Reports of (Colour) Kodachrome Home Processing Emerge from Sydney

StoneNYC · Nov 8, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Well, to start with, I have NO ISO 400 Kodachrome. Although, by reports, it did make mud look like mud! Maybe more so!

I cannot process the film except to B&W, but then anyone can do it.

I used the example on Wikipedia as an example only. But, on average, the one on the left is chosen or something in between. This is not uncommon.

As saturation goes up, errors creep in due to errors in the dyes or in the imaging process, so for example as red saturation goes up, detail is lost because you are removing yellow and magenta which represent the real only source of detail. This is called undercut, where the saturation of one color is undercutting the presence of another color. At least that is the way we refer to this in film design.

I found 1/2 brick of a C41 coating in the freezer today. IDK what it represents, as it is a plant experiment with an FW before the emulsion # and no other detail. So, sorry, no Kodachrome. I do have a Kodachrome experience to relate though. When E6 came out, I quit using Kodachrome!

Thats it.

PE

Haha oh well, I didn't think you would have any, I was going along with the theme of bothering you with Kodachrome things.

I AM at my witts end with all my Agfa/ORWO/foma films from the 50's that I have now shot and want developed on color, maybe I'll harass you by mail and mail you all my film one at a time, every day another Agfa NK-17 roll falls through the mail slot.. Hehe can you imagine the insanity?

I think I'll get all the Chem together, it's not hard just tedious.

I wish I could just x-process in current color chem and not destroy it in the mean time..

Well Velvia seems to handle color saturation just fine...

~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

wblynch · Nov 8, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
... I do have a Kodachrome experience to relate though. When E6 came out, I quit using Kodachrome!

Thats it.

PE

Yep, PE is officially Fed Up.

MattKing · Nov 8, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
I do have a Kodachrome experience to relate though. When E6 came out, I quit using Kodachrome!

Thats it.

PE

PE

Did the named Kodachrome patent holders complain?

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2012

Neither of us did!

PE

ME Super · Nov 8, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Neither of us did!

PE

I love it. Even though you're so very tired of all the ballyhooing about Kodachrome being gone, you haven't lost your graciousness or sense of humor. You're a true gentleman and the APUG community is so much richer because of your presence here.

I also stopped shooting Kodachrome quite a while ago because the fastest speed I could get was 64 (I don't think the 200-speed version was available yet), and my lens was so slow and flash was so wimpy (I was a poor student then) that I couldn't get decent Christmas pictures with a 64-speed film. Ektachrome 200 was fast enough so that's what I switched to. I did shoot a roll or two of the K200 when it was available, but didn't like it as well as I did the Ektachrome or the K64.

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2012

ME;

Thanks. As you can imagine, my life has been photography above all else. I have lived, breathed, and worked it since I was about 8 or 12 depending on B&W or color. It has been mostly fun!!! sometimes low spots, but this Kodachrome thing is really getting to me. Let it go people. It will not come back, and its qualities were, in some sense, an accident of demands for quality and keeping.

Oh well.

The real workers were Fred and Ed. Dick S worked on lab processing and Dick B and I were just bystanders who worked on color developing agents at that time.

Best wishes .

PE

wogster · Nov 9, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
ME;

Thanks. As you can imagine, my life has been photography above all else. I have lived, breathed, and worked it since I was about 8 or 12 depending on B&W or color. It has been mostly fun!!! sometimes low spots, but this Kodachrome thing is really getting to me. Let it go people. It will not come back, and its qualities were, in some sense, an accident of demands for quality and keeping.

Oh well.

The real workers were Fred and Ed. Dick S worked on lab processing and Dick B and I were just bystanders who worked on color developing agents at that time.

Best wishes .

PE

I never actually used Kodachrome, the results I saw were grainy with weird colours, and it was slow, and more expensive to process. 75 years ago, it was a brilliant idea, but, really, Kodachrome was on life support when I started shooting colour in 1978, there were other transparency films with better colour accuracy, finer grain, higher speed and easier processing even then, 34 years ago now.

MattKing · Nov 9, 2012

Sorry Paul - cannot agree with you here.

My best Kodachromes were shot after 1978 (until the late 1980s), and survive well to this day.

wogster · Nov 9, 2012

MattKing said:
Sorry Paul - cannot agree with you here.

My best Kodachromes were shot after 1978 (until the late 1980s), and survive well to this day.

What I mean by it was on life support in 1978, is that already Kodachrome was starting to lose market share to other film technologies, like E6 and C41, even if digital had never been invented, we would still have seen Kodachrome fade into history.

Prof_Pixel · Nov 9, 2012

In the late '80s, Ray DeMoulin tried to give Kodachrome a 'push'.. See http://photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00XWtx

A key comment by Ron Andrews is "He started all of these development programs because he wanted them. Later in the project when someone finally did some number crunching, they found that the sales projections didn't justify a new film. Ray could get the programs started on his say so, but he still had to answer to some other people before he could get a product out the door."

I worked on a number of projects for Ray. I should mention that he is the guy at Kodak that started the program I worked on for the original DCS - but he did (and still does) love film!

You might want to look at Ron Andrew's Kodachrome pages at http://www.randrews4.com/kodachrome.html

MattKing · Nov 9, 2012

wogster said:
What I mean by it was on life support in 1978, is that already Kodachrome was starting to lose market share to other film technologies, like E6 and C41, even if digital had never been invented, we would still have seen Kodachrome fade into history.

On the market share issue, I have no disagreement with you.

I did, however still prefer the qualities of Kodachrome right through the early 1980s. When the Kodak lab in western Canada closed, that definitely started to wain.

I assume that you weren't in Canada at the end of the 1970s, or bought Kodachrome from outside the country, because as far as I am aware all Canadian sold Kodachrome included processing until the early 1980s.

Roger Cole · Nov 9, 2012

wogster said:
I never actually used Kodachrome, the results I saw were grainy with weird colours, and it was slow, and more expensive to process. 75 years ago, it was a brilliant idea, but, really, Kodachrome was on life support when I started shooting colour in 1978, there were other transparency films with better colour accuracy, finer grain, higher speed and easier processing even then, 34 years ago now.

No to most of that. It was rather slow, granted. But it wasn't remotely grainy, except the short lived 200 stuff. In fact it was so sharp that well into the 80s commercial shots and some stock agencies preferred either a 35mm Kodachrome or an 8x10 Ektachrome. Anything else wasn't as sharp. The colors were not subjectively weird, whatever the curves may look like. As I posted before, sometimes Caucasian flesh tones can be a bit pale, but overall the color is rich and vibrant. It does have its own look.

There's a fair amount of Kodachrome from my 2010 "farewell to Kodachrome" on my Flickr page. Some do look grainy, but those are on Kodachrome 200, which was also all well past expiration by then too. I bought it all off eBay all stores being out of it by the time I started buying it, and had no way to know how it had been stored before I got it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogercole/sets/72157625927349242/

Photo Engineer · Nov 9, 2012

wogster said:
What I mean by it was on life support in 1978, is that already Kodachrome was starting to lose market share to other film technologies, like E6 and C41, even if digital had never been invented, we would still have seen Kodachrome fade into history.

Market share was not lost until 1990 or therabouts.

PE

lxdude · Nov 9, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Market share was not lost until 1990 or therabouts.

PE

Thanks for stating that, PE. Kodachrome was not "on life support" in 1978, or anything close to it. It was used extensively. That's 4 years after K-14 was introduced. If it had been on life support, would Kodak have come out with 120 format K64 and K-200 8 years later?

The E-6 films were improving, but they had to overcome a Kodachrome user base that had found nothing to replace it, and many were going to continue to use the K-films because they were so familiar with them.
Myself, I found Fujichrome oversaturated and Ektachrome to be bluish. I have wildflower slides from 1982 that were taken at the same time, Ektachrome in one camera and K-64 in the other, and the California poppies on the Kodachrome were orangeish the way they really were, and on the Ektachromes they were yellow. It took a long time for E-6 films to be widely preferred over the K-films, not just accepted in their place.

wogster · Nov 10, 2012

MattKing said:
On the market share issue, I have no disagreement with you.

I did, however still prefer the qualities of Kodachrome right through the early 1980s. When the Kodak lab in western Canada closed, that definitely started to wain.

I assume that you weren't in Canada at the end of the 1970s, or bought Kodachrome from outside the country, because as far as I am aware all Canadian sold Kodachrome included processing until the early 1980s.

I was here, born and raised, I got into serious photography in the late 70's and into slides in the early 80's, the Kodachrome I saw shot by friends was not impressive, I used some other chrome films myself, and then gave up on it, when I realized I wasn't going to be projecting them, and printing negatives was cheaper and easier. This is one of the problems a lot of people here are running into, printing from slides now that the successor to Cibachrome, Ilfochrome is history, is only really possible using digital technology.

railwayman3 · Nov 10, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Market share was not lost until 1990 or therabouts.

PE

Not wanting to drag up what I posted some two years ago (and was well discussed then)....here, in the UK, this was just about the time when the previous high-quality factory processing went to pieces, with scratched films, poor mounting, slow service, which should never have happened with a "flag-ship" product.

StoneNYC · Nov 10, 2012

Roger Cole said:
No to most of that. It was rather slow, granted. But it wasn't remotely grainy, except the short lived 200 stuff. In fact it was so sharp that well into the 80s commercial shots and some stock agencies preferred either a 35mm Kodachrome or an 8x10 Ektachrome. Anything else wasn't as sharp. The colors were not subjectively weird, whatever the curves may look like. As I posted before, sometimes Caucasian flesh tones can be a bit pale, but overall the color is rich and vibrant. It does have its own look.

There's a fair amount of Kodachrome from my 2010 "farewell to Kodachrome" on my Flickr page. Some do look grainy, but those are on Kodachrome 200, which was also all well past expiration by then too. I bought it all off eBay all stores being out of it by the time I started buying it, and had no way to know how it had been stored before I got it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogercole/sets/72157625927349242/

Roger were you there at the lab on the last day with Dan (Bayer) and I? There were a bunch of photographers so it's hard to remember them all.

~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

lxdude · Nov 10, 2012

Roger Cole said:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogercole/sets/72157625927349242/

I just want to corroborate what you say on your flickr page.

Your wife is indeed lovely. She also looks like she's a delight to be around, and I will venture to say that you are one lucky guy.

Roger Cole · Nov 10, 2012

StoneNYC said:
Roger were you there at the lab on the last day with Dan (Bayer) and I? There were a bunch of photographers so it's hard to remember them all.

~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nope. Never been in any Kodachrome lab.

Roger Cole · Nov 10, 2012

lxdude said:
I just want to corroborate what you say on your flickr page.

Your wife is indeed lovely. She also looks like she's a delight to be around, and I will venture to say that you are one lucky guy.

Thanks.

I shot a lot more Kodachrome than what's there, but much of it was documenting family and friends that year so I've not posted that kind of stuff.

One slide I value greatly is a photo of my then new girlfriend, now wife, and my mother, then 82 years old and having been very sick earlier that year, hugging at Christmas, the first time they met. My mom loves my wife and liked her immediately. It's a shot with a lot of personal meaning but not one for Flickr.

Dwayne's also managed to scratch it. It doesn't ruin it, but I'd rather it weren't scratched. I thought about getting an Ilfochrome of it when I could but didn't. I don't know if the one or two commercial labs doing Ilfochrome still have any or not.

StoneNYC · Nov 10, 2012

Roger Cole said:
Thanks.

I shot a lot more Kodachrome than what's there, but much of it was documenting family and friends that year so I've not posted that kind of stuff.

One slide I value greatly is a photo of my then new girlfriend, now wife, and my mother, then 82 years old and having been very sick earlier that year, hugging at Christmas, the first time they met. My mom loves my wife and liked her immediately. It's a shot with a lot of personal meaning but not one for Flickr.

Dwayne's also managed to scratch it. It doesn't ruin it, but I'd rather it weren't scratched. I thought about getting an Ilfochrome of it when I could but didn't. I don't know if the one or two commercial labs doing Ilfochrome still have any or not.

Granted Dwayne's had a lot of film coming through at the end, but they certainly had their issues, lost about 3 rolls of film to them, just blank, from different cameras all sent at the same time, they said "must have been my camera" but again, multiple campers a, sucks because its basically all of my Hollywood LA stay is gone, a missing part of my book, it sucks.

Another reason K didn't survive, too muck risk in error...

~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Diapositivo · Nov 10, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Market share was not lost until 1990 or therabouts.

PE

For what I remember of the time, Kodachrome 25 ruled for high definition (in the 135 format) and vivid colours. Publications like General Geographic would give a strong preference to Kodachrome 25. Travel photography was the monopoly of Kodachrome. Those Polinesian beaches with blue sky, blue (or green) sea and bight sand, and the green palm on top, where Kodachrome private ground. E-6 were slightly below in grain and vividness and were considered good-but-no-cigar.

Then came a product of a quasi-obscure Japanese firm, Fujifilm, the existence of which one would normally learn about in photo catalogues . Velvia. Velvia was 50 rather than 25, was equally fine grained than Kodachrome 25, and was also much easier to process and, especially, much less risky (E-6, could be done at home or down the corner). The colour response was markedly different but, all in all, was very vivid and up in vividness to Kodachrome, which never had happened before in the industry.

IIRC in a few years Kodachrome sales had a sharp fall and the Fujifilm brand became synonym of professional material rather than Kodak. I think the risks and waste of time related to sending Kodachrome to a far-away laboratory weighted much more, in the shift, than the colour response of the two materials. Velvia was good enough, but without the anxiety.

Photo Engineer · Nov 10, 2012

Fuji E6 films were introduced in about 1990 and immediately ran into severe process problems due to process sensitivity. Fuji nearly lost the market and this led to an upsurge of EK E6 sales. Eventually, Fuji fixed the problem and came back strong.

The ads for the 1990 Winter Olympics were among the last Kodachrome ads. They shared the ad with E6.

PE

lxdude · Nov 10, 2012

So before 1990 they were still E-4 with Fuji processing included?

Photo Engineer · Nov 10, 2012

I never said this!

PE

Reports of (Colour) Kodachrome Home Processing Emerge from Sydney

StoneNYC

wblynch

MattKing

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Photo Engineer

ME Super

Photo Engineer

wogster

MattKing

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wogster

Prof_Pixel

MattKing

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Roger Cole

Photo Engineer

lxdude

wogster

railwayman3

StoneNYC

lxdude

Roger Cole

Roger Cole

StoneNYC

Diapositivo

Photo Engineer

lxdude

Photo Engineer

Reports of (Colour) Kodachrome Home Processing Emerge from Sydney

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