Just last night I finally found the stash of family slides I've been searching for. A few frames of 35mm Kodachrome with shots of my Dad and a girlfriend in an aluminum canister, ca. 1940 to other materials up to about 1970.
The real heart stoppers were 4x5 Kodachromes of Boston, and my beautiful mother and her beloved first born child (guess who, ha ha.....), 1942 to 1947. Ironically found simultaneously almost to the day with the end of Kodachrome processing, eh? Stunning color, beautiful as the day they were processed.
Starting in the late forties or early fifties my father started shooting slides with his 1944 Leica M2. Mostly Ektachrome, but also some Agfa and Ansco.
As expected, they have faded badly. One of the other brands, I can't recall which, did not fade to Ektachrome's magenta, but green, IIRC. I sampled different slides up to about 1964, then all of a sudden, the colors were still "very very good!" It's as if a whole new generation of film and/or processing came into being. I don't know enough about these histories, some one here surely does.
Since the latter generation of chromes is now about 45 years old with no special care in storage, maybe "they" really have gotten the archival thing down. Especially since we know that a lot more work has been done to that end since then. I looked at lots of our drugstore prints from the 70's and their condition is, I would say, "good" to "very good." Impressive for cheap.
Maybe things aren't as bad as we want to believe.
The real heart stoppers were 4x5 Kodachromes of Boston, and my beautiful mother and her beloved first born child (guess who, ha ha.....), 1942 to 1947. Ironically found simultaneously almost to the day with the end of Kodachrome processing, eh? Stunning color, beautiful as the day they were processed.
Starting in the late forties or early fifties my father started shooting slides with his 1944 Leica M2. Mostly Ektachrome, but also some Agfa and Ansco.
As expected, they have faded badly. One of the other brands, I can't recall which, did not fade to Ektachrome's magenta, but green, IIRC. I sampled different slides up to about 1964, then all of a sudden, the colors were still "very very good!" It's as if a whole new generation of film and/or processing came into being. I don't know enough about these histories, some one here surely does.
Since the latter generation of chromes is now about 45 years old with no special care in storage, maybe "they" really have gotten the archival thing down. Especially since we know that a lot more work has been done to that end since then. I looked at lots of our drugstore prints from the 70's and their condition is, I would say, "good" to "very good." Impressive for cheap.
Maybe things aren't as bad as we want to believe.