Trichrome Photography Basics
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- čas přidán 6. 08. 2024
- RGB. The fundamental principle behind color photography
It was back in 1855 James Clerk Maxwell published a thought experiment laying out the basic concepts for color photography. He posited that if you took three black and white photos, one with a red filter, one a green filter, and one a blue filter, combine them together, you can create a color photograph.
In 1861 Maxwell and Thomas Sutton, photography pioneer and inventor of the SLR, joined forces to put this thought experiment to the test.
The end result, a color photograph of a tartan ribbon, which is now considered to be the first color photograph ever created.
00:00 - Intro
00:32 - Filters
03:02 - Photoshop
05:16 - Pros and Cons
06:47 - End
Music:
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Cockroach On Toast - Rachel K Collier
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The Harris shutter photos are super tight tho tbh. Especially the one in the city with the people walking. Would make an awesome print tbh
This would be a good use of a half frame 35mm camera since it double the number of images you can take on a roll
If you need the volume a half frame camera would be great. But I've actually went the opposite direction and have been using my medium format camera more. The whole operation is a bit tedious, lugging a tripod and swapping filters and such. I'd rather get through a roll a quick as possible.
I just got my results back from my first attempt at this and I think they look rad. Thanks for the inspiration!
That's great to hear. I'm glad it worked out for you!
You can also shoot bi-chrome with two negatives instead of three, dropping the blue channel. It looks a little weird and may not represent reality 100% but it works surprisingly well for skin tones (and saves you film lol)
You can can also accurately colour balance by using no filter for the third frame, but then you have the same issue (burning through film)…
Weren't the first Kodachrome experiments 2 color?
I've never seen so many cons to a film technique but wanted to shoot it more 🤣👍🏾
This is a film process that is actually great to do with a modern digital camera. Just split the channels in editing and resemble the 3+ images in post
Always wanted to try this technique. Thanks for the insights.
found your channel about two days and it already makes me feel inspired and curious about film photography again. i was way into it couple of years ago and then it got pushed aside by having a job, but every now and again I think about getting back into it. thanks to this video, I now have the perfect idea of what I can use about 10 rolls of bw film laying somewhere in my fridge! thank you for the type of content and comedy you put out, it really did make my day.
by the way, if you're reading this - can I post a suggestion of a video idea? back when I was younger and cooler, I used to hang out at night in the streets, either shooting with tripod, or handheld with pushed film, so I developed a taste for nighttime\lowlight photography. one of the films I use is Tasma Mikrat 200, which is an iso 2.7 expired film you can still shoot at 6 or 12 iso comfortably. the funny thing about this stock is that it's basically insensitive towards red light (i think orthochromatic is the actual term, but basically reds turn into straight up blacks on it), super slow, has a very fine grain and is susceptible to "halation". I always wonderd if one can intentionally calculate the effects of halation or get the feeling for it. so yeah, sorry for long winded rant, superslow films,
Really cool video! Thanks
Brilliant video thank you. I have long considered trying this and your review really helps!💯
ah, I see you're a man of culture as well,
I've been dabling in trichrome for a while and it is frustratingly undocumented like I've been searching how to make slides from them to enjoy them to their full potential
Please consider joining my new subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/trichromes I am trying to make a community of people doing this and get the info all in one place :-)
I had a job in a darkroom where we ran a copy setup that produced paper positives from original material in one generation, using a version of this…the ‘camera’ was two light-isolated rooms(~30 ft combined length), separated by a choice of huge Schneider lenses, a rotating disc with two cutoff filters and a blank, empty gate (you only ‘need’ two colours + white, mathematically), and a front-faced mirror. Lights and vacuum tables were all track-mounted for focussing, and colour balance was achieved by tweaking exposure duration through each gate. Process was Illford’s Cibachrome (gorgeous material!), and Fuji made some (very contrasty, saturated) papers for this as well. VERY cool piece of gear and setup.
Loved the video, really took me back. Thanks. I’ve got to try all this. Subscribed.
Looking forward to whatever the thing that comes shortly is, grade A content!
Thanks, really appreciate it!
some nice trippy effects of some of those photos. i also like the ones that don't turn out as they have a very interesting look to them.
Great video, subscribed. Now I really want to try this process! Also the photo at 7:06 is super nice.
Thanks man, I really appreciate it!
I really like the photo with the people walking. A lot. I looked into doing this in 2020 and finding the Green and Blue filters were indeed hard and expensive and I ended up not following through with the project.
Proper trichrome filters are expensive. But if you want to mess around with the effect there are cheaper alternatives.
You can get color gels. They're cheap but easily damaged.
You can get filters that are close enough, like an X1 green filter. They're usually cheaper and more available.
And if you want to do this on film you can get color film, shoot three frames, then in post you can extract the red channel from one frame, green from another, and the blue channel from the last frame and combine them together.
Sick af
I had no idea this was a thing. I had thought about doing it the other day using b/w film to take color images. I thought I had a cool idea. Apparently, it is cool, but I was the last one to have it!
I still have to try it though.
This is such an interesting technique!
I wonder if it would work using a Cyan, Magenta, Yellow split and setting it up on a CMYK file in Photoshop…
Also love your video style, keep it up!
Since I have such a loose grasp on color theory I'm probably not the best person to ask. But I'd assume it wouldn't work. At least with CMY filters on b&w film.
I would like to try this, but I don't think anyone makes cyan or magenta filters. Maybe I could try it with gels or something.
@@WSetzer Ok, but since we are using photoshop anyway we could actually do the subtractive process. I find it an interessting idea. I think I will give it a try...
@@WSetzer I think it’s ‘do-able’, but less efficient; I read somewhere Kodak’s early digital sensor’s filters were CMY-based. I tried to shoot exactly one job with an early Kodak SLR. The colours were weird in that cyans and magentas were…perfect. Not lifelike, but uncanny and mathematical, somehow.
Side flex: I have an 8mpx Sony DSC-F828 that has a RGBE filter, ‘E’ being emerald…they introduced a wavelength of green intended to eliminate the magenta fringing most sensors experience in high-contrast highlights. Oddly, you can tap a strong magnet to the base of the lens barrel, and it’ll temporarily pop the cold mirror out of place…you now have a camera that can shoot UV and/or IR. When you turn it off, it goes back to normal. And it has a Carl Zeiss f2.0. Shoots tiffs. I love it.
Nice introduction. I used to do this sort of work back in the 80s and will be getting back into it very soon. I hope you don't mind but I do have some questions... How are you scanning your film? You show what looks to be negatives, but then the images are positives (unless I'm totally mistaken which is always possible!). So do you scan the negatives and then reverse the images in PS for example? With a scanner designed for film perhaps? Have you done the same process with b/w slide film? One of the techniques I used to play with (with absolutely no success I should add) was trying to merge the trichrome method with some watercolour techniques - do you have any thoughts on this?
Thanks a lot and I hope you do continue with some other videos! Stay safe.
Honestly, I would just grab some red, blue, and green lighting gels and hold them over the lens while it sits on a tripod. I've done something similar with a pair of sunglasses over my smartphone camera to get a uv filter.
Interesting. I looked up the specs for the Red 25a filter you used, and it shows a filter factor of +2.5 stops (straight off the hoya website.) Did you arrive at 3 stops from experience, or some other resource I didn't look up?
I have what could be considered as mastery of the Tri-Colour B&W separation colour photography process. It took a long time, it is convoluted and complicated - but - completely doable. The results are amazingly beautiful, possibly the best colour I have ever seen. It would take me several hours to verbally describe the process, and if you wish to establish a dialogue, then contact me. But you really have to want to do it in order to do it well.
You definitely have my interest. I'm always looking for ways to better my trichromes.
OK, two years later and I have begun working with film again. Every part of the process is difficult, but worth it. Let’s keep in touch.
Do we ever see those sheets of RGB slides come back in another video? My curiosity is piqued
Can you do a video about a "tri"chrome but using 4 filters with and infrared film, like using the 3 color filter + an ir one
Great video! Cool content on the channel!
What I've been struggling to find out is how to achieve the trichrome print in the darkroom?
I don't have any color darkroom printing experience so I can't help you there. But in theory you should be able to work. You'd have to align each frame in a carrier, use the respective filter, and expose.
Again, I don't know what I don't know, and RA-4 printing is a bit out of my depth.
This is mind blowing. I thought I knew photography…thanks for showing something original, fascinating, and not soundtracked by lo fi cliche nonsense
I don't do photography, just passing by, interesting, nice editing, 17/20
+1 for the ankward bye
have you ever tried using a panorama stitcher like Hugin to automatically align the frames?
Look up the 3-strip Technicolor process. The most famous example is Wizard of Oz film (1939). You know, "I'm off to see the Wizard. The wonderful wizard of Oz..."
You're basically replicating conceptually that process. Technicolor prism split the incoming image into three channels, RGB filtered and separately recorded onto three cameras running B&W film. That's how they got around the temporal alignment issues you ran into.
In a more modern context, the beam split method is used in high-end video cameras like the AG-HPX170. Each pixel gets recorded behind separate R, G and B filters on three different sensors. No Bayer interpolation this way.
Hey, for your experimentation have you thought about shooting through a color wheel - R, G and B? This should be faster and reduce alignment problems.
Amazing work ! You inspired me to do it in my city ! But I need an advice, what kind of magnetic filter holder should I buy ???
I use Manfrotto Xume holders. I'm not sure if anyone else is making them. While they work fine my biggest gripe is they vignette with wide angle lenses.
You could swap to colors around, like trade red and blue. That is the red shot is displayed with blue and blue is displayed as red. For that.matter, do a three way swap, red becomes blue, blue becomes green, and green becomes red.
Another possibility is take one color and flip it to a negative, with all other colors normal.
Even with all the CONS I’m so gonna try this 😅
"You're going to lose one third of your film roll."
"I am really bad at math."
You are not contradicting yourself there. ;-)
Thanks for the video!
I'd like to see you replicate Autochrome. I've seen a few Autocchrome prints and they look glorious.
Would a triple exposure in color film (one for each filter) instead of three single exposures in black-and-white film yield good results?
Edit: Just realized floyd7820 asked the same question. The answer from Attic Darkroom was "Triple exposing with RGB filters onto color film will yield a full color photo, but you would have to expose each filter normally.
You wouldn't decrease the exposures because each filter only captures their respective part of the visual spectrum. i.e. red only captures red, green only captures green, and blue only captures blue. There shouldn't be any overlap between the three, so no need to change the exposure."
No links to the other videos in description?
your videos have inspired me to try a cheap and dirty attempt at trichrome photography using a triscopic camera, color gels, and distant subjects. The problem is that my triscopic camera is basically a toy camera without the ability to control shutter speed. I was planning to overexpose and pull it back in post. Have you tried that / how viable do you think that method will be?
Triscopes might cut maybe half of your cons down, "imperfect" pictures can be marketed as "stylistic", and an option to mitigate the high cost/using 3 frames for 1 color photo would be to shoot half-frames.
From my experience the exposure needs to be spot on, basically like slide film.
If you don't have control over the shutter speed it might be difficult getting the colors to look right.
With that said, if I were you I'd totally give it a shot. I'd be interested in the results you get.
@@atticdarkroom The gels I got didn't work, but I swapped out for some color transparency paper from my local arts and crafts store and they work pretty well! Correcting exposure in post works well enough, although I'm sure nailing it in camera is always preferable, which I'm trying to do now with a proper SLR and light meter. Thanks again for the inspiration!
I'm glad to hear you got it working. Getting the exposure right is tricky, but hopefully your SLR makes the process easier. If you have any other questions feel free to ask.
Subbed.
Hi there! =) QUESTION!!! how to make optical print from trichrome neg`s????
I'm still using an ancient version of Photoshop. Photoshop 7.0. Would merge layers be the same as merge channels?
Amazing channel. I do enjoy your tempo, all these voluntary mistakes, so thank you for all your videos, hahaah, BTW I was wondering if have you tried to do this with Xray film on large format. Probably you just can shoot 2 channels (not red one) but anyway Though it would be interesting to try it just because. Regards man.
I haven't tried xray film yet, but I ever get my hands on some you bet I'll tricrhome it!
Very nice-- especially listing the specific filters. I've been interested in this sort of thing since seeing this guy's work: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky
Pretty interesting process. Film and processing is expensive if you don't have a darkroom, so it got me thinking,
I wonder if doing it the exact same way but with a digital camera, set up to take black and white images, and using those screw on filters.
Then processing it the same way, rejoining the part of the process of where you scan the negative ?
If it still works, you would miss out on alot of the tactile satisfaction of this whole process and results though.
the way i see it with a digital camera, you don't even need filters. you could just take 3 color photos and extract the red, green and blue channels from the first, second and third photo respectively. but doing it this way feels like cheating in a way :p
@@morchkovalski Yes I agree, it would really remove alot of the satisfaction of it, but would be an interesting experiment.
I have checked and checked again and I cannot merge channels. I have only the three photos open. They are exactly the same pixel dimensions, and all three are 8-bit grayscale mode in Photoshop (using CS6). Merge Channels is still dimmed. Any idea what the deal is?
Disregard. Images needed to be flattened (they were in layers).
What if you did this but used a camera 📷 that offered the half frame function?
What magnetic filter adapters are you using?
Manfrotto Xume. Unfortunately looks like they've been discontinued.
how do you expose for trichrome? Take a generic exposure and then adjust for the filter factor?
also, were the slides at the very end e6 color slides? I had tried to do something similar, but through manually toning black and white film slides, but I wasn't able to get the chemistry to work
When I started I tried adjusting for filter factor, but the colors came out all wrong because I suck at filter factor math.
I later found out that my FE2 can meter through the filters without any trouble. Most, if not all, of the examples I showed were metered through the lens. Recently I've been shooting with cameras without built-in meters, and in those cases I use a spot meter and just meter through the filter.
And regarding the slides, that was E6.
Are you going to cover the Land 2 filter full color image process?
I didn't know this was a thing. I'll have to look into it further. Thanks.
Serious question; why not just use the floppy film (r,g,b film) and hold it over the lens instead of screwing it on?
Is a Hoya 80B filter good enough for the blue filter?
It will work, but it allows in a lot of red and green. It'll do an ok job, but won't get you accurate colors.
How about some trichrome printing, like the gum over platinum process?
Don't you lose 2/3rds of your film?
Yep, a 36 exposure roll nets you 12 pictures.
@@atticdarkroom you said the opposite in the video...that you lose 1/3rd of the film
Yep, that would be a brain fart.
i tried, but i'am lost in PS 2022, have no channels to combine.. mabye you missed out a step?
With this method make sure:
1- All three images are opened separately.
2- All images are in grayscale color space (not just B&W)
3- All images are the exact same pixel dimensions.
If your photos are in RGB color space you can also copy and paste the red, green, and blue channels into a new image.
If neither of those work could you let me know your exact steps were?
What if you print these images with an color enlarger
I can't say for certain, but if you took each negative with its respective filters and somehow managed to align the negatives, you should get a full color picture.
What if all of my results (even with veeery carefully set exposure) turn out to be bright pink?
Nvm lawl i’m stupid
Our nearest future since there are almost no colour films on market
What if you use cyan, magenta, and yellow instead?
Try it and report the results, I'm curious
Awesome. This is probably why they developed the Leica M Monochrom. Oh, wait…
Wellllll that demon duck is going to haunt me forever
So basically it's technicolor. Gotta try this now
It is also called Kodachrome
I love you
I have an idea : BW slide film trichrome
fucc, i will flex when you get thousands of subs
if you were to do the 3 exposures on a single frame, each using a different filter and each at 1/3 of the correct exposure, would you get a color image? My guess is no but would you know why?
Triple exposing with RGB filters onto color film will yield a full color photo, but you would have to expose each filter normally.
You wouldn't decrease the exposures because each filter only captures their respective part of the visual spectrum. i.e. red only captures red, green only captures green, and blue only captures blue. There shouldn't be any overlap between the three, so no need to change the exposure.
orange green - 2 exposures
Surely you lose 2/3 not 1/3?
Wait til this guy hears about *The Prok*
Bruh is et trying to phone home with them fingers lmaooooo
No good reason is the best reason.
Is it just me or shouldn't you lose 2/3rds of your film?
Since if you have 9 frames, you can get 3 images max you lose a potential of 6 frames out of 9, so 66%.
Yep, it takes three exposures for one color image. So 36 exp gets you 12 pictures.
I just got a brilliant idea but i don't have the filters to test it out. What if instead of using RGB filters on your camera lens, you used them on a flash unit? Could make for an interesting effect where everything lit by the flash is in color but the rest lit ambiently is monochrome
*2/3rds
Duck you are doing witchcraft!!!!
dude, get a half frame camera.