Kodachrome 1940 (Page 3): One of the advantages of slow films: my dad shot 3x5 roll film BW in ASA 25 or less and the contact prints were and still are incredible. He used a Kodak...

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Kodachrome 1940

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Mar 8, 2019 22:11:35 #

DaveyDitzer Loc: Western PA

One of the advantages of slow films: my dad shot 3x5 roll film BW in ASA 25 or less and the contact prints were and still are incredible. He used a Kodak camera with the extended bellows. We loved looking at the shutter through the back of the camera when it was unloaded.

Mar 8, 2019 22:31:12 #

greigfla

wrangler5 wrote:

But did anybody except Kodak own a Kodachrome processing plant? I thought those were such capital intensive machines that only Kodak made the investment.

Too big a deal to set up in your bathroom, but otherwise I wouldn't think any more capital intensive than many other complex machines, such as in the food or drug industry. And the rewards were great. I seem to recall reading at one time that Kodak film was operating on a 70% profit margin -- largest of any inductry. Before 1954 only Kodak could develop Kodachrome, not because it was impossibly complex, but because Kodak would not sell the developers to anyone until they were forced to when they lost their monopoly in court. Also to be noted is that while we are mostly talking about 35mm slide film -- Kodachrome was available in various sizes, including movie film. There were certainly enough pictures and movies being shot to keep a number of processors busy in its hayday . . . until Kodak invented the digital camera and sort of cut its own throat.

Mar 8, 2019 23:45:46 #

bodiebill

My Kodachrome slides from the 50's on preserved the colors well.
My Ektachrome slides did not, and faded over time. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

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Mar 8, 2019 23:57:56 #

Ghery Loc: Olympia, WA

bodiebill wrote:

My Kodachrome slides from the 50's on preserved the colors well.
My Ektachrome slides did not, and faded over time. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Same story here, but mine started in the 70s.

Mar 9, 2019 00:00:34 #

greigfla

bodiebill wrote:

My Kodachrome slides from the 50's on preserved the colors well.
My Ektachrome slides did not, and faded over time. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Everyone should have had the same experience if they kept their slides long enough. The long life of Kodachrome compared to other films is a function of its unique chemistry and one of the reasons it was preferred.

Mar 9, 2019 01:49:30 #

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Pixelmaster wrote:

...Can you imagine using a film with an ASA (ISO) rating
of 10?...

Yes, I can. Or, at least... pretty close. I used a lot of ASA 25 film back in the day... ASA 32, too. One of my favorite slide films was Velvia which was ASA 50.... but I rated it at ASA 40 most of the time. In fact, the fastest slide film I used was ASA 200. Some color neg and B&W film was ASA 400... and I'd occasionally push the B&W to 800.

I sort of get a kick out of people who complain that their modern DSLRs' high ISO capabilities are inadequate... Between that and Image Stabilization, they have it pretty easy, but don't realize it. Maybe Kodak should make ASA 10, 24 and 32 films again, so we could make those folks shoot with them for a year and learn to appreciate what they've got!

Mar 9, 2019 13:48:50 #

lukevaliant Loc: gloucester city,n. j.

pendennis wrote:

I got into photography in the mid-60's, and Kodach... (show quote)

i liked agfa for flash pics colors very real

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Mar 9, 2019 14:57:40 #

BartHx

I started shooting color with 135 Kodachrome 10. However, in the early 60s, I switched to Agfachrome 50 for the extra speed.

Mar 9, 2019 17:16:45 #

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

I remember my father talking about Kodachrome having a speed of 8, but when he used a meter it was a Weston and I think they may have had a different (proprietary) film speed scale back then (early 1950s.) His standard daylight exposure with his Leica IIIc and pre-war Elmar 50mm/3.5 was 100 at f/6.3 or f/8, IIRC. That's the exposure I used when I started using an "adjustable" camera with no light meter - a Kodak Retina II with 47mm/2.0 Ektar lens.

Mar 10, 2019 20:07:13 #

PlymouthWoodworker Loc: Plymouth, MA

Yes, I loved Kodachrome back in the day. Shot it and Ektachrome from 1965 to about 1999. Forgive me if I am repeating what someone else has posted, but, as I understand, Kodachrome was actually a black and white film with multiple layers sensitive to red, green, and blue. During processing, color dyes were absorbed selectively by the layers to produce the color image. Ektachrome (and all other competing slide films of the day) had color couplers in the emulsions. So during development chemicals would activate the color couplers to form the color dyes right from within the film. That is why Kodachrome was more stable over time. The color dyes added during processing were much more stable than dyes produced by color couplers. My Kodachromes from the '60s are still pretty good, although they have increased some in contrast over the years.

Mar 12, 2019 01:34:22 #

MDI Mainer

I was always attracted to what I thought was the more natural landscape rendition of Fujichrome Velvia.

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Mar 27, 2019 15:00:59 #

Bill P

wrangler5 wrote:

But did anybody except Kodak own a Kodachrome processing plant? I thought those were such capital intensive machines that only Kodak made the investment.

Dwaynes may have been the only one in the US. As I understood it, Kodak saw the decline of Kodachrome early on, and wanted out of the processing business, so they made a buddy deal with Dwaynes to take the new Kodachrome minilab machine, and all the chemicals they could eat, so Kodak could offload what was by then an unprofitable business.

So Dwayne's got a deal, but I don't know if it was ever profitable for them.

Mar 27, 2019 15:06:06 #

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

I used a lot of Kodachrome when I did slides. But when I started to develop my own film I switched to Ektachrome, in fact the first role of film I ever developed was Ektachrome because I had no enlarger or place to set one up. Nobody bothered to tell me how "difficult" it was compared to B&W negative film until I took it in to a photoshop to buy some slide mounts for it. And that first roll, beginners luck, it actually looked just as good as the commercial lab work. I still used Kodachrome for special occasions.

I have about 3 file boxes of slides (and about 6 of negatives) I need to scan. I just bought a dedicated film/slide scanner. I brought back about 3000 from my two years in Nam - since culled down to around 1000 (dupes, motion blur, out of focus, and other fails got mercilessly culled).

There are preset apps available to duplicate the look of most of the more popular negative and slide films. In fact I think I have at least two in my old software box (I paid for it and "might" want to use it one day.)

Mar 27, 2019 15:08:40 #

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

chippy65 wrote:

Kodachrome worked well with Voightlander Vitomatic

Fujichrome was also very good.

also memories of bulk loading 35mm cassettes with ?? and self processing colour reversal

I also shot Kodachrome (ASA 10) in a Vitomatic in the early 1960s. Results were always great. Then moved to Kodachrome II (ASA 25).Still just as nice, but more reasonable exposures were possible. The key was not to use shutter speeds faster than 1/60. The conversion of the film speed standard to ISO came a little later.

Mar 27, 2019 17:10:44 #

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

amfoto1 wrote:

Yes, I can. Or, at least... pretty close. I used a... (show quote)

Did you ever do B&W slides from Panatomic-X?
I know Kodak had a chemical kit for it that involved many steps but the one year I taught Basic Photography (74-75 school year) I bought a kit with only a few steps for a student who read about it in a photo mag and wanted to try it. I bought some for myself also.
He set his camera for ASA 25 and did studio portraits of his girl friend and the other cheerleaders. Those slides were gorgeous, with a range of white to black that had much better and smoother ranges of gray than the vast majority of B&W prints.

As to people complaining about slow ASA/ISO, I remember how thrilled I was when ASA 100 then 200 became easy to get. And then when I learned about push processing I was in heaven once I learned to process it for fine grain.

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