[rollei_list] Re: Old film

At 02:05 AM 5/31/2005, Richard K wrote (extensively):

>The stability of incorporated coupler color films has been
>very substantially improved over the years. Modern color
>films probably have a lifetime of 50 or more years before
>dye fading becomes too great to get good prints or reproduce
>them. The early films had lifetimes of no more than 15
>years.
[enormous snip]

Thank you for the details and obviously my memory is faulty about a number 
of them.  It was more than I recall reading when I found what I did about 
the process.

Regarding the films with incorporated couplers, I'm all to painfully aware 
of their lifetimes.  I've suffered the short life you mention in negatives 
my wife has dating up into at least the 1960's and believe some of them 
were exposed and developed in the 1970's.  They've proven impossible to 
extract a reasonably color balanced print out of them.  Some are barely 
able to make any kind of print from.  I've also had enormous problems with 
some color print materials made from of film I shot up to around 
1980.  Some of them have held up as if they were printed yesterday and 
others have faded horridly.  Don't know if it was their developing or if it 
was different print materials.  I was having the film developed and printed 
by the same service.  They were sending it out somewhere; it was not done 
in-house, so there could be some variation there if they shipped it to 
different labs.  There doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to the 
fading and color shifting though . . . which prints have and which have not 
. . . no longitudinal effect of most of the fading before a particular 
month/year and little afterward (or vice versa).  It's seems quite random 
over about a five year period.

Many of my father's Kodachromes are over 50 years old.  They look like the 
day they came back from Kodak.  Having prints made from them has been zero 
problem.  It's not just Kodachrome's longevity that I've found attractive 
though.  In addition to the apparent sharpness it has, there is nothing 
else that renders colors like it does.  I know some despise it but I've 
always enjoyed it.  I now use Provia 100F for medium format.  It's the 
closest I've found to Kodachrome . . . not as different compared to the 
other E-6's I've tried would be a better characterization.  Provia has been 
OK, but has some characteristics I don't like.  I've suffered the "train 
headlamp flare" problem from other bright light sources that rail buffs 
complain train headlamps produce.  Creates a blob like hot-spot in the 
photograph that doesn't have the same shape as the light source whereas 
Kodachrome creates something resembling the light source's shape with 
minimal flare around it.

-- John Lind

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