Reports of (Colour) Kodachrome Home Processing Emerge from Sydney

[Diapositivo]

Kodachrome would have died regardless of digital. E-6 rules. Long live E-6. Anything which cannot be developed at home makes no sense. Film must be cheap if it simply wants to be.

 

[Roger Cole]

All that's true, and E6 did surpass it in any objective measures I can think of.

But the Kodachrome look was never duplicated or even, IMHO, equaled. We all understand the reasons for its demise. But that doesn't mean we have to like that demise, and it's good to remember it with others, and even to dream about how it or a similar film could live again, even if we understand too well that the chance of that happening is vanishingly small.

 

[Photo Engineer]

You must understand that the Kodachrome "look" was a colorimetric accident or mistake, due to the peculiar nature of the cyan dye that was formed. To get good stability and reactivity, the dye had a very peculiar visual response that created neutrals that were often green. Some thought that the greens were beautiful, and that the sky was beautiful, but in reality flesh tones were harsh and greens were often dark or even black.

It was quite hard to print, and prints and dupes lost detail in reds due to that oddball cyan.

PE

 

[wblynch]

...But the Kodachrome look was never duplicated or even, IMHO, equaled...

You know Roger, that's a good point.

It makes me wonder if there was a purposeful effort by Kodak to NOT duplicate the look. If they made an E-6 look like, or better than, Kodachrome it would have died out a lot sooner.

If Kodachrome was their color quality flagship for so long I would bet they were very protective of its status.

Of course EK is no longer interested in a look-alike E-6 replacement for Kodachrome.

---
I missed PE's post before this went in.

Given the colorimetric mistake mentioned above, perhaps they wanted to avoid replicating it?

 

[Roger Cole]

Well...dunno. I concede that Caucasian flesh tones, at least, tend to look, to me, a bit whiter and paler than either other films or reality. I'm not so sure I see that in greens - not saying it isn't the case, just not sure I see it. I'll review some of my Kodachromes with an eye to looking for it.

And hard to print depends on the media, I think. It seemed to print beautifully on Ilfochrome but I'm judging this from prints of others on it. I printed a fair amount of Ilfochrome but always from E6, because I could develop it at home (getting back to the above point.) So I really have no way of knowing how much difficulty those printers faced in producing those results, I just know some of them were quite beautiful.

I think for many of us the look just reminds us of our youth. Even though my family didn't shoot slides and barely shot consumer prints in my early days, a lot of what we saw in media was done on Kodachrome through the 70s and even much of the 80s.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Well guys, the "norm" in visual response is a balance between C/M/Y when we look at films. Kodachrome has a mismatch in C/M/Y in terms of band width and density of the cyan, and this does what Roger states. Caucasian flesh tones tend to be washed out, African-American flesh tones often turn greenish, especially in the highlights.

Take a look at the 4 figures and observe how well matched the Ektachrome characteristic curves and dye curves are compared to those of Kodachrome. This mismatch in Kodachrome gave it excellent dye stability as well as unique (but odd) color reproduction. Direct side-by-side comparisons of any E6 film with Kodachrome would show you.

And there was an effort made to get Ektachrome to "look right" in terms of overall color response. I would guess that if Kodachrome had had another round of R&D, the "errors" would have been fixed.

PE

 

[dsmccrac]

PE, interesting. When I was in the printing world, there was a saying that the 'C' in CMYK stood for 'cockeyed' ;-)

I did not know that cyan dyes were all around pesky!

 

[bvy]

And there was an effort made to get Ektachrome to "look right" in terms of overall color response. I would guess that if Kodachrome had had another round of R&D, the "errors" would have been fixed.

PE

Hopefully we'll get that with the upcoming $300/roll processing.

 

[Roger Cole]

Those are very interesting curves. Thanks for the information.

It goes to show that accurate isn't always preferred by everyone.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

You must understand that the Kodachrome "look" was a colorimetric accident or mistake, due to the peculiar nature of the cyan dye that was formed. To get good stability and reactivity, the dye had a very peculiar visual response that created neutrals that were often green. Some thought that the greens were beautiful, and that the sky was beautiful, but in reality flesh tones were harsh and greens were often dark or even black.

It was quite hard to print, and prints and dupes lost detail in reds due to that oddball cyan.

PE

The is exactly what my Ilfochrome Classic printer remarked to me in communication about the difficulty in printing from Kodachrome trannies. But on occasion he also mentioned something that turns things on its ear: that Kodachrome was preferred for printing over e.g. Fuji for the quality of hue in the red spectrum, though personally I could not understand what he was getting at, but it seemed to my understanding Kodachrome was better at reproducing very subtle tones of red-pink (in the days I used it I frequently photographed a friend's rose growing business, and roses as we all know, come in myriad colours, some very rare and unusual) than E6. The resulting print from Kodachrome (not sure if I still have it or framed it and sold it) looked a mud muggy by recollection. I don't think the matter was resolved fully, with the suggestion that Velvia be used for reds and greens.

Kodachrome seemed OK in the hue of a blue skies (even when polarised), but didn't ever look right with people photography. I now see what has happened by reading PE's posts regarding the colourimetric oddity. Still, all my Big K slides are remain in great shape more than 30-40 years after exposure. Not sure how three times as many Fujichrome trannies will fare over the longer term.

 

[wblynch]

It goes to show that accurate isn't always preferred by everyone.

Well, as the man said, "I know they'd never match my sweet imagination and everything looks worse in black and white"

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Well guys, the "norm" in visual response is a balance between C/M/Y when we look at films. Kodachrome has a mismatch in C/M/Y in terms of band width and density of the cyan, and this does what Roger states. Caucasian flesh tones tend to be washed out, African-American flesh tones often turn greenish, especially in the highlights.

Take a look at the 4 figures and observe how well matched the Ektachrome characteristic curves and dye curves are compared to those of Kodachrome. This mismatch in Kodachrome gave it excellent dye stability as well as unique (but odd) color reproduction. Direct side-by-side comparisons of any E6 film with Kodachrome would show you.

And there was an effort made to get Ektachrome to "look right" in terms of overall color response. I would guess that if Kodachrome had had another round of R&D, the "errors" would have been fixed.

PE

Kodachrome was around for 75 years. What was stopping Kodak from putting a bit of progressive R&D into it with a view of balancing its many odd nuances?

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Kodachrome would have died regardless of digital. E-6 rules. Long live E-6. Anything which cannot be developed at home makes no sense. Film must be cheap if it simply wants to be.

So very, very true.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Kodachrome did not get much research over time, and its needs for couplers was quite particular as they had to be soluble in the developer at pH values near 12, and they had to be stable. They had to make stable dyes, and etc... So, during the life of Kodachrome, we probably had 3 dye sets. I'm not sure now. Other films had many dye sets.

Kodachrome satisfied a very happy but narrow customer base. It made slides with low detail in red objects (cyan again), and odd greens and blues. It made flesh tones seem chalky in some cases. But, I have remarked elsewhere that each person sees color a bit differently. This is due to the ratio and nature of the pigments in the eye and many other factors.

Over time the E6 film dye set evolved more rapidly and E6 films from about the mid 80s are far more stable (I think) than films from the mid 70s. I know this is the case for C41 films and the color papers which evolved very rapidly.

I have done Kodachrome-Ektachrome-Kodacolor comparisons in the original and in prints. Kodachrome was most often picked last for color quality.

PE

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

PE, it's all very interesting and quite telling that Kodachrome was not quite (in terms of technology) the holy grail of emulsions as so many people emotively make it out to be. So much advanced progress was made with E6 (even more with digital) that, as Diapositivo pointed out, Kodachrome was doomed from the time E6 and digital leaped ahead. I will have a look at some old Kodachrome slides that feature red and pink roses; I'm sure that as beautiful as they were to photograph, Kodachrome did not show them with reasonable colour fidelity (or sharpness; grain was always noticeable), which is no doubt why so many were never printed to Ilfochrome Classic media (a task my printer at the time was loathe to do because of lesser quality results than from E6).

I discarded my last four rolls of Kodachrome 200 in 1994. It was too costly to process and I had already been shifted in my mindset of better quality materials. And I'm not moved at all by the flood of emotive overtures at its demise.

 

[Steve Smith]

I suspect that the reasons we like the quirkiness of Kodachrome are similar to the way guitarists like the distorted/compressed sound of their guitars through non linear, non hi-fi valve (tube) amplifiers.

Things don't have to be technically perfect to have appeal.


Steve.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Kodak worked on a t-Grain and an ISO 400 Kodachrome but none of this went to market. The photo magazines who got samples were "ho-hum" about it in the face of the new E6 films.

PE

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Ken, you are right. But only in this sense... Look at the threads and out of the 60,000 or so members of APUG, only the same 10 - 20 people are posting. So the people posting are avid Kodachrome users, but in the broad sense the customer base has vanished and there are few true users. In fact, the most avid will still not pay the price projected here in APUG for a roll to be developed, and yet i feel that is the true cost now. Once you realize that Kodak was approaching that price limit, (ie. No profit) then you realize that there is no avid customer base, at least not one much bigger than the people here and there like us posting on APUG.

PE

No argument with any of this at all.

Kodachrome is never coming back any more than the Kodak of old is coming back. Perez and the board have made sure of that. And whether Kodak survives in any incarnation is still very much up in the air. For the sake of everyone who still depends on them, I hope they do. But we'll just have to wait and see.

Actually, what motiviated my post were the comments in (there was a url link here which no longer exists) from the other Kodachrome thread, where it was implied that APUG should shut down all of the currently related Kodachrome threads and ban any new similar ones.

Given Kodachrome's place in American culture over the generations, I thought that was a little harsh. Notwithstanding some here (not you!) who seem compromised in their ability to emote, the memories many of us hold of long ago friends and family members are, in fact, Kodachrome memories.

If you've seen my photo contribution to the Epic Kodachrome Thread, you've seen one of mine. Without that precious single frame there's no way I'd still remember the names of half of my long ago teammates. But with it, that memory is colorfully secure for my lifetime, and beyond. I have the Kodachrome slide and I have the camera used by my late father to make it. That has real value. Emotable value.

See (there was a url link here which no longer exists) for another perfect—and perfectly timed—example of what I'm saying (the emphasis below is mine):

"i never got the chance to shoot kodachrome despite my families boxes of slides being exclusively full of it."​

I'd bet dollars-to-donuts that this poster and his family are not unique in that regard. I also read that the staff chemist at Dwayne's Photo spent the last year or two documenting their family members with Kodachrome. This person could have chosen any of the more modern films.

As I've said, a cultural phenomenon. Capable of generating value far beyond the simple cost of its manufacture. Even with a slightly less than perfect cyan dye.

Ken

 

[Photo Engineer]

Ken;

There are 3 or 4 active "Kodachrome is dead, the sky is falling" threads active right now. A fair percentage of my mail is about "what can you do about Kodachrome" and what I can do or want to do is zip! To me, to some extent, these threads are an annoyance. Now, if someone is faced with the best photomaterial in the world, and has never used it, well, how can they complain now when it is gone? They were part of the problem!

I laugh but there is some truth to the bizarre proposal to chain me in a barn and have me process Kodachrome, or build the equipment to coat it. Some people think I can or would do something if the price was right.

Perhaps you see where I am coming from? I wish all of these threads were closed.

PE

 

[wblynch]

One could most easily ignore the threads....

 

[Sal Santamaura]

Those are very interesting curves. Thanks for the information.

It goes to show that accurate isn't always preferred by everyone.

Didn't need the curves to show that. Velvia's broad success is a more graphic demonstration.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Sal, you could not be more correct! That is why Fuji had the E6 market cornered.

Bill, when you are trying to help someone with information, you don't ignore them. OTOH, you have to tell them that enough is enough.

PE

 

[Roger Cole]

Ken;

There are 3 or 4 active "Kodachrome is dead, the sky is falling" threads active right now. A fair percentage of my mail is about "what can you do about Kodachrome" and what I can do or want to do is zip! To me, to some extent, these threads are an annoyance. Now, if someone is faced with the best photomaterial in the world, and has never used it, well, how can they complain now when it is gone? They were part of the problem!

I laugh but there is some truth to the bizarre proposal to chain me in a barn and have me process Kodachrome, or build the equipment to coat it. Some people think I can or would do something if the price was right.

Perhaps you see where I am coming from? I wish all of these threads were closed.

PE

I can understand annoyance with the mail. If I were you I'd compose a standard reply that said politely but tersely "not a damned thing I can do, it's gone, get over it and use the E6 films you prefer if you don't want to lose them too" or something to that effect and just paste it into each one of them.

The threads are a different matter. You can ignore them easily with the ignore thread feature. It comes across like the fact you're tired of hearing something means you think no one else should be allowed to talk about it. I'm in agreement with Ken. I don't think threads should ever be closed on any forum just because one poster, no matter how knowledgeable and helpful in the general topic, finds the subject annoying to the point of being a pet peeve, even though the subject is also on topic. I've ignored plenty of threads. On another forum I'm on I have (I just counted) 198 threads on ignore, yet I participate there almost daily. Granted, that list goes back to 2008 and many of them could not doubt safely be taken off ignore now.

 

[Roger Cole]

Oh and Velvia - curves or not, if there's one film I think takes "very inaccurate but people like the inaccurate look" to an extreme far beyond Kodachrome, it's Velvia. I'm not talking about how well curves match, just the level of saturation. Not many people claim it looks realistic, but people seem to love it. I'm not one of them, finding it exaggerated and garish most of the time, though I do like it for subjects that need a color pop shot in dull lighting.

Kodachrome has a realistic look to me even if I can identify where the color isn't accurate. That's hard to explain but easy to see. There's something about it that looks very "real" somehow.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Roger, please read the second paragraph of my post 223. That is why I cannot ignore these threads. I have had requests from students trying to piece together a history of Kodachrome, others want to replicate just one color image for a science experiment and etc. How can I ignore this. I said in the post you quote that I want and can do zip. That is not really correct. I can give out information and guide people to sources for more information.

PE