[rollei_list] Re: Old film
- From: "John A. Lind" <jalind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 04:02:24 -0500
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
---
Rollei List
- Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe'
in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
- Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org
- Online, searchable archives are available at
//www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list
Other related posts:
