[rollei_list] Re: Kodachrome
----- Original Message ----- From: chatanooga@xxxxxxxxx 
To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 8:47 AM
Subject: [rollei_list] Re: Kodachrome


Emmanuel
Chacun a son gout and all that but do you feel there are some areas where K'chrome shines over the more modern slide films? 
rgds
Chat
Kodachrome has established a very good record of dark storage life. OTOH, its projection life is not especially good. For those shooting stock photos Kodachrome has, at least in the past, been the film of choice because of its long dark storage life. If you project or display transparencies frequently other films may be better. Now, there has been much change in color films even over the last ten years. I don't know of any published data on the dark storage life of current films, its quite possible they may match Kodachrome. Also, when Kodachrome was introduced it had very brilliant color, partly due to its high contrast. This seems to have been at least partly a choice made by Kodak, perhaps based on market research. Technicolor also chose to have a very brilliant look because producers, at the time of its introduction, wanted it to look that way. Both systems are capable of lower contrast. Kodak seems to have lowered the contrast of Kodachrome since it was introduced plus the color gamut seems to have changed just a bit. I shot a lot of Kodachrome on a European tour quite some time ago. The slides still look like they did originally. However, all had a very slight magenta cast, probably an artifact of processing. They were all processed locally by A&I, one of the best pro labs in the country. Kodachrome, for those not familiar with the differences, requires a special and quite complicated process to develop. Kodachrome was released about 1935, initially as 16mm motion picture film. Kodak was in something of a rush to get a color film on the market because they undoubtedly knew that Agfa was developing such a film. Because Kodak could not come up with a suitable mechanism for anchoring the couplers in the emulsion it chose to put them in the reversal developing solutions. As a result Kodachrome must go through four developing steps. About the only other color film I know of that used a similar approach was made by Ilford. It used a similar processing technique but used a different method of isolating the emulsion layers. One of the differences in Kodachrome's permenance may be the type of dye that is produced in the emulsion. 

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Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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