Do you have any Kodachrome?

guangong · Oct 12, 2019

Have Kodachrome slides from mid 1950s on. There appears to be no fading. A few slides taken with Argus 3C. Blue cast in a few slides probably because lens accentuated blue cast of shady shots. Pictures taken with better lenses from 1960 to demise of Kodachrome, slides have not exhibited any visible deterioration. For last 30 years slides stored in cellar where temperature is rather constant. Ditto for Super 8 films.
Kodachrome suffered from rise of digital. Depending solely on professional and hobbyist photographers without mass of vacation snap shooters could not support processing.

Larry Cloetta · Oct 12, 2019

There is a long thread over at rangefinderforum.com on Kodachrome from various time periods which contains many, many images, which might be worth a look. https://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165131
I had posted many there, going from the late 40’s through the 90’s all the way to its demise. Of all the film stocks we have lost, this one hurts the most, as there really are no close substitutes. Most of the slide film I shot was K25. The Ektachrome and Agfachrome I shot concurrently all show degradation now, and were all carefully stored. And neither was as good as Kodachrome 25 to begin with, IMO.

Purely coincidentally with seeing this thread this morning, yesterday I started sorting through the last large box of my father’s slide trays, which turned out to be 70% Kodachrome, 30% a mix of Agfachrome and Ektachrome. The Agfachrome is hard to even make out the image on, the Ektachrome, is better, but still essentially useless. Kodachromes in this box went back to 1946, and some of those were in reasonable shape. Sometime around 1950 the formulation changed, and from then on color became much more stable. Putting those on a light table last night, none of which I had ever seen before, was a real experience, more so than newly found black and white negatives would have been. It was like opening a time capsule and seeing people exactly as they were, in color, for the first time, after almost 70 years.
This film is never coming back, and that’s a huge loss.

Alan Edward Klein · Oct 12, 2019

guangong said:
Have Kodachrome slides from mid 1950s on. There appears to be no fading. A few slides taken with Argus 3C. Blue cast in a few slides probably because lens accentuated blue cast of shady shots. Pictures taken with better lenses from 1960 to demise of Kodachrome, slides have not exhibited any visible deterioration. For last 30 years slides stored in cellar where temperature is rather constant. Ditto for Super 8 films.
Kodachrome suffered from rise of digital. Depending solely on professional and hobbyist photographers without mass of vacation snap shooters could not support processing.

Kodachrome lost its edge commercially when Fuji's Velvia 50 came out with all it's fine grain and bright saturated colors. Ektachromes put a big dent in to it as well.

macfred · Oct 12, 2019

Alan Edward Klein said:
Kodachrome lost its edge commercially when Fuji's Velvia 50 came out with all it's fine grain and bright saturated colors. Ektachromes put a big dent in to it as well.

I have to confess that I love(d) Ektachrome more than Kodachrome ... I have tons of Ektachrome slides and those are in great condition too.

Examples in 35mm captured with a Konica Hexar AF on Kodak Ektachrome Elite 100 (5045):

Larry Cloetta · Oct 12, 2019

macfred said:
I have to confess that I love(d) Ektachrome more than Kodachrome ... I have tons of Ektachrome slides and those are in great condition too.

Examples in 35mm captured with a Konica Hexar AF on Kodak Ektachrome Elite 100 (5045):

View attachment 232713 View attachment 232714

Those are lovely shots, but the presence of all the baseball caps on backwards indicates that these are not all that old. Being Ektachrome, or any E-6 film, years from now they won’t look much like this. I will be long dead, but time will prove this.

macfred · Oct 12, 2019

Larry Cloetta said:
Those are lovely shots, but the presence of all the baseball caps on backwards indicates that these are not all that old....

Larry, you're right - those are from the early 90's - I have Ektachromes captured in '82/'83 in India and the US and those are nice too. Let's see what time will do to them.

abruzzi · Oct 12, 2019

alanrockwood said:
I have some Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides going back as far as about 1969. The Kodachromes look like they were shot yesterday. The Ektachromes have faded considerably.

I was recently scanning some of my fathers slides from when we lived in Nigeria in 1976 (I was 5 yeas old), and found the same thing. The Kodachrome looks as rich as if it was shot yesterday (well, 2012 since Kodachrome shot yesterday doesn’t look like anything). The Ektachrome is very faded.

macfred · Oct 12, 2019

Just for fun (father-in- law's archives) : Not well aged AGFA Chrome CT18 (process AP-41) - Reeperbahn Hamburg / GER 1963

Larry Cloetta · Oct 12, 2019

macfred said:
View attachment 232715 Just for fun (father-in- law's archives) : Not well aged AGFA Chrome CT18 (process AP-41) - Reeperbahn Hamburg / GER 1963

Colors might be faded, but still a shot worth having as a memory. I wonder how many good photographers in the 60's and 70's were painfully aware of how E-6 films were going to fade. I know I had no idea, I was just shooting things based on how the color palette looked to me at the time, or what speed I needed. Then again, I wasn't a good photographer.
Was the longevity issue common knowledge among good photographers in 1960, and did they consider this when purchasing film? That's what I might be curious about.

markbau · Oct 12, 2019

Larry Cloetta said:
There is a long thread over at rangefinderforum.com on Kodachrome from various time periods which contains many, many images, which might be worth a look. https://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165131
I had posted many there, going from the late 40’s through the 90’s all the way to its demise. Of all the film stocks we have lost, this one hurts the most, as there really are no close substitutes. Most of the slide film I shot was K25. The Ektachrome and Agfachrome I shot concurrently all show degradation now, and were all carefully stored. And neither was as good as Kodachrome 25 to begin with, IMO.

Purely coincidentally with seeing this thread this morning, yesterday I started sorting through the last large box of my father’s slide trays, which turned out to be 70% Kodachrome, 30% a mix of Agfachrome and Ektachrome. The Agfachrome is hard to even make out the image on, the Ektachrome, is better, but still essentially useless. Kodachromes in this box went back to 1946, and some of those were in reasonable shape. Sometime around 1950 the formulation changed, and from then on color became much more stable. Putting those on a light table last night, none of which I had ever seen before, was a real experience, more so than newly found black and white negatives would have been. It was like opening a time capsule and seeing people exactly as they were, in color, for the first time, after almost 70 years.
This film is never coming back, and that’s a huge loss.

I totally agree that K25 was the bee's knee's. I started photography because I was a train enthusiast so as wonderful as K25 was it wasn't much use photographing fast moving trains. Here is a pic using K25 shot in 1982. Its sharpness was unmatched and in low afternoon winter sunlight, it was as good as colour photography gets. Only drawback I ever found with Kodachrome was that the shadows went to ink very quickly. It would be interesting to see a characteristic curve.
I was lucky enough to live very close to the Kodak factory/lab in Melbourne and would drop my Kodachrome rolls off in the morning, before school, and pick them up after school. Happy days!

Ariston · Oct 13, 2019

markbau said:
Here are a few recently scanned shots from Kodachrome.
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/685491/
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/691126/
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/689412/
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/688939/

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/688725/
This is from one of my last rolls of Kodachrome

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/688352/
One of the very few shots I took on Kodachrome 200

I talked to a Kodak rep once and asked about why some rolls of Kodachrome seemed to have a green cast. He told me something very interesting. Non-Pro Kodachrome did indeed have a green bias when fresh, as it got to its use by date it was more or less neutral. He told me always try to use Kodachrome around its use-by date. I did and he was right!

Alan Edward Klein said:
Mark, Nice shots. I was just thinking. Those trains are getting old and dying like Kodachrome. Nothing lasts.

Those are nice shots, Mark! I don't know if I've ever seen trains shot on Kodachrome before, but it looks like a perfect match of subject and film type. It makes me want to visit the train museum near me in Duluth.

Agulliver · Oct 15, 2019

A few stories here.

I shot 135 K25 and K200 a bit in the late 90s and 2000s. It's all held up perfectly but it isn't that old.
I also shot K40 super 8 from 1986 through to 2000 and it has all held up perfectly.
The Agfa super 8 film that I also shot from 1986-92...some has faded to red a bit.
the Ektachrome slides I shot in 1987 have held up well. As have the cheap E6 slides I shot in the early 2000s, Tura branded but made by who knows who? However the caveat is that I always store my cine film and slides in the dark, in their reels/containers.

I own my late maternal grandfather's entire output of 8mm film which he shot from 1965-1972. Probably a couple of hundred rolls. Each one Kodachrome...each one like it was shot yesterday in terms of colour, contrast etc.

I also own my late great aunt's 35mm slides, probably over a thousand shot from the early 50s into the early 90s.. Last time I checked about five years ago all the Kodachrome was perfect while the Perutzchrome had faded, usually to magenta and some so bad that I could only scan and obtain monochrome images from them.

Last year I was asked by a retiring work colleague to scan about 100 slides that her father shot during her childhood in the 1960s. About three quarters were Kodachrome and once again were *perfect*. The remainder were Agfa and had faded slightly - though I was still able to scan decent colour images a projected image would have been faded, washed out.

In my experience Kodachrome has the best archival properties of any imaging material it has ever been my pleasure to handle. It's up there with B&W film. Because it basically *is* B&W film.

Anon Ymous · Oct 15, 2019

mshchem said:
... This may sound nuts, but the earliest slides up to the late 50's when it was ASA 10, and Kodak processed everything themselves, are IMHO the most beautiful...

Ah, yes, these kodachrome slides with their red border cardboard mounts. They're a thing of beauty. I suspect it's the colour palette of the film, nowhere near as accurate as the modern films, but strangely beautiful.

Larry Cloetta · Oct 15, 2019

This was the oldest Kodachrome from the most recently scanned box of my father’s slides. Shame about the focus/blur, but it is from March 1946, he’d just returned from WWII and the camera likely wasn’t the greatest, and the Kodachrome at the time was ASA 10 if I recall correctly. Colors don’t seem all that far removed from modern emulsions. Maybe even nicer
The Agfachrome slides stored in the same box from the early Fifties were completely gone, the Ektachrome ones from the Fifties were in poor shape as well.

pentaxuser · Oct 15, 2019

macfred said:
I have to confess that I love(d) Ektachrome more than Kodachrome ... I have tons of Ektachrome slides and those are in great condition too.

Examples in 35mm captured with a Konica Hexar AF on Kodak Ektachrome Elite 100 (5045):

View attachment 232713 View attachment 232714

In the second shot who is the King? Thanks

pentaxuser

macfred · Oct 15, 2019

pentaxuser said:
In the second shot who is the King? Thanks

pentaxuser

Richard Virenque in the red polka dot shirt climbing Alp d'Huez

Arklatexian · Oct 15, 2019

mshchem said:
My Dad's start in 1949. They are fabulous. I have images on another computer. This may sound nuts, but the earliest slides up to the late 50's when it was ASA 10, and Kodak processed everything themselves, are IMHO the most beautiful. I use a little Nikon Coolscan unit, I've made inkjet prints 11 x 14 that are amazing. I'm pretty sure everything was shot with an Argus C3. Pictures of my 89 year old uncle as a 19 year old picking corn with a one row corn picker. First harvest they didn’t pick and husk it by hand.
70 years ago! Looks like yesterday.

What is "nuts" about it? The Kodachromes with the best color that I have are ASA10 Kodachromes processed by Kodak. We always felt that the "more natural" ASA25 Kodachromes were "anemic looking" compared to the ASA 10s........Regards!

mshchem · Oct 15, 2019

Arklatexian said:
What is "nuts" about it? The Kodachromes with the best color that I have are ASA10 Kodachromes processed by Kodak. We always felt that the "more natural" ASA25 Kodachromes were "anemic looking" compared to the ASA 10s........Regards!

I'm not alone!!! Bring back REAL KODACHROME!

Or maybe not

kevs · Oct 16, 2019

I have a set of slides from 1963 of my parents' wedding; all but one are on Ilfochrome, which was a Kodachrome-like, non-chromogenic film. There's a little warping (projector heat I'm guessing) but the colours are bright and saturated with no apparent fading but a slight magenta cast. The single Kodachrome slide looks about the same but less saturated and more blue-cyan, but it was probably made on another camera and time of day. Apart from the warping they've held up pretty well. Must scan them one day.

BRING BACK ILFOCHROME!!!

My own Kodachromes look fine too, but they're at least 30 years younger than the wedding slides. Shame about the content though; no-one will want to scan them in 30 years!

kevs

mshchem · Oct 16, 2019

markbau said:
I totally agree that K25 was the bee's knee's. I started photography because I was a train enthusiast so as wonderful as K25 was it wasn't much use photographing fast moving trains. Here is a pic using K25 shot in 1982. Its sharpness was unmatched and in low afternoon winter sunlight, it was as good as colour photography gets. Only drawback I ever found with Kodachrome was that the shadows went to ink very quickly. It would be interesting to see a characteristic curve.
I was lucky enough to live very close to the Kodak factory/lab in Melbourne and would drop my Kodachrome rolls off in the morning, before school, and pick them up after school. Happy days!
View attachment 232722

What good fortune to have an actual Kodak lab to drop off your film. I do miss Kodachrome. The color of the train car is stunning.
Oh well, happy to see Ektachrome back.

neeksgeek · Oct 16, 2019

I’ve shot many 35mm rolls of Kodachrome 64 and 25, along with some Kodachrome 40 tungsten film which I got for a buck a roll as it was expired; I shot it outdoors with an 85 filter. Also shot one roll of 200. All made in the 90s, stored properly. They look great today.

Color macro work with Kodachrome 25, done on a tripod with good lighting, is a thing of beauty.

foc · Oct 16, 2019

macfred said:
View attachment 232715 Just for fun (father-in- law's archives) : Not well aged AGFA Chrome CT18 (process AP-41) - Reeperbahn Hamburg / GER 1963

That's how I remember the 1960's

Larry Cloetta · Oct 16, 2019

[url=https://cloetta.smugmug.com/Kodachrome/n-4c6hvD/i-ZxvBdHh/A]

[/URL]
Kodachrome 35mm slide taken in 1955 possibly with a Bessamatic.

BradS · Oct 16, 2019

My former father-in-law has slides that he took in the 1950's while serving in the Korean war. Some are Kodachrome and some are Ektachrome. He used to project them as part of the "family slide show". Last time I saw the slide show, was probably around 2010 or so - the slides were then almost 60 years old. It was easy to spot which were Kodachrome. The colors had not faded and still had that characteristic Kodachrome color palette. The vast majority of the Ektachrome slides had faded. Many has a severe red cast. Some had faded so much that you really couldn't tell what the photo was any more.

George Mann · Oct 19, 2019

mshchem said:
Bring back REAL KODACHROME!

Kodachrome 64?

Do you have any Kodachrome?

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