Re: Restoration of tri-color camera

I am fairly certain that the pigments used were proprietary, and
different ones were used by the various manufacturers of three-color
carbon tissue. In fact, some of the manufacturers of this product
even offered two or three series of tissues, favoring either
saturation or permanence.

Of course, some people carried this information away from the company
and gave it to other people. In the mid 80s I was in contact with a
number of folks, all now deceased, who provided me with the exact
pigments used in one of the Devin McGraw three-color tissues. In fact
I still have the pigments and their code numbers. But the formula was
based on beginning with dry pigments that did not disperse easily in
pigmented gelatin solutions. Eventually, when I started to make my
own carbon tissue a man named Richard Kauffman, who with Charles
Berger developed the Polaroid/Ultrastable color carbon system, kindly
gave me a formula based on water soluble pigments, distributed at
the time by Dupont. They worked perfectly for three-color carbon and
carbro, but may or may not be the same as the ones used in the
Ultrastable system.

Unfortunately so much of this knowledge exists only in memory, and
the people with the memory are fast leaving us.

Sandy

>----- Original Message ----- From: "Sandy King" <sanking@clemson.edu>
>To: <alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca Resent-reply-to :>
>Sent: Friday, March 11, 2005 4:30 PM
>Subject: Re: Restoration of tri-color camera
>
>>I have been quite surprised with how much information is still
>>available about these cameras, though so far I have heard from only
>>one person who has actually used such a camera to make color prints.
>>
>>As for the carbon tissue I don't belive that Bostick and Sullivan
>>has any three-color tissue for sale at this time. I know for a fact
>>that Dick Sullivan is interested in producing this material, but so
>>far as I know he has not done so as of yet, even for testing.
>>
>>Sandy
>>
> Well, perhaps he needs a little encouragement. It would be useful
>to know something about the pigments used in the original process.
>Probably all this stuff was proprietary but maybe not.
>
>---
>Richard Knoppow
>Los Angeles, CA, USA
>dickburk@ix.netcom.com
Received on Fri Mar 11 22:44:42 2005