accessory to create in camera double/triple exposures
Toronto. The Young-Helmholtz theory of colour with three different wavelengths of rays in various combinations became the standard means to create colour images – even today in the digital world.
Different camera designs were touted to place the three unique colour images on three different monochrome plates. A scheme to expose all three plates at once offered a way to capture colour photos of something in motion.
A novel accessory using a similar idea was this 1956 gadget that combined two or three subjects on one film frame – still or movie. This way, a photographer could super impose one image on another in camera rather than in the darkroom.
The idea probably didn’t catch on, since it had limited use, and disappeared from view. In the 1950s, photographers fussed over added lenses, better resolution, higher sensitivity, colour, flash, etc. far more than any niche idea.
Thanks to my good friend George Dunbar for sourcing this piece of photo history in a filler article from the May, 1956 issue of Popular Mechanics. A clever idea that seemed to be of little practical value.
