• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

A Kodachrome type film formula!

Photo Engineer

Subscriber
Allowing Ads
Joined
Apr 19, 2005
Messages
29,017
Location
Rochester, NY
Format
Multi Format
At some risk, here is a Kodachrome type film formula for the "last days".

I don't want to be chained in a barn!

In the thread "a real formula" I give an emulsion formula that will make an ISO 25 - 80 emulsion depending on the workers skill and resources. I'll use that as a base to go further.

1. Make 3 emulsions like the one in that thread but use 3 temperatures about 10 - 20 deg C apart. IE, use 40, 60 and 80 deg C for the PPTNs. Then, sensitize each with sulfur or sulfur + gold.

2. You now have 3 emulsions which must be split into 9 jars. Three of them (fast, medium and slow or 80, 60 and 40 deg C makes) will be stored, bu the other 6 will be sensitized spectrally to R and G light. Mixtures of the 3 will be used in each layer. So there will be 3 blues, 3 greens and 3 reds.

3. Find yourself some Rem-Jet backing! Good luck!

4. Coat the red layer (red sensitive) at about 150 mg/ft square of silver using a blend of the three red sensitive emulsions.

5. Coat an interlayer with about 10 mg / ft square of Di-t- octyl HQ. (a scavenger dispersion - see my post on making dispersions....)

6. Coat the magenta (green sensitive layer at about 150 mg / ft square.

7. Coat a mix of yellow CLS silver and 10 mg/ft squre of the HQ dispersion.

8. Coat the unsensitized mix of the 3 emulsions as the blue sensitive layer.

9. Coat a UV absorbing overcoat in gelatin.

10. Go find the couplers and the developing agents and mix the solutions up.

11. Process and adjust the coating and process until you get good color.

Have fun. Don't chain me up in a barn!

PE
 
Well, I'm figuring there's hundreds of rolls of K14 left out there. After all, one guy said he had 400 himself left over.

For that matter I've got a brick of 120 K-14 left.

So how to process it as a small batch would be the first thing we'd really need.

I have been thinking of how one might build a small container to abrade the Rem-jet off.

The first development can't be hard. Its just a B&W developer.

The rest is a mystery to me. But it has to be doable even if it isn't commercially viable. You've already admitted that K14 was sometimes processed by hand at EK.

The chems will be tough, but anything worth having is worth working for.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
It would be helpful for someone, PE if possible, can come up a modified E-6 formula, that can be used to process Kodachrome film.

What I mean modified E-6 formula, is to utilizing current available E-6 chemicals; If not, some formulas we can use to mix from raw chemicals. It does not need to be E-6; could be E-14 or any number of steps, as long as it works.

Even some suggestions on which step to use which chemicals to try out it would be useful and fun to experiment. I am not striving for color accuracy and it probably not possible without original Kodak chemicals. I just want to get some approximate color matches.
 

This is not possible as E-6 have the color dyes in the film already, and for Kodachrome the dyes are added during processing. Here is a technical explanation of the process from Kodak.

http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins/acrobat/en/service/Zmanuals/z50_03.pdf

Regards,
Chris Maness
 
Thanks for the the kodak document. It has detailed steps and helpful. But it does not contain the formulas for each step. Have the K-14 formulas been published yet?
 
I wish they would, maybe PE can give the processing chemicals/dyes for K14. There is a guy in Europe that had done some reverse engineering and supposedly has been able to process at home. It is too bad Kodak did not just simply make all of the info public domain. I am not sure if there are trade secrets that have to do with current films or not.

Chris
 

Thanks for the explanation about not to use E-6 chemicals.

It seems no one ever posted a replacement formula for K-14. Is it possible to come up a bunch of replacement formulas for K-14?
 
bwfans said:
Thanks for the explanation about not to use E-6 chemicals.

It seems no one ever posted a replacement formula for K-14. Is it possible to come up a bunch of replacement formulas for K-14?
Click to expand...

I believe it is possible. Hopefully PE will reply on this thread. He is far more the expert.

Chris
 
Ok PE, I just whipped up a few hundred rolls of RonAchrome, so how do I process this stuff?
 
Yes, that's the thing.
Apparently there still are plenty Kodachrome (type) films around, but no way to process them.
So you approached this backwards, PE. Back to the barn!
 
bwfans said:
Thanks for the the kodak document. It has detailed steps and helpful. But it does not contain the formulas for each step. Have the K-14 formulas been published yet?
Click to expand...

I think it is published in the patent documents. And if I recall correctly Kodak specifically released all that in hopes someone would also get into the market. Apparently there was some competition in the K-13 and K-12 realm. But K-14, in what was even then a shrinking market, just pushed Fuji and Agfa out the door rather than expanding the market.

What I see as the big lost opportunity was an idea I was pushing back a few years ago, when it was apparent Kodachrome was moribund even though not yet dead. Had Dwayne's provided awesome quality scans rather than the infamously mediocre ones (and there may not have been a cost sustainable market, so I'm not second guessing Dwayne's management), then instead of kids dropping off C41 and checking the CD box one could drop off K14 and check the CD box.

After all,from the perspective of the user today the important thing was the CD with the scans. The negatives were those weird colored things people loose, and I knew a lot of kids didn't even want the prints. So what if you got back a box of slides instead of a sleeve of negatives. If you got back "blow me away awesome" scans from a roll of Kodachrome, people would have bought it. At least I think they would have bought it for special occasions.

And there could have been a market to sell Kodak photo printers! For crying out loud, even my dad, who is such a old guy he's not even interested in a cell phone, notices the Kodak printer ads on TV.
 
On one side, I would like to see the link to published Kodak chemical formula for K-14 process, if it is available on the web.

On the other side, and probably of the same importance, I would like to see the replacement chemicals for those K-14 chemicals made by Kodak and no longer being made now. I realize there are some major compromises we have to make because the replacement is not the real thing. But if the replacement chemicals can produce some sort of color images, that will be a major progress.

With long history of Kodachrome, there will be many Kodachrome film left in someone's old cameras with 1-5-10-25-50-75 years old valuable images on the film, and also many unused 120 films and 35mm films and movie films, to be used for nostalgia, artistic creativities or other reasons.
 
I've gotta know if the guy on Kodachromeproject has a chance. PE, have you spoken with him at all?

Kittlegraphy is his name (I'll assume that's his christian name ); and he's quite literally purchased a K-Lab machine.

I'll get the chains, who's got a barn?
 

I have a barn, and since we got rid of the cows it's available.

I wonder if the K-lab is the best approach, frankly. It's still a monstrosity to operate, and is still going to take quite a bit of film volume to be feasible.

The "K-14 process" is really nothing more than, dissolve/wipe off the rem-jet, agitate the film in the chemical baths, re-expose in appropriate order interleaved with the chemical baths, then fix it out.

I know that's an extremely simplistic restatement of a pretty sophisticated process, but there's no reason one cannot do it in a sink in a small darkroom. It's probably too much to get done in a changing bag, and the fact that the re-exposures have to occur from both sides without light contamination to the other side is problematic. But I doubt it's insurmountable.

Obviously you cannot fog like the old Ecktachrome where you just took the reel out of the tank in white light. But you can pass in front of some kind of slit similar to the plastic movie processing tanks have. You'd just need some way to do it from each side independently.

Here is the beginning of a K-Lab-2: http://cgi.ebay.com/MOVIE-developin...310?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item45f659cf36
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I believe that 'bwfans' has hit the issue square on the head. Film, any film, is a part of the fabric of history. What will we do if there is a treasure trove of undeveloped Kodachrome found? Witness the uncounted rolls of undeveloped b&w film shoot by Vivian Maier. Fortunately, we still have the technology to develop them. Kodak has always shown the most atrocious disregard for the role in history that it took upon itself to monopolize. There's probably not much to be done about that now. So what can be done? In my opinion, it starts with not relying on one individual who supposedly can/will supply the answers. The irony is that that mentality is the direct descendant of Kodak's brainwashing. Chemistry is science, not magic. Not everyone is able to re-engineer Kodachrome chemistry, but a whole lot of people are. If there is to be a campaign to be mounted, it should be to bring those people together to work the problem as a team, including literature research -- something that can be done by even the most chemistry-phobic.
 
Even if I could never get them processed, I still envy you michaelbsc!

And I feel jealous that you likely have some big Kodachromes to look at in your archives.
 
Answering two questions here:

1. Rem jet is needed as antihalation, as it must be removed in the first step so the red reversal exposure can be made properly. Normal AH layers are not suitable. Second reason is that it is an antistat for motion picture use, and as Kodachrome is also used in-camera as MP stock, it uses rem-jet.

2. Actually, E6 chemicals can be used to process the Kodachrome family of films, but it will take quite a bit of tinkering. I'll explain. You must divide the color developer into 3 parts and add the cyan, magenta and yellow couplers to those 3 parts as outlined in the patent to Bent and Mowrey. There are 3 couplers given there, but others can be used. The problem is getting them and paying for them.

Anyhow after rem-jet removal, you then develop in E6 1st developer, wash, red reexpose, red/cyan develop, wash, blue reexpose, blue/yellow develop, wash, fog and green/magenta develop, wash, then finish with the rest of the E6 process. It is actually that simple and is possible!

PE
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register