'Sure Be Nice If Ektachrome Wasn't the Only One Available...

MattKing said:

The inherent problems in the last versions of Kodachrome - which were a bit better than earlier versions - meant that there was a built in inability to achieve colour fidelity.
The E6 films of the same era did not suffer from those problems, and were therefore able to achieve better colour fidelity.
I guess you could design into modern E6 materials the problems with Kodachrome colour fidelity, but would you want to?

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What “inherent problems”? Kodachrome (especially Kodachrome 25) always reproduced the scene much more faithfully than Ektachrome in my experience.

The classic early E-6 Ektachrome 64 suffered from red contamination of the greens. That could produce wonderful renderings of sage and muted bluish off-green hues, but couldn't hit the nail on the head with cleaner spring greens, that is, unless a special masking correction was applied to dye transfer printing. But as soon as Fujichrome 50 came out, it was the other way around. Alas, no one film does it all. As far as Kodachrome goes, I much preferred the 25 version to the subsequent 64; but other than experimenting briefly with 120 Kodachrome, I was shifting entirely to 4x5 at the time anyway. Just in time for the advent of Cibachrome, first version.

paddycook said:

What “inherent problems”? Kodachrome (especially Kodachrome 25) always reproduced the scene much more faithfully than Ektachrome in my experience.

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I'm working from memory here - a deep dive into Photo Engineer's posts will reveal the information in more clear form - but IIRC in essence the process inherent in adding the colour to the three black and white images included some self masking characteristics that made it impossible to obtain the full amount of colour in at least one of the primary colours, leading to a deficiency in that colour.
And there was no way to engineer around that deficiency - just some ways that helped minimize it a bit.
I am not a chemical engineer, and I am not the person with the detailed technical knowledge who should be looked to for a better explanation. Back in the day, I relied entirely on Ron for this - both in his posts, and off thread communications. He clearly was of the opinion though that further work on a Kodachrome like process was a waste of resources.

MattKing said:

I'm working from memory here - a deep dive into Photo Engineer's posts will reveal the information in more clear form - but IIRC in essence the process inherent in adding the colour to the three black and white images included some self masking characteristics that made it impossible to obtain the full amount of colour in at least one of the primary colours, leading to a deficiency in that colour.
And there was no way to engineer around that deficiency - just some ways that helped minimize it a bit.
I am not a chemical engineer, and I am not the person with the detailed technical knowledge who should be looked to for a better explanation. Back in the day, I relied entirely on Ron for this - both in his posts, and off thread communications. He clearly was of the opinion though that further work on a Kodachrome like process was a waste of resources.

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Interesting. Thank you for the summary.

Alan Edward Klein said:

Velvia 50 is nicer IMO, and an E6 emulsion making production and processing easier and more available. Unfortunately, it's been dropped in large format and who knows how long it will be around in smaller formats?

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Honestly, E6 is not really benefitting from any influencer push. I perceive with the new generation that slide film is seen as hard and it does not have the flexibility of C41. As a young one, I have to attribute Ken Rockwell in his Velvia 50 era, late 2000, which made me go into film. To be critical, slide did a lot for me to jump into this medium but I am also rarely shooting it.
Kodachrome was beaitufl to try; but for the below 30 photographers and with due respect to forum participants that really vouch for it, its nostalgia is approaching the one of Panatomic and Verichrome... It's gone long enough that a whole generation of photographers do not really have much to relate to.

MattKing said:

I'm working from memory here - a deep dive into Photo Engineer's posts will reveal the information in more clear form - but IIRC in essence the process inherent in adding the colour to the three black and white images included some self masking characteristics that made it impossible to obtain the full amount of colour in at least one of the primary colours, leading to a deficiency in that colour.
And there was no way to engineer around that deficiency - just some ways that helped minimize it a bit.
I am not a chemical engineer, and I am not the person with the detailed technical knowledge who should be looked to for a better explanation. Back in the day, I relied entirely on Ron for this - both in his posts, and off thread communications. He clearly was of the opinion though that further work on a Kodachrome like process was a waste of resources.

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I remembered top of mind that Kodachrome had particularities in the cyan dye, multiquoting some PE below. I loved its reds, but basically the primaries are rendered quite strongly in other (slide) films as well.

Photo Engineer said:

Kodachrome has a unique cyan dye in it that has a very narrow band pass. It therefore requires a lot of cyan dye to make a neutral thereby making greens look 'different' than other films. At the same time, a neutral does not look exactly neutral.

It is for this reason that people report it difficult to scan Kodachromes. OTOH, I have seen some superb scans done by Al Weber. He has not had any problems with it by simply adjusting his parameters correctly.

Again, no mystery, just an accident of chemistry regarding the greens and cyans and blues. As to why overall? Kodachrome can pick any dye set they want due to being able to use 3 developing agents. They picked the couplers and developing agents for color purity (bandpass), and dye stability among other features.

PE

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Photo Engineer said:

Unfortunately, the "peculiar" properties of the cyan dye used in Kodachrome K14, just like the predecessor, is related to it being in the developer and not in the coating. Being alkali soluble and unballasted changes the polarity and also renders it to some extent, microcrystalline as the dye. These are the two factors important in hue and image stability and they do not translate into E6 films very well.

PE

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Photo Engineer said:

The fault of Kodachrome lies in the very narrow absorption spectrum of the cyan dye. It thus requires more cyan contrast which leads to some colors becoming chalky looking and others being exaggerated. The high contrast also leads to heavy doses of color. Basically, Kodachrome gives an unreal color rendition to everything, but it is one which can make a garbage dump look pretty.

Also, Friedman's book is so old, it predates K14 and thus is not really representative of the technology in use at the end of Kodachrome's life. But then, K14 is not representative of what could have been done if there was a K16... etc...

PE

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Photo Engineer said:

they form a relief image that enhances sharpness. Also, using 3 developers, the dyes can be individually customized for stability and hue. My opinion has been that the cyan is detrimental to the image due to its peculiar hue, and I have presented evidence elsewhere.

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