[rollei_list] Re: ...Kodachromes taken 50 years ago "Processed by Technicolor R"
- From: David Sadowski <dsadowski@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2014 14:56:26 -0500
Originally, Kodachrome was sold with processing included. In the 1950s,
the US government decided this was anti-competitve, and forced Kodak to
offer Kodachrome processing via independent labs.
While there weren't a lot of these labs, Kodachrome being a difficult and
complicated film to develop properly, Technicolor was one such lab.
This would have nothing to do with the Technicolor process for color movie
film. This was Kodachrome film and processing, just done by an independent
lab.
For a short time in the late 1980s, there were actually two such
independent labs in Chicago doing K-14 processing- Ross-Ehlert and LaSalle
Photo. It was even possible to have Ross-Ehlert do the film in four hours
(pro E-6 labs, however, could do Ektachrome in two hours), and they also
offered push processing.
It turned out the market for Kodachrome had largely dried up already, and
both of these ventures failed. LaSalle spent perhaps a million dollars to
put in their K-14 line, had to install a blast cap above the lab, and kept
a chemist on hand full time to mix the chemistry (some of which had to be
made "from scratch").
On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 2:44 PM, CarlosMFreaza <cmfreaza@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I had not payed attention to the Kodachrome slides frame data. They
> say in one of the sides "KODACHROME Transparency", "Processed by
> TECHNICOLOR R" (with the circle meaning Registered Trade Mark); the
> other side says "Made in U.S.A. P.701" , the number of slide in the
> batch is also printed in red (f.e. 1,2,3...) and even more
> interesting, it is engraved on each frame (via pressure on the
> cardboard, without ink) the slide process date: The 18 Kodachrome
> slides in the little box were processed in "DEC 59" (December 1959)
> and belong to the same roll. I suspect some other slides in the box
> with plastic frames are also Kodachrome from this batch, because it
> was necessary to replace the cardboard frame sometimes, when it became
> broken or jammed during the projection.
>
> "Processed by TECHNICOLOR R", could be the explanation for the vivid
> colors these slides showed when they were new, Technicolor process
> evolved and improved from 1916 to give and /or to improve colors for
> movies and it was also applied to improve color vividness for films of
> still photography too.
>
> Carlos
>
> 2014-08-06 12:20 GMT-03:00 CarlosMFreaza <cmfreaza@xxxxxxxxx>:
> > One of my sisters found a box containing some K 14 35mm Kodachrome
> > slides taken by my father between 1958 and 1962, the box also
> > contained some E-6 35mm Ektachrome slides taken by me when I was 16
> > and 17 years old (1972/73). We believed all these old slides were lost
> > and, in fact, most of them are lost, but these few slides in the
> > little box have some of the magic from the old times, when, as
> > fascinated kids and teenagers, watched the projected images .
> >
> > The slides show very faded colors, dust, scratches and some units have
> > fungus and humidity stains too, anyway four or five Kodachromes look
> > pretty good, I don't know the cause for the difference, they are from
> > the same time, same lab an were kept in the same box.
> >
> > I'm scanning them using the infrared cleaning option, Vuescan works
> > fine for the purpose, at least a lot better than the Epson Digital ICE
> > software. Vuescan eliminates most of the scratches and dust; BTW, it
> > can not solve problems if the image was destroyed in the emulsion
> > itself.
> >
> > The scanning software options to restore faded colors and chromatic
> > losses hardly work to improve the image quality for these cases, most
> > of the slides need very much work with levels and curves; I'm
> > having some acceptable results for a few slides but others are beyond
> > my limited skills and knowledge, I think I'll convert them into Blank
> > and White images.
> >
> > Carlos
> ---
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