Bipack color

In bipack color photography in motion pictures, two strips of film are used to record two colors of the spectrum for the purpose of print later onto one strip of film. The technique of bipack color photography became economical in the early 1910s when the Kodak introduced duplitized film.

Bipack photography was, at one point in motion pictures, the most economical process of natural-color cinematography available, where color was needed and circumstances did not warrant the higher cost of three-color methods. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the introduction of monopack stocks such as Kodachrome, Ansco Color, Dupont Color and Eastman Color, favor of bi-pack photography and printing dwindled.

How it works

photography refers to two strips running through the camera at once, for the purpose of recording two different spectra of light, generally.

Color photography begins with any standard camera. Special magazines or adapters must be provided to accommodate two separate rolls of film. Two films are loaded, passing through the photographing aperture with the emulsions towards each other. The front film is orthochromatic, to record the blue-green portion of the picture. On top of the base is a red-dye layer equivalent to a Wratten 23A filter. The rear film is panchromatic, and being photographed through the red coating of the front film, records only the red-orange components of the picture. No filtering is necessary either for exterior or interior photography, as all necessary color corrections are made by adjusting the development of the two negatives during printing.

Since the image must be focused on the plane of contact of the two negatives used, lenses and focusing screens used in bipack photography would be readjusted to throw the plane of focus .006" back of the standard black-and-white plane.

Care would be taken to avoid photographing objects of purple, lavender or pink coloring, as bi-pack color generally cannot reproduce these colors in printing.

After processing the two negatives, the red and cyan records were printed separately on a single strip of Eastman or DuPont duplitized stock. Since the red negative was reversed in camera (that is, its emulsion away from the lens), there was no optical printing required to focus the image, and thus contact printing on both emulsions took place. Both sides were toned by floating each side in a tank with the complementary colors (cyan for the side exposed with the red negative and vice versa) using toning chemicals or through dye mordanting.

Bipack color processors

Over the years, a great number of bipack color processors existed, largely due to the lack of holding patents on processing in this method. These systems included:

*Kodachrome (1915), Eastman-Kodak's first color system
*Prizma (1918-1928)
*Brewster Color (1913-193?)
*Magnacolor (1928-194?), by Consolidated Film, a direct off-shoot of Prizma
*Colorcraft (1929)
*Harriscolor (1929)
*Multicolor (1929-1932), a company financed by Howard Hughes
*Photocolor (1930)
*Sennettcolor (1930)
*DuPack Process (1932)
*Cinecolor (1932-1954), the most popular bi-pack processor, an off-shoot of Multicolor
*Polychrome
*Kesdacolor
*Douglass Color (second process)
*Dascolor
*Cinefotocolor
*Colorfilm process

In addition, Consolidated Film also owned the Trucolor color system, which was shot as bipack color, but processed with special duplitized stock produced by the Eastman Kodak company that carried a dye-coupler.

ee also

*Color film (motion picture)
*Color photography
*List of color film systems
*List of film formats