or 120 camera! You could have 3 rolls of film in 1 camera. That would be awesome...

That was a Phillips prism we were talking about. Much more elegant, much more expensive, and probably not happening in my life time without a winning lottery ticket. The Phillips prism would have far less light attenuation, but all the modern ones you can find are sized for microscopic CCDs. I found a few places that would make one for prices that would make a military project sweat.

Edmunds has beamsplitters that are 50/50 and ones that are 65/35. So my thinking, without having done all the research, is that you can maybe take care of the filter factors in the camera by how much light goes to each plate.

As far as using roll film is concerned, I suspect that you would have to cut the frames apart for registration anyway. So I was thinking that plain old film holders would be easier with sheet film. I have some 2.25x3.25 film holders that I got for my Baby Graphics 2x3.

 

[CMB]

I think that these Curtis and Devin one-shots used half-silvered mirrors,

My 5x7" Devin-McGraw has gelatin pellicles and my Curtis Color Scout has silvered mirrors.

 

[John Jarosz]

The book by Paul Outerbridge "Photographing in Color" has an appendix with pictures and information about one-shot cameras. It's kind of hard to find and pristine copies are really expensive, but if you find an old beat up copy the information in it is pretty cool. Most people are only interested in the tipped-in photographs.

 

[smieglitz]

If anyone is interested in some NOS 5x7 tricolor holders I have 9 for sale in the classifieds. I've reduced the price considerably from the original ad.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[smieglitz]

I forgot to mention that the tricolor holders I have for sale are plate holders, not film holders.

 

[holmburgers]

I saw those and wondered about them. They would certainly make a collector very happy.

I'm still reeling from the fact that Charles has 2 one-shot cameras...

 

[holmburgers]

Cool Duxochrom one-shot camera.

http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/duxochrom-strahlenteilungskamera,-c.-1930-1-c-d8d9970fd6

 

[holmburgers]

Friday Daydreaming

I've learnt a bit about a unique kind of color camera by studying F.E. Ives' Hess-Ives Hicro Camera (found here, though many different models seem to have existed). It used a special tri-pack with one element that folded down at a 90° angle (the blue sensitive element) relative to the remaining two elements (green & red sensitive plates). Then, a yellow dichroic reflector lowers down from within the camera and bisects this right angle at 45°. It throws blue light onto the blue plate and allows green & red light to pass to the bipack behind it.

U.S.P. 1,287,327 generally describes the Hicro camera.
Then, patent 1,238,775 describes the dichroic reflector and how to make it (warning... it's super easy!)
980,961 describes the film pack I believe, though I haven't actually read this one yet.

Ives refers to this dichroic reflector as a "color selective transparent reflector", and it represents an advantage over a half-silvered mirror or beamsplitting prism in that only one color is reflected and all else are passed. A half-silvered mirror would split all light 50/50 and this would require further attenuation by a color selective filter to isolate the primary light. The dichroic reflector takes care of both at the same time, resulting in less loss.

A dichroic reflector is an interesting thing; "...the sum of the reflected rays is in color substantially the complement of the sum of the transmitted rays."

I have some pictures of the Hicro camera interior that I will post if I get permission from the author of said pix.

OK, and now for something completely different...

Michaelbsc has mentioned several times about using a tri-color beamsplitter to achieve a very efficient separation of light into red, green & blue elements. It turns out these Phillips prisms use dichroic reflectors (maybe you knew this... I didn't!). These might be inside every old camcorder sitting in your closet and I'm wondering if you couldn't just open one up and cannibalize it. Or you can get them for mildly reasonable prices on eBay (at most $200, but O.B.O.). Or one could go for broke (or just broke) and call up these folks.

 

[holmburgers]

Hess-Ives Hicro interior photos, courtesy of Bob Lansdale. I think Bob intended to clean up the photographs by erasing the props & improving the presentation, but I'm too impatient... so don't blame his taste, blame mine!

 

[holmburgers]

Here's the Jos-Pe tri-color camera.

http://www.prophoto-online.de/images/863/150-Jahre-Farbfotografie-0.jpg

All I really know about the Jos-Pe process is that it was a dye-imbibition color printing process that, I think, used relief matrices.

 

[holmburgers]

A few amendments.

First off, the "dichroic reflector" is not used in the Hicro camera, as is made evident by reading the Hicro camera patent more thoroughly. However, the superficial similarity made me jump to conclusions. The dichroic reflector still remains a bit of a mystery to me and I'm quite curious if such a piece of glass coated with a thin alcoholic solution of tartrazine (yellow) would reflect the complementary color, blue. I guess I should try it.

Anyways, the Hicro doesn't require this because the blue-plate is merely unsensitized and thus requires no special filtration to record only the blue light.

Also, here are some cleaned-up pictures provided by Bob to further illustrate the Hess-Ives Hicro camera.

 

[holmburgers]

A few more images of the Hicro camera for the sake of being comprehensive. Courtesy of Bob Lansdale of course.

One image shows the front page of U.S. patent 1,287,327 which shows the folding tri-pack. An earlier patent details such a tri-pack but with tape/fabric hinges. This later improvement has a metal hinge and "plate-pack" construction.

The last image is from a totally different patent for a totally different camera, but that one is worth checking out as well. U.S.P. 1,153,229 (by the way, these are all available on Google patents)

If anyone out there is fooling around with panchromatic emulsions (cough, cough, Bill... ), it might be a good idea to start designing a 3-color camera in your mind.

 

[holmburgers]

I was looking through a 1941 issue of 'The Complete Photographer' last night that had a full & complete rundown of current offerings for one-shot & color cameras.

For one, there were a number of 'single-mirror' cameras and even a single-mirror back that could be put on an ordinary view camera. The single-mirror cameras require the use of a bipack in one of the film holders. Apparently Defender (and perhaps others) supplied appropriate bipack films for these types of cameras. These cameras represented the "affordable end", and I think kits were even available in the less than $50 range. These cameras are direct descendants of the Hicro!

Then we get to the big leagues; two-mirror cameras that take 3 negatives simultaneously in 3 separate holders. I was amazed at the prices of these... anywhere from $600 to nearly $1000. That comes to about $15,000 in today's money.

Also surprising (to me) was how thin the pellicle mirrors are: 1 mil to 0.2 mils thick. I imagine those are very delicate...

Does anyone know how the pellicles were made? I recall Wall & Jordan's 'Photographic Facts & Formulas' had a variety of formulas for silvering glass, but I'd like to know more about this. Patents perhaps?

Here's a great look at some complete one-shot camera setups -> http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/1377632_HJEJJ/1/65026459_3dDPF#65026459_3dDPF
http://www.vintagephoto.tv/scouts2.shtml
http://www.vintagephoto.tv/scouts1.shtml

I plan on scanning and posting the aforementioned article. And yes, I know...

 

[holmburgers]

A real beauty... http://www.earlyphotography.co.uk/site/entry_C292.html#C292

The mirror arrangement on this one is flummoxing, befuddling and downright perplexing.

 

[holmburgers]

Unexpectedly, I found the exact article on color cameras that I referred to above. So, no need to scan I guess...

http://trichromie.free.fr/trichromie/index.php?post/2010/07/23/OneShotCamera

 

[ctsundevil]

In the article referenced above, they mention Defender Tricolor cut film. There was a box of it for sale on eBay a few weeks ago. I don't know if it sold or not.

 

[holmburgers]

Thanks for the tip, though I can't find it in completed auctions.

 

[holmburgers]

Seeking information on these cameras...

This is totally new to me. 3-color cameras in small formats, for the amateur market.

If anybody knows anything about these cameras, please do tell. All I have are these links and the names, that's all I know, though I'll search in the meantime. And if you've got one to sell, send me a PM...

Mikut:
http://www.vintagephoto.tv/temp/my_mikut1.jpg
http://www.vintagephoto.tv/temp/my_mikut2.jpg

OMI Sunshine:
http://p2.la-img.com/427/10947/2668447_1_l.jpg

Spektaretta:
http://www.westlicht-auction.com/index.php?f=popup&id=239307&_ssl=off#239298

 

[holmburgers]

The Spektaretta - The smallest camera in the world for three-colour photography. This camera was manufactured by the firm Optikotechna Prerov in 1939. The camera created three separate negatives 24×24 mm on a usual black/white 35 mm film. A sophisticated splitting prism system ensuring minimal light losses (combined with a low weight of the camera – 1100 g) made it possible to realize snapshots as well.
- http://212.24.128.164/en/glossary/spektaretta

 

[holmburgers]

The OMI Sunshine - Italian camera that dates to 1947. The red, green and blue records are recorded in a space slightly smaller than a full 35mm frame. The individual images are approximately 8 x 11mm, about the size of a Minox image. The focal length of the lenses is 35mm so the lenses are quite long in relation to the image size. The angle of view is very narrow.


Here is a writeup on the Yahoo! History of Color Photography group by Scott of this great website.. You might have to join to see these, but it's easy and well worth it I would have to think. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/history_of_color_photography/message/78

Here are some pictures & color composites from the camera.
http://www.vintagephoto.tv/temp/rgb8.jpg
http://www.vintagephoto.tv/temp/rgb9.jpg
http://www.vintagephoto.tv/temp/10.jpg
http://www.vintagephoto.tv/temp/rgb3.jpg