COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY

Opotiki News, Volume I, Issue 36, 18 May 1938, Page 4

COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY

VITAL ' , ' . - ' REDUCING THE COST Tlie day must not be far distant when any photographer will be able not only; to take coloured snaps ou film or plates, but may make as many coloured, prints on paper as lie desires at a cost within reach of the ordinary, amateur, says the News Chronicle, London. v j ~ At present the process is so long and costly as to be beyond the pocket of the average photographer. A colour print now costs anything from 10s to £5 ss, according to the size. Mr A. von Bariss, a 53-year-old Viennese photo-chemist, : claims ■to have perfected a method by which he can take, develop and print a colour picture in 90 minutes, at a total retail cost of Is 6cl, for, a 41 by 01 in print. Further prints can be run off every 45 seconds for 4d each. Mi* von Bariss claims that the speed of liis developing and printing methods plus the use of a colour-, cinema camera, which he has invented makes it possible to take colour films and show them in 'an unlimited number* of cinemas on the same - day.'

The process', which has taken Mr. Bariss nine years to perfect , is a secret one. It depends on the chemical reaction of certain emulsions on a special kind of printing paper.

Board of Trade officials know of the process, and M[r Bariss lias been given permits to import the necessary dyes and .to remain in this country to, continue liis experiments. In his laboratory in the city Mr Bariss explained liis process to the News Chronicle. Three Pictures Taken. With a special camera containing three filters—yellow, reel, and blache simultaneously takes three pictures of the image on ordinary colour sensitive (Panchromatic) film. One picture registers yellow light, another red, and a, third blue. ’These he calls “separations.” From these “separations” Mr Bariss makes; three celluloid matrices., Working in daylight, he placed a piece of his special printing paper on a small hand-press. Dipping the yellow matrix made from a photograph of a bunch of multi-coloured

carnations into an emulsion, he laid it over the printing, paper and pressed iff like a transfer.

He counted up to 10, then whipped off the transfer, and a skeleton appeared in yellow on the paper. Repeating this with the red and blue matrices, in 20' seconds he had produced a, paper picture of the bunch of carnations in shades of red, orange, magenta, green, blue, white and the elusive black which colour photography experts have so. far failed to produce. - With-rifefia mel -.hairbrush dipped in various solutions, Mr Bariss deftly retouched the picture,7 making colours disappear or reappear at will. Three hundred prints can be made from one set of matrices, and without; the aid of liis three-filter camera Mr Bariss can make an equal number of prints from any commercial colour film taken from any ordinary camera. For still lectures the shortest exposure given by Mr Bariss in exceptionally good light is 175th of a second with a 4.5 lens. . He - works at 125th or 135th of a second in normally gefod light.

The process differs from others in that it does not need a special apparatus to reveal the colours.