Kodachrome in the news -- Interview with Grant S. of Dwayne's ...

[amateriat]

Kodachrome was invented by two musicians, Mannes and Godowski--I am going by memory here, on the spelling. They timed the chemical baths by whistling bars of classical music.

Think about it...what other photographic product–other than, say, the original Leica–has that kind of story behind it?

It's a safe bet they do, most likely an employee who services all the processing equipment. When I worked in a pro lab, we had at least one guy who could work on all the equipment. Of course, most of his time was taken up getting the Kreonite back on-line. 😛

By the time I got to the Kreonites in the labs I worked at, they'd truly had the life beaten out of them. Keeping them from eating clients' rolls on a regular basis, was rather a challenge.

And, for what it's worth, Kodachrome is back in my film rotation after an absence of, oh, fifteen years? Just doing my bit. 🙂

And, thank you, dmr, for that link. You do the "alertness thing" quite well.


- Barrett

 

[amateriat]

Well, Al there are a few of us still projecting slides. I've been fascinated by projected images ever since Cinemascope and Cinerama came out. So when I was a kid I decided I would show my pictures that way when I grew up. here's my rig:

Ah, you do the multi-image thing. 🙂

In yet another lifetime, I made something of a living working on large-scale versions of this, with fifteen projectors or more, computer-controlled (funny to think of it now, but this was the cutting edge of photography circa 1980-1990). It was, for better or worse, the precursor to PowerPoint presentations and iMovie. (But the resolution was higher.)

(Raise your hand if you ever say The New York Experience, or even know what it was.)


- Barrett

 

[Rob-F]

I don't know about the New York Experience, but I saw a slide show put together by a fellow in Telluride using 27 projectors. Later I saw one in Chicago, near the old water tower, put on by Kodak. It had 63 projectors. (The one in Telluride was better. The number of projectors doesn't tell the whole story!)

 

[Al Kaplan]

I'm not sure of the exact relationship between Ansco and Agfa but I know that Anscochrome and Agfachrome did share some technology and both had a bad fading problem. The dyes used in Kodachrome were fantastic for long term storage but faded from exposure to bright light. Great to keep but not to project too often. On the other hand Ektachrome dyes hold up better when projected, but fade faster over time.

I suspect that a lot of the problems with Agfa and Ansco (GAF) color products were due to fear of infringing on Kodak patents. I'd love to see the return to Kodachrome II, and to placate the digi-freaks just include a disc in the price of every box of slides. Fifty years after the last vestige of a pixel on the discs had corrupted itself into oblivion the Kodachrome slides would still be there, to be scanned again.

 

[amateriat]

I'm not sure of the exact relationship between Ansco and Agfa but I know that Anscochrome and Agfachrome did share some technology and both had a bad fading problem. The dyes used in Kodachrome were fantastic for long term storage but faded from exposure to bright light. Great to keep but not to project too often. On the other hand Ektachrome dyes hold up better when projected, but fade faster over time.

I suspect that a lot of the problems with Agfa and Ansco (GAF) color products were due to fear of infringing on Kodak patents. I'd love to see the return to Kodachrome II, and to placate the digi-freaks just include a disc in the price of every box of slides. Fifty years after the last vestige of a pixel on the discs had corrupted itself into oblivion the Kodachrome slides would still be there, to be scanned again.

Interesting stuff, Al. I'm going to want to look into my slide archives and compare, as an example, my Agfa CT18 slides with my GAF 500 slides (both taken around the mid-late 70s). The funny thing about GAF 500 is that it looked "off" and ruddy right off the bat, while Agfa CT18 had merely a warm patina (not unpleasant, as I recall) that betrayed its origins. Kodachrome, or course, was in a whole 'nother universe (I started shooting it at the dawn of the K-14 era, however).

And I marvel at how far film technology has evolved in other ways since then (especially color neg, which I didn't give the time of day back then, but now is almost all I shoot).


- Barrett

 

[BlueMan]

I hate to say I don't shoot as much film as I used to(not that I'm shooting dogital- I'm just not shooting much stuff these days), but I vividly remember all the landscapes, mountains, scenic vistas I shot with K25 and 64. Beautiful blue skies, bright white clouds, pleasant greens, and bright reds, oranges and yellows in fall leaves. I've never been as happy with the colors in any of the E6 films compared to Kodachrome. And projecting them on a big screen with my 35 year old Kodak 750H projector- breathtaking!

 

[wilt]

At a conference the other year, I saw a presentation done with a slideprojector; the resolution of the slides compared to computer projectors normally used made the presentation really stand out. Since the researcher relied extensively on documentary-style photography as source material - this was by an ethnologist working on food retailing - it made a difference.

Ah, you do the multi-image thing. 🙂

In yet another lifetime, I made something of a living working on large-scale versions of this, with fifteen projectors or more, computer-controlled (funny to think of it now, but this was the cutting edge of photography circa 1980-1990). It was, for better or worse, the precursor to PowerPoint presentations and iMovie. (But the resolution was higher.)


- Barrett

 

[shadowfox]

Well, Al there are a few of us still projecting slides. I've been fascinated by projected images ever since Cinemascope and Cinerama came out. So when I was a kid I decided I would show my pictures that way when I grew up. here's my rig:

... and what a wonderful rig yours is, Rob.

That's what I'd call a media-room. 🙂

 

[summaron]

According to the Kodak cinema & tv page, Kodak made a 2 color Kodachrome in 1931 (2-color processes consisted of two opposite colors, such as the orange and blue of Cinecolor, which ventriloquized the rest of the color spectrum between them). There was also a lenticular color film in 1928 (little intricate prism lenses embedded on black and white stock and projected through corresponding color filters). Neither one was wildly successful. The release of Agfacolor patents after the second world war may have helped Kodak with the development of Kodacolor.

Kodachrome II was the best--very smooth as Al says and with very subtle hues of color--almost the color equivalent of Panatomic X. It was the Kodachrome of the years between 1961 and 1974. Then Kodachrome 25 came stumbling on the market and the whites had a rather sickly greenish cast, while the highlights of Kodachrome X or 64 had a more acceptable magenta tint.

 

[philipb]

Kodachrome II was the best--very smooth as Al says and with very subtle hues of color--almost the color equivalent of Panatomic X. It was the Kodachrome of the years between 1961 and 1974. Then Kodachrome 25 came stumbling on the market and the whites had a rather sickly greenish cast, while the highlights of Kodachrome X or 64 had a more acceptable magenta tint.

Might I assume that my scan above from a 1971 slide would be Kodachrome II?

 

[summaron]

There's a nice chart in the Wikipedia entry on Kodachrome laying out all the dates of the various versions. The source is William S. Lane, a Product Support Engineer at Eastman Kodak.

1974 seems to be the dividing line between Kodachrome II and Kodachrome 25 & Kodachrome X and K-64.

The change from the first Kodachrome (asa 10) to Kodachrome II was also controversial, a little like the move from 78s to Lps and 45s.

 

[Trius]

I do not disagree completely about the qualities of K-II, and when K25 was introduced the resulting chromes were a bit of a visual jolt. However, K25 has qualities I like and is well suited to certain scenes/lighting conditions. And K64 is, IMO, a definite improvement over KX.

I actually think the processing makes a difference. When I was shooting KII and then K25, it was processed by Kodak since, in Canada, there were no anti-combine regulations preventing the sale of the film with processing. I ALWAYS got great results, and it may be that my satisfaction with K25 was partly due to the processing. I'm pretty sure that the processing was done at Kodak in Toronto, though it's possible they sent it here to Rochester.

I really, really liked CT18 and Agfachrome 64. Different than Kodachrome, for sure, but when you wanted pure blues, Agfa was the choice. Fading has been a problem with some of my Agfa slides, but I think processing may be a factor as well as dye type.

IIRC Agfa had some things colour emulsions about the same time that Kodachrome was invented, but WWII intervened and changed the dynamic of the market. If not for WWII, Agfa may have gained ascendancy or at least more market share in North America. The biggest problem with Agfa film products (not so much paper) in the 70s and on was distribution. They were forever changing their distributors in the US and Canada.