What Films Would You Like To See Kodak Re-Introduce Again? And why?

[Milpool]

I don’t know… it seems to me if you’re going to claim Kodachrome (and which version?) could do things better than any other color negative or positive film current or past, you’d need to have done some kind of side by side comparison. That obviously is not the case, so all we really have here are spirits, essences, chiropractic, throw in some water memory while you’re at it.

There’s probably an indistinguishable digital replication if you really must have it.

 

[MattKing]

I just want the youthful energy back that I enjoyed when Kodachrome was my film of choice.
Heck, if I could get that back, I'd settle for Anscochrome 500!

 

[chuckroast]

Wrong! It captured the spirit and essense of the scene better than any other.

How dare you have an opinion without doing double blind testing. Tsk, tsk.

 

[Dr. no]

I don’t know… it seems to me if you’re going to claim Kodachrome (and which version?) could do things better than any other color negative or positive film current or past, you’d need to have done some kind of side by side comparison. That obviously is not the case, so all we really have here are spirits, essences, chiropractic, throw in some water memory while you’re at it.

What is the goal you wish to accomplish with your medium? Purely chromatic reproduction, granularity, Dmax/range? Some things are suited for direct comparison and require side-by-side comparison, some require subjective impressions. Blah blah blah

 

[Milpool]

That's what I thought. No basis at all, reasonable or otherwise for the claims. "I know what I believe"

 

[Blue Glass]

Aerochrome definitely

 

[Bill Burk]

The thing I find remarkable is the inability of some dug-in defenders of Kodachrome to find Ron's posts on the colour deficiencies of K-14 dyes. After all, if one of the people who was literally one of the patent holders for the process was pretty critical of aspects of K-14's colour, I think the rest of us can be as well.

The other more difficult question is if there are intersections between certain medical conditions that affect colour perception and people's perception of Kodachrome.

Was PE’s criticism that it faded when projected for extended periods of time? I know my average projection time is five seconds.

Or was the issue color impurities and inadequate correction?

I can’t directly compare side by side Kodachrome and Velvia because I used them at different times, but I could compare similar scenery.

I always believed Kodachrome didn’t fade as much as E6, certainly old E6 faded badly but Velvia seems to hold up

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Was PE’s criticism that it faded when projected for extended periods of time? I know my average projection time is five seconds.

Or was the issue color impurities and inadequate correction?

I can’t directly compare side by side Kodachrome and Velvia because I used them at different times, but I could compare similar scenery.

I always believed Kodachrome didn’t fade as much as E6, certainly old E6 faded badly but Velvia seems to hold up

Since Kodachrome is gone, one has to compare Velvia with let;s say, Ektachrome. I still admire Velvia 50 more, but unfortunately, Fuji has discontinued it in 4x5 and larger. Even in smaller sizes, finding it to buy is as rare as hen's teeth.

 

[MattKing]

Or was the issue color impurities and inadequate correction?

This - and that the nature of the process and the materials available made correction impossible.
In contrast, the nature of the technology and the materials available made it possible to get better accuracy with E6 - thus the switch of R&D to that path.

 

[Lachlan Young]

It depends on which version. K25 and K64 had different colour palettes, K64 had a tendency to render skies as cyan, rather than blue. K25 did red well, but green foliage was an odd shade of green. It is a distinctive look for sure. Relatively unsaturated compared to the E6 materials.

Indeed. I'd assumed that most people could readily see these strengths/ weaknesses, but apparently some cannot (or possibly never allowed themselves to use other colour materials). The good parts that people like (e.g. a 'Kodak' red seem to have particularly been engineered into some of the C-41 materials (and you can definitely see the intent from the MTFs)), albeit with an overall vastly better & more usable exposure scale and colour representation. For those pining for cyanotic skies, they can misuse Ektar. At the time of their introduction, I can see why the K-14 films would have been under pressure to produce 'better' colour representation while maintaining the other characteristics, but DIR/ DIAR couplers and the like managed to square the circle for the inherently otherwise better colour neg materials.

I think another aspect that gets casually ignored is that the distance between K-14 appearing and the advent of Velvia was not that long (about the same time as separates now from the introduction of the current Portra 400), but long enough for the drumbeat of those wanting something with the stronger, less controlled colour of older K-12 with easier processing etc to have become clear, even if Fuji ended up off at their own angle on the idea.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Or was the issue color impurities and inadequate correction?

This - mostly related to the cyan dye. He said it could have been fixed if there had been the corporate desire to do so.

Realistically however, today's colour neg wildly outperforms K-14 Kodachrome, even if it was heavily re-engineered with T-grains and new dyes. If I was going to really annoy certain individuals, I'd suggest that Portra 800 is the film KM-25 wished it was.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I'd strongly disagree. Only Ektar 100 comes close to the neutrality of Kodachrome. All the others have a terrible time resolving warm tones, cause they're engineering to lump all those into "pleasing skintones". Even with Portra films, one can't discern between yellow and orange, or orange and pumpkin. The greens are cyan-inflected. Portra 160VC was an improvement, but only partially so. I'm surrounded at the moment by some 4-ft wide framed prints from 8x10 shots using 160VC, printed on Fuji Super C. The 400 and 800 are way off, comparatively, and still look quite color-negish.

 

[Kodachromeguy]

If you want the sterile truth, nothing will beat Ektachrome.

Minor wording change: "you want the sterile truth, nothing will beat Digital."

 

[MattKing]

If you want the sterile truth, nothing will beat Ektachrome.

Slightly older than current Ektachrome:

 

[Craig]

Was PE’s criticism that it faded when projected for extended periods of time? I know my average projection time is five seconds.

Or was the issue color impurities and inadequate correction?

Mainly the colour, there was crossover that was apparently inherent in the process.

Projection life was short too, if you look at the Whillhem Institute aging tests Kodachrome had the best dark storage keeping qualities, but the worst projected life.

 

[isaac7]

I’ve mentioned it before but I find discussions about color accuracy of films to be quite a throwback these days. When film was all there was to capture images it was important to know which emulsion recorded which colors more accurately for technical and color matching workflows. Digital tools have completely taken over that aspect both in capture and post processing. These days film is only used for creative purposes. Part of that process is using how film translates what you see into a picture.

Different films have always rendered colors differently. If a completely accurate film was ever possible it wouldn’t matter who made it because they would all look the same. People want Kodachrome(s) back because of how it looked, how it rendered colors. I suspect that if anyone claims that Kodachrome was the most accurate what they really mean was that it rendered the picture the way they imagined it should be. I also suspect that opinion was formed by anchoring their color experience with Kodachrome first as a preferred choice and then later as a reference. No matter what you get used to, using something else will always feel like a deviation from the baseline.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The only film I ever encountered which could realistically replicate the look of certain fluorescent algae and lichen hues was the extremely grainy and contrasty pre-E6 version of Agfachrome 50. I couldn't resolve greens well; but it's own element, nothing was better.
One chooses their tools wisely. Old Ektachrome 64 would handle nuanced sage and oak leaf off-greens better than current films, but struggled with vivid spring greens due to the red dye contamination. Fujichromes solved that issue, but couldn't replicate the subtlety of E64.
Digital might claim to do all things well, but that's simply not the case. For one thing, you're trapped into digitally printing it, with its own inherent gamut limitations. For another, a Jack of all trades might not do anything specific quite as well, if life is made too easy.

 

[chuckroast]

I’ve mentioned it before but I find discussions about color accuracy of films to be quite a throwback these days. When film was all there was to capture images it was important to know which emulsion recorded which colors more accurately for technical and color matching workflows. Digital tools have completely taken over that aspect both in capture and post processing. These days film is only used for creative purposes. Part of that process is using how film translates what you see into a picture.

Different films have always rendered colors differently. If a completely accurate film was ever possible it wouldn’t matter who made it because they would all look the same. People want Kodachrome(s) back because of how it looked, how it rendered colors. I suspect that if anyone claims that Kodachrome was the most accurate what they really mean was that it rendered the picture the way they imagined it should be. I also suspect that opinion was formed by anchoring their color experience with Kodachrome first as a preferred choice and then later as a reference. No matter what you get used to, using something else will always feel like a deviation from the baseline.

Not to mention the fact that the opinion of different lens designers of how a lens should be corrected also factored into the final colour along with the emulsion.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I’ve mentioned it before but I find discussions about color accuracy of films to be quite a throwback these days. When film was all there was to capture images it was important to know which emulsion recorded which colors more accurately for technical and color matching workflows. Digital tools have completely taken over that aspect both in capture and post processing. These days film is only used for creative purposes. Part of that process is using how film translates what you see into a picture.

Different films have always rendered colors differently. If a completely accurate film was ever possible it wouldn’t matter who made it because they would all look the same. People want Kodachrome(s) back because of how it looked, how it rendered colors. I suspect that if anyone claims that Kodachrome was the most accurate what they really mean was that it rendered the picture the way they imagined it should be. I also suspect that opinion was formed by anchoring their color experience with Kodachrome first as a preferred choice and then later as a reference. No matter what you get used to, using something else will always feel like a deviation from the baseline.

When I convert (scan) Velvia 50 film into a digital image, I try to get the colors to look right in my eyes. I never compare the scanned anmd edited colors on my calibrated screen to see if they match the original film colors. My theory is that the color designed into Velvia 50 was done by some Japanese engineer decades ago. He's probably dead by now. He's certainly not checking my shots. Who cares what the palette he designed is? The film's design is only a reference point. In the end, I'm the one who has to be satisfied with the final colors. Does a painter try to match the colors he sees in nature or does he pick his own color oils?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The only film I ever encountered which could realistically replicate the look of certain fluorescent algae and lichen hues was the extremely grainy and contrasty pre-E6 version of Agfachrome 50. I couldn't resolve greens well; but it's own element, nothing was better.
One chooses their tools wisely. Old Ektachrome 64 would handle nuanced sage and oak leaf off-greens better than current films, but struggled with vivid spring greens due to the red dye contamination. Fujichromes solved that issue, but couldn't replicate the subtlety of E64.
Digital might claim to do all things well, but that's simply not the case. For one thing, you're trapped into digitally printing it, with its own inherent gamut limitations. For another, a Jack of all trades might not do anything specific quite as well, if life is made too easy.

Why do you have to match the actual colors unless you're making a product brochure where the buyers need to see the actual colors of the product they are buying?

 

[chuckroast]

Why do you have to match the actual colors unless you're making a product brochure where the buyers need to see the actual colors of the product they are buying?

I agree with this.

We monochrome film shooters routinely bend the tonal response of film and paper to get a desired artistic effect.

Why should colour be different? I remember when people shooting transparencies we're advised to modify effective film speed for metering to increase or decrease saturation.

I certainly miss being able to use Kodachrome, but not because it represented some objective standard of colour, but because it had a look of its own that was quite beautiful.

To your point and the point of others in this thread, arguably the only time true rendering of colour it's very important is when one is doing technical work or needs to, as best they can, represent a product.

But except for the highest levels of physical printing, this is pretty tough to do and even more so on the morass that is the internet and its monitors. Certainly, the bulk of printed advertisements and even magazines rarely achieved this. In my observation, the printed media today is worse than ever, no doubt to feed an audience raised on looking at screens.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Because just like Ansel himself stated, because it doesn't take long till things start looking fake. Of course, we color printers very much fine-tune and modulate our hues to achieve the look we want. It's just that a skilled magician never shows their hand. No color film or digital form of capture can come close to the full experience of the human eye. But we try.

For example, I recently took a 6x9 Ektar shot of a very interesting outdoor industrial site in the rain. Due to the bluish color temperature, I applied a warming filter in order to boost the whole range of hues onto the more manageable portion of the film curve. But then when I actually printed, I went deliberately more blue. Different effect. I got the rainy day feel, but without the risk of color cyan crossover characteristic of Ektar. And the extra blue (minus Y)
actually heightened the secondary yellow foliage accents in the scene. It looked and felt real, even though it was somewhat biased.

 

[Craig]

These days film is only used for creative purposes.

That's a pretty sweeping statement, I wouldn't have said that. I still use film for documentary purposes and value an accurate colour reproduction.

 

[Dr. no]

Copied from the Danziger thread but equally applicable here!

I try to get the colors to look right in my eyes. I never compare the scanned anmd edited colors on my calibrated screen to see if they match the original film colors. My theory is that the color designed into Velvia 50 was done by some Japanese engineer decades ago. He's probably dead by now. He's certainly not checking my shots. Who cares what the palette he designed is? The film's design is only a reference point. In the end, I'm the one who has to be satisfied with the final colors. Does a painter try to match the colors he sees in nature or does he pick his own color oils?

As I and others have said before, almost all of us are more interested in the vision that the film (or sensor) (or film+sensor) (and then printer/chromogenic dyes) can communicate rather than absolute faithful chromatic fidelity, as have ALL artists through the millennia. And Kodachrome had a palate that was pleasing to most of the people who used it. That is the only requirement for it to be desired and missed as an artistic medium.

 

[Dr. no]

And since we have wandered so far from B&W films, I want Cibachrome back too.