Career
Turpin began his career in 1945 at Ealing Studios as a camera assistant to Douglas Slocombe and Stanley Pavey. From 1953 he worked as a camera operator, and worked with the likes of Pavey, Gordon Dines, Desmond Dickinson, Otto Heller, Gilbert Taylor, Reginald H. Wyer and Harry Waxman. In 1961 he made his first film as director of photography, The Queen"s Guards with director Michael Powell.
His first collaboration with Bryan Forbes in 1964, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, earned him a nomination at the 1965 British Academy Film Awards (British Academy of Film and Television Arts).
Foreign his second collaboration with Attenborough, Young Winston, Turpin developed a camera lens mounted device called ColorFlex which represented an alternative to traditional pre-exposure (flashing) of the negative film in the laboratory From 1973 Turpin developed his ColorFlex system into a comprehensive system called Flex which was used by cameramen such as Oswald Morris (1978 in The Wiz), Freddie Francis (1984 Dune), Sven Nykvist (1984 Swann in Love), Adam Greenberg (1987 Louisiana Bamba) and Jost Vacano (1990 Total Recall).