Koda chrome was like butter it was selling so slow it became rancid...
This '21st century" that so many hype as some kind of great new era, so far hasn't been very good at all. Whole swathes of industries and lifestyles have been turned into wagon wheels and buggy whips by the computer. My own field is one of the hardest hit. And I don't see an ounce of improvement in any of it.
But suggesting this is like drawing a cartoon of the prophet and I am afraid of the anti-K film fatwa.
What about the diskettes they are stored on? I have trouble buying 3 1/4 inch floppies and the larger ones are impossible. Drives are going bad.
PE
Not my experience, my fathers Kodachromes have faded very significantly over the years. Optimism can be unfounded and bare little resemblance to reality.
I should add he shot on early Kodachrome and they were processed by Kodak and fading was noticeable within 20 yeras, my Kodachromes shot about 40 years ago are OK but so are my E4, Agfachrome and E6.
Ian
Don't want to reopen the KChrome wars, but it was always a Kodak product which I loved. I am in possession of color slides over 60 years old and they look beautiful. Few color images can compare with the resolution and color saturation. Modern digital technology does pump up the color values and has very good yellows, but I imagine in a few years these qualities will begin to look artificial and dated. In 60 years will we be able to present a Digi camera image with the ease that matches pulling a 35 mm slide out of a box? It will probably be harder than getting music out of an old player piano roll.
KChrome has an elegant design and the happy accident that it is an archival format. Evans, Hanson and Brewer in "Principles of Color Photography" recommend a p-phenylenediamine type developer with the couplers 2,4-dichloro-1-napthol, p-nitrobenzyl-cyanide and naphthoylacetanilide (p. 261). So recreating the film in small batches ought to be possible, if anyone wanted it. But suggesting this is like drawing a cartoon of the prophet and I am afraid of the anti-K film fatwa. No one will be able to make it as well as EK, but it is by no means a lost recipe.
I've heard that Kodachrome film is basically BW film and the dyes are added to the film during processing?
Dont overdo my contribution to Kodachrome. I worked on CD6 and not Kodachrome. Quite a different story.
As far as old OS's go, there are copies on the internet and they run in virtual windows under the current windows machines using emulators such as VMWARE.
PE
Now, if you exposed three strips of HP5+ through a red, green, and blue filter, run the red strip through the first developer and cyan developer, the green strip through the first developer and magenta developer, and the blue strip through the first developer and yellow developer, (don't forget to bleach and fix!) of the K14 process, then laminated the three strips together, you'd get a full color image.
this is actually far more complicated than described here, to yield a good image you need to consider a number of issues.
A, The spectral sensitivity of the black and white film you choose
B, The Red, Green and Blue Filter you choose in relation to the chosen films sensitivity
C, Film Exposure though each filter.
D, Development contrast and density for each of the film frames
E, Registration of the 3 frames as to avoid colour aberration
this list covers a select few of the primary issues though there are others.
The biggest thing I learned when experimenting with converting black and white films into colour mediums is that when black and white films are made they dont seem to have been engineered to easily convert into accurate colour.
Alan, at the time you write of, Kodak was only discovering that micro crystalline dyes were part of the clue to dye stability. The other part was the use of free radical chain stoppers like Vitamin E. The crystallization was part of the Kodachrome secret and was first applied to Ektacolor 37 paper as was the Vitamin E work alike.
There were claims that Kodak did not care and other negative statements such as those by Henry Wilhelm. However, the image stability problem was foremost in most all Kodak film projects.
PE
I don't have time to read all the preceding posts. But here's my take on it strictly from a personal experience standpoint, that I am certainly
not alone. Kodachrome is a pretty fussy process to develop requiring dedicated machinery. Several things happened roughly around the same
time. Kodak spun off development to a third party called Kodalux, and they started botching things. Slides came back scratched etc. Then Kodak decided that K64 was good enough, so dropped K25, which was really the superior product in many respects. Then E6 films started getting better, and were a helluva lot easier to make and process. Then they introduced 120 Kodachrome and made a big hoopla about it,
but dropped it soon afterwards, which left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. But I don't think there has ever really been a substitute for that
Kodachrome look. I don't know exactly how far back Kodachrome goes; but I've seen 5x7 sheet film images on it possibly 70 years old that
look like they were taken yesterday.
I didn't understand that, but thanks!
Oh yeah, I have two 16mm film magazines loaded with Super XX. Once I figure out how I can develop said film, I'll shoot them. I remember shooting XX in 35mm, too, many years ago.
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