[rollei_list] Re: Kodachrome

  • From: Dirk-Roger Schmitt <Dirk-Roger.Schmitt@xxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:29:29 +0100

Dear folks:

Well some comment from me:

I have never been an enthusiast on Kodachrome, however mostly because it was very unconvenient (eand expensive) for me because there was no local lab. We had a local professional lab here in Braunschweig, the home town of Rollei, Voigtlander, and Volkswagen, where I could bring my E6 rolls, and could get them processed within one hour if needed. For 2 $,-. The lab has closed.
Kodachrome did take with the Lausanne-way 10 days or more.

For Super-8, Kodachrome 40 was the only way to get any sharp movies, so I sticked to it until 2001, when I shot the last rolls (which have been frozen for 10 years in my refrigerator at -18 Celsius). The outcome was perfect.

I never did like Ektachrome X-Type films. They give a to reddish athmosphere.
If I am on a glacier say near the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc at 12:00 noon in summer, the snow ot the glacier HAS TO BE BLUE!!!!
I did hate films, making the snow neutral or red
My choice have been EPR (by the way, is it still available??) or the newer 100 G but NOT the X-Versions of Kodak.
I cannot compare how the Kodachrome was, because I did not use it.

About 4 or 5 years ago, I shot rolls of Kodachrome, Ektachrome and Fuji, and taped them to my window showing to the South into most of the sun. I posted the results in this forum (however I forgot the details, sorry, but maybe someone can bury it out).

I showed that the Kodachrome was not very good, at least that the UV exposure of the sun degraded it more than others.

But, anyway, Emanual does encouraging me to buy at least one role of it for playing around.

Best regards


Dirk










At 22:48 27.02.2009, you wrote:

----- 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.

--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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