Kodachrome layering and development

Sam_D · Oct 27, 2016

This is my first post here on APUG (or any forum actually) so here goes:
After reading through some of the threads here on and off for the past year or so I've been very drawn to the attempts to develop kodachrome. I spent some time looking through the 1972 patent, and it includes all the needed chemicals except the couplers. For this, it has a list of patents that described coupler chemicals. The pdf has a compiled list of the information I could get from these patents, and some other older ones relating to couplers. I have also seen the thread on using Rockland polytoner couplers, which would seem like it would work just fine. Now on to the question. To my knowledge, the emulsions are layered as follows: Anti-halation, base, red sensitive, green sensitive, yellow filter, blue sensitive, UV filter. I am wondering how the anti-halation layer and the yellow filter are removed. I've heard to use borax for the backing, but I'm not sure. For the filter, I've heard that it is removed during the first development and then bleaching steps. I'm doing this for a 10th grade chemistry project, and as of now, NOT actually attempting the process, so don't tell me it's impossible. Thanks for any help that can be provided.

Photo Engineer · Oct 27, 2016

The AH layer is Rem Jet (Removable Jetblack or carbon powder in gelatin). It can be removed by a 20 g/l solution of Sodium Carbonate and gentle wiping with a wet cellulose sponge with a wash afterwards. Then into the developer.

The yellow filter came in 2 versions. One was a yellow dye destroyed during processing or washed out. The CLS yellow filter (Cary Lea Silver) was removed in the bleach. And it is possible in a home lab, just expensive and difficult.

PE

flavio81 · Oct 29, 2016

Sam_D said:
For the filter, I've heard that it is removed during the first development and then bleaching steps. I'm doing this for a 10th grade chemistry project

Wow!!

Zach-MLT-MD · Nov 8, 2016

Photo Engineer said:
The AH layer is Rem Jet (Removable Jetblack or carbon powder in gelatin). It can be removed by a 20 g/l solution of Sodium Carbonate and gentle wiping with a wet cellulose sponge with a wash afterwards. Then into the developer.

The yellow filter came in 2 versions. One was a yellow dye destroyed during processing or washed out. The CLS yellow filter (Cary Lea Silver) was removed in the bleach. And it is possible in a home lab, just expensive and difficult.

PE

Is there anyone on apug that has home developed kodachrome since labs stopped processing it (what about 15 years ago now?) - I am just curious if there is anybody that has managed to develop a long lost roll of that magic film.

Sam_D · Nov 8, 2016

Commercial processing stopped in 2010 (December I think) at Dwayne's. Stephen Frizza from what I heard was partly successful in his attempt to develop it with recreations of the original couplers and a full lab. The easiest way to try it would be if you could get ahold of some kodachrome sheet film (Makes reexposure easier), and the polytoner couplers. I'm not sure how it would look because the toner dyes and the original dyes are not quite the same color, so some shifts may occur.

Sirius Glass · Nov 8, 2016

Welcome to APUG

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2016

Zach-MLT-MD said:
Is there anyone on apug that has home developed kodachrome since labs stopped processing it (what about 15 years ago now?) - I am just curious if there is anybody that has managed to develop a long lost roll of that magic film.

Yes.

AgX · Nov 9, 2016

Zach-MLT-MD said:
Is there anyone on apug that has home developed kodachrome since labs stopped processing it (what about 15 years ago now?) - I am just curious if there is anybody that has managed to develop a long lost roll of that magic film.

As said Stephen Frizza did.
see here, but you have to crawl through hundreds of post...
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

flavio81 · Nov 9, 2016

Sam_D,

How is it going?

As you probably already know, removing anti-halation backing is something that is well documented and no challenge at all. As for the K14 process, it is well documented on the internet, the main problem being the chemistry, i would guess.

The process itself is long but from what i've seen not impossible. See below: Everything you wanted to know about kodachrome in the post-Dwayne era and were afraid to ask is here:

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Here my choice of quotes from the thread. I am putting this quotes here to avoid PE and Stephen Frizza having to go through all the pain of answering those questions again.

PE said:
As I have said time after time, Kodak has abandoned the patents for K-14 allowing anyone to use them. They are open and clearly disclosed.

Stephen Frizza said:
Though as I have stated in the past the Yellow Dye Developer I use is not from the K-14 process.

Stephen Frizza said:
I can do it, I currently have a small amount of chemistry left and to process more film in the future would need to buy additional chemicals.

PE said:
There are at least 2 or 3 people who have gotten reasonable results with home processing of Kodachrome.

PE said:
And, a well done color neg can actually exceed the quality of any E6 product.

Stephen Frizza said:
I do not own a K-lab machine and I know for a fact that the chemical process I run to produce a colour kodachrome is not compatible with a K-lab.

PE said:
If you can get the chemistry (even if it is just the couplers and color developing agents), I will be happy to teach you the entire Kodachrome process. It will probably take a dozen rolls of test film and a lot of trial and error. If Steve were willing to help in any way it would speed things up.

I will NOT do any processing of film beyond the test shots necessary for setup.

PE said:
I never said I could do it. I said that I had seen it done by hand.

Stephen Frizza said:
Each week I have people email me asking if they can send me their Kodachrome to process. Sorry to be blunt but the Answer is NO. (and I seriously think half these people have more money than sense) My current stance on this subject may change for one or two people in the future but at this point in time my answer is NO.

PE said:
Neither GEH nor any other existing facility have the space, staff or equipment to process Kodachrome. As Steve says above, everything is "kaput". No one (AFAIK) except Steve and myself know first hand the complexity of mixing and processing Kodachrome by hand. And machine processing is not much easier.

PE said:
Jason, the Kodachrome couplers were custom made for Kodak for the K14 process. The simplest cyan coupler is 4-Chloro-1-Napthol which I am sure is sold by Aldrich. It is by no means a Kodachrome coupler, but it forms a credible cyan dye. Some of the couplers are sold commercially and I think that someone has posted a source.

If you want more, I can start drawing structures, but I don't think it will help anyone but another Organic Chemist.

PE said:
And for those wishing to work with the Chloro Napthol, take precautions as this can be a nasty chemical in clumsy or let us say "inexperienced" hands...

PE said:
The coupler names are in the patent for all to see. The only reason I would do anything is to show the actual structure, or one close to it. But then, if you search the name for the patent, or the Napthol I gave above, the structure is shown.

Such as here: http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sigma/c8890?lang=en&region=US

frobozz said:
And this is no secret, but in case anyone here didn't know, the K-Lab instructions, which include a very thorough discussion of the processing theory, are still up on Kodak's site, you just have to get all 10 sections one by one. Number 3 is the really interesting one!
(...)
http://www.kodak.com/global/plugins/acrobat/en/service/Zmanuals/z50_03.pdf

NZoomed said:
Kodak supplied Dwaynes with all the chemicals in their crystalline form, they did not have to synthesise the end product of course, but they had to prepare all the mixtures to the right dilution etc.
Thats why a trained chemist was required to run the large scale K-14 machines, in addition to mixing them correctly, they needed to constantly monitor the chemicals and regularly replenish them.
As far as im aware with the K-labs, the chemicals were already mixed to the correct strength and sealed in bags flushed with nitrogen, so that the mixed chemicals did not oxidise.

I'm still at page 16 of 20...

flavio81 · Nov 9, 2016

Again, i'm posting this so there's no need to go through the 20 pages AND so people don't start asking Photo Engineer the same things again...

PE said:
The Kodachrome chemistry is exceedingly unstable and goes bad fast. The cyan developer turns cyan with keeping as it auto couples during air oxidation. Therefore the process must be kept running or it goes bad. That is why we kept our color developers as "blanks" with no color developing agent present. The developing agent was added at the time of use.

John Shriver said:
OK, I've heard requests to post the Z-50. So up it comes. Well, minus Chapter 6, since the file is over the file size limit. Need to see how to make the PDF file smaller for that one.

(attachments on post #488)

That's it. Most posts are from 2013. I've yet to know what happened after 2013.

AgX · Nov 9, 2016

Flavio,
thank you for picking out some interesting posts out of that long thread!

Sam,
I just would like to add that several manufacturers from different parts of the world produced films of the Kodachrome type. (All gone long ago, in the trend of standardizing colour processing).

flavio81 · Nov 9, 2016

You're welcome, AgX.

AgX said:
Sam,
I just would like to add that several manufacturers from different parts of the world produced films of the Kodachrome type. (All gone long ago, in the trend of standardizing colour processing).

I.e: Dynachrome from Dynacolor, later bought by 3M. K12 process.
Also Ilfochrome (old Ilfochrome). And i think i've read that really-old Sakurachrome and Fujichrome films were also designed to be Kodachrome-process compatible.

I would guess that creating a Kodachrome-compatible film is easier than creating an E6 film. After all the structure is far simpler. And you can say that's the reason the process is more complex.

While E6 films have everything "built" into the film (color dyes, etc) so processing is easier.

So it's natural that a smaller company wanting to bring out their own film in the 60s would choose to make a K12 (or K11) compatible film. It would be easier (than creating a sixties-agfachrome-process compatible film)

AgX · Nov 9, 2016

Aside of Kodak 7 other manufacturers produced such films.

railwayman3 · Nov 9, 2016

AgX said:
Aside of Kodak 7 other manufacturers produced such films.

Interesting....I wonder if there is any detailed technical information archived anywhere. I have some Ilford Colour Slide photos taken by my Father in the early 1960's and they still look good, very similar to the Kodachrome from the same time.

Photo Engineer · Nov 9, 2016

I am only aware of 3 other manufacturers.

Flavio, thanks for the recap. I am getting tired of being questioned over and over about Kodachrome.

PE

AgX · Nov 9, 2016

railwayman3 said:
Interesting....I wonder if there is any detailed technical information archived anywhere.

There is meanwhile hardly interest in historic issues at the industry.

railwayman3 · Nov 10, 2016

Photo Engineer said:
I am getting tired of being questioned over and over about Kodachrome.

PE

You shouldn't have worked for a company which invented and sold such iconic products.

MattKing · Nov 10, 2016

railwayman3 said:
You shouldn't have worked for a company which invented and sold such iconic products.

Or done all that work leading to your name being on one of the important Kodachrome patents .

Photo Engineer · Nov 10, 2016

I guess I just have to be philosophical about it then.

PE

flavio81 · Nov 10, 2016

Photo Engineer said:
I guess I just have to be philosophical about it then.

PE

I wish i was you, Ron. I mean, working at Kodak and engineering films and getting your name into key patents of a legendary product, and meanwhile being able to shoot all the film i want? Sounds like the kind of life I would love to have. (Another alternatives to "the kind of life i would love to have" are Formula 1 Champion, and rock star.).

As for Kodachrome, don't worry, you can always link back to post #9 of this thread everytime anyone asks again about K14:
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Photo Engineer · Nov 10, 2016

Flavio, when your work is your hobby, you never get a day off.

PE

1L6E6VHF · Nov 10, 2016

flavio81 said:
You're welcome, AgX.

I.e: Dynachrome from Dynacolor, later bought by 3M. K12 process.

AFAIK, Dynacolor/Dynachrome never actually used the K-12 process. The famous consent decree may have only covered the K-11 process in use for Kodachrome at the time.

When Kodak rolled out the K-12 process with Kodachrome II, ASA 25, Dynachrome continued to produce slide and movie films using K-11 and rated at ASA 10 for a few years, many with store brands (e.g., Sears or Wards). It's quite amusing to see the old ads touting their slower speed as an advantage ("works in YOUR electric eye camera with no need for a filter").

About 1964, Dynachrome cranked up the speed to ASA 25, but continued to use the K-11 process.

At about the same time, 3M acquired Dynachrome and Ferrania. The strange result was that they had Dynachrome 25 as a K-11 film and Dynachrome 64 as a unique process substantive color slide film.

There was briefly a substantive ASA 25 color slide film, but its existence was brief. At this point, I think most of these stocks were custom brands with few boxes marked as Dynachrome.

Somewhat later, they would join the E6 club and rename everything Scotch, right around the time store branded slide and movie films started disappearing.

Note: Dynacolor and Dynachrome were BOTH reversal films, the distinction of "color" = prints and "chrome" = slides would come in the later fifties.

flavio81 · Nov 10, 2016

Photo Engineer said:
Flavio, when your work is your hobby, you never get a day off.

PE

But on the other hand, the joy of being an engineer (as we are), is to get paid for doing something you would even do for free anyway. Of course, an engineer must be careful not to disclose this aloud when the employeer is around.

(Parahprased from here, a classic for software engineers:
Real programmers don't use Pascal
http://web.mit.edu/humor/Computers/real.programmers

Generally, the Real Progranmer plays the same way he works -- with
computers. He is constantly amazed that his employer actually pays him to
do what he would be doing for fun anyway (although he is careful not to
express this opinion out loud). Occasionally, the Real Programmer does
step out of the office for a breath of fresh air and a beer or two.

)

Gerald C Koch · Nov 10, 2016

Sam_D said:
This is my first post here on APUG (or any forum actually) so here goes:
After reading through some of the threads here on and off for the past year or so I've been very drawn to the attempts to develop kodachrome. I spent some time looking through the 1972 patent, and it includes all the needed chemicals except the couplers. For this, it has a list of patents that described coupler chemicals. The pdf has a compiled list of the information I could get from these patents, and some other older ones relating to couplers. I have also seen the thread on using Rockland polytoner couplers, which would seem like it would work just fine. Now on to the question. To my knowledge, the emulsions are layered as follows: Anti-halation, base, red sensitive, green sensitive, yellow filter, blue sensitive, UV filter. I am wondering how the anti-halation layer and the yellow filter are removed. I've heard to use borax for the backing, but I'm not sure. For the filter, I've heard that it is removed during the first development and then bleaching steps. I'm doing this for a 10th grade chemistry project, and as of now, NOT actually attempting the process, so don't tell me it's impossible. Thanks for any help that can be provided.

Oh jeez not again.

Photo Engineer · Nov 10, 2016

Flavio, you must read the monograph on the "C" language by the inventor who claims he devised the language as a jest.

PE

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