Bermpohl

Wilhelm Bermpohl was a cabinetmaker in Berlin (Germany). His company made three-color cameras (colour separation cameras). These make separate monochrome negatives of the red, blue and green components of an image, to allow a colour photograph to be assembled in the printing stage. With appropriate filters, this can be done with any camera, and early colour-separation cameras are simply folding plate cameras, adapted to use dark slides that will contain a set of three plates, which are exposed one after another. Later, cameras were designed by several makers including Bermpohl, which use an arrangement of semipermeable mirrors behind the lens to divide the light into three light bundles, forming images on three plates in the same exposure; this extends the usefulness of the method to subjects that would move significantly between one exposure and the next.

The original designer of these cameras was Dr. Adolf Miethe, the co-inventor of the magnesium flash. Bermpohl and Miethe introduced their first three-color camera in about 1902. For some of these cameras the lenses were also designed by Miethe.

Bermpohl & Co. continued making three-color cameras, sophisticated studio cameras and others until 1956.

The company may have moved to Neumünster in Schleswig-Holstein (perhaps after the War), or perhaps had a branch there: Monorail cameras, the Bildmeister and Fotomeister were made in the 1950s by "Bermpohl Apparate-Bau Neumünster".

Cameras

• Dr Miethe's Dreifarben-Kamera (Dr Miethe's Three-color Camera; folding colour-separation camera), about 1902
• Bermpohl Naturfarbenkamera (Natural Color Camera), about 1930
• Bildmeister (wooden monorail camera), aboout 1950
• Fotomeister (wood and aluminium monorail camera), about 1950