mundy-F2 Loc: Chicago suburban area

Hi, Kodachrome 25 and 64 where positive slide film and was discontinued several years ago. It was a complicated process to develop, so it was best to let Kodak develop the slide film..
Making enlargements, you required a color enlarger head for color prints, as well as the correct paper and developing chemicals. Nevertheless, it was magical seing uour exposed paper come to life in the developer.
Thanks for a nice walk into the past. The person you gave the equipment will have fun.
Mundy

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

For a couple of years the only thing I had done was processing my Kodachrome slides, and mostly I used Ektachrome. But I did do prints from my Kodachrome slides using the reversal paper. Everything else B&W film, color film, prints from both and even B&W slides using a special process for making positive slides from Panatomic X. The tones and transitions when you did that made color slide film look like it had grain the size of a golf ball.

medphotog Loc: Witness protection land

Aaah, the Star City of the South. Lived there for ~12 years.

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

Loved it 25 years there last 10 actually in Smith Mountain Lake

mundy-F2 Loc: Chicago suburban area

Cibachrome...wow, how quickly I forget. Soo much different today...
Mundy

Pablo8 Loc: Nottingham UK.

I didn't think Kodak released formulas for Kodachrome film processing. I did plenty of processing Ektachrome film 35mm up to 5 x 4 sheet film.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

There were a handful of Kodachrome labs around the USA... Most were Kodak owned or sponsored. It was a nasty, demanding process that few sane lab owners wanted to do.

E-6 required precision and discipline to do properly, but anyone could learn to do it.

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

In Ekta and similar like Agfa Ferrania and negative films pigments are generated during development ie Chromogenic
Kodachrome’s pigments were added during development using a coupler system
Much more complicated
For many years Kodak did not allow any one to develop K’chrome even including price of developing in purchase price then after litigation allowed a few labs
Abroad there were very few labs available from Chile sent to Panama for processing
Shower my 8mm film camera to a 5 year old grandson, explained how movies were made he asked about sound and lack of viewfinder
After a while he commented “What a rip off”
Digital generation

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Perhaps the best alternative to Cibachrome/Ilfochrome and Kodak Ektaflex (all defunct) is to digitize slides and transparencies on a digital camera or high-end scanner, then adjust them in Lightroom Classic/Photoshop and print them directly through a 16-bit driver to a high end Canon or Epson pigment inkjet printer. The finest portrait, commercial, and art photographers, the best art schools, the top high-end service bureaus, and the top art museums selling prints of exhibited works for artists all use this method.

My biggest annoyance with printing directly from transparencies was always contrast control. Transparency films can record 4-5 times the contrast range that paper can reflect. Good as they were, the reversal printing methods of the '70s were just too contrasty to capture the brilliance of Kodachrome without blown highlights and plugged shadows. Macro photographing slides in 12-14 bit raw, or scanning to 16-bit files, can retain highlight and shadow details that can be compressed in post-production software to fit within the dynamic range achievable with a particular printer/paper/ink combination. The results are much more natural, with considerably more detail visible. With digital, we can control every aspect of the image precisely.

I worked with Kodak Internegative film extensively in the late '80s to mid-'90s. We made hundreds of thousands of elementary school class composites with that film at the lab I worked for. It controlled contrast well... sometimes TOO well. But it was very hard to maintain a stable color balance. The film itself was unstable, drifting in speed and color balance over a short period (a few months). It was very sensitive to C-41 process drift. It required LONG exposures through thick filter packs. The switch to digital saved us a ton of money, improved the quality, and drastically cut turnaround times. It also enabled major product design improvements.

In fact, one of modern digital photography's key post processing advantages over film, generally, is its predictable control over color temperature, hue, contrast, sharpness, saturation, dynamic range, and all the other factors that contribute to image quality. There may have been a, "Wow it gives me the hebejebes watching that image come up in the developer" factor to (B&W) analog photography, but that pales when you consider the control digital tools offer. Now it's, "Wow, look at all these sliders and how easy it is to get the look I want!"

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Your grandson was right! The stuff we grew up with in the 1950s and '60s was crap. Our parents paid small fortunes for it, and they loved it! Heck, it was magic.

I was hooked at age 4-1/2 when my uncle gave me an Argus Seventy-Five which sits a few feet from me as I type this. My parents once had to hide it, for fear I would ask for film and flashbulbs and blow their budget.

In high school, about 1973, several of us made a Super 8 movie for a class project. It was terrible! We all knew it when we presented it. The teacher was gracious. She knew that access to "good" movie equipment was way out of our league.

Our twins were making videos for class projects with sub-$100 Canon point-and-shoot cameras and iMovie, in elementary school, age 9-10, about 2007 or 2008. They had music, sound, and tightly edited visuals. They were inspired by the Nickelodeon TV show, "iCarly."

About a year ago, my son found my Nikon FTn in a drawer and asked me how it worked. He laughed all the way through my demonstration with a dummy roll of film. Then I showed him some 50-year old scenes I made with it. "You made THAT with THAT THING???", he asked. I pointed him towards my basement bookshelf stash of analog era photography books. He's spent hours with them, since.

I also told him we did so much with so little for so long, we were capable of doing almost anything with almost nothing. Then I handed him the book "Moon" on the Apollo project. That story is astounding. When I had him read the description of the computers on board the LEM and Command Modules, his jaw dropped. We are so spoiled now!

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Kodachrome needed a developing machine, process and chemicals that most would not want to mess with. That is why relatively few besides Kodak developed it. The last place to process Kodachrome was a non Kodak lab. And I read that people have figured out how to develop Kodachrome as B&W and in 2017 someone figured out an alternate to do it in color. But of course they haven't made the film since 2009/2010 so there is now precious little of it left anyway, if there is any at all besides a few packs frozen as a stash by someone.

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

You are so right with contrast build up and density range Kodachrome vs prints
Never tried “Self masking” Cibachrome Any one who did? And using a mask beyond my patience and skills
But scanning with curves adjustment really helps tame down contrast
Use Hamrick’s Vuescan on my Canon and Minolta units ( both of them dead now problems with advance) and good contrast control

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

Color film developed as B&W
1971 Our baby was born, gave roll to my brother to take to lab Agfachrome, he checked wrong box .Very dense very limited contrast image.
Agfa suggested a complicated bleaching process, never tried but made slide copy on high contrast B&W film, you can make out images of course monochrome but pretty poor.
Would not do it on purpose

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

Had pretty much the same experience but my very first camera was a Kodak 110. After the 24 then came the 1hr photo, which I still see today. Then came the digital cameras and inkjets. Had a friend whose family was into the Photo & Video Business and we often hang around in their shop, they did black and white prints in-house but not the colored ones.

Wallen Loc: Middle Earth

I hope so too. I know the struggle.

One of my closest buddies have such a shop as their family business where we used to hang around alot. It was a series of spaces like an apartment but the front was meant for business and the back & upstairs were living quarters. They were renting the first door, a Photo/video & betamax rental shop. On the second door was also a very close buddy and their family business was a car battery sales, charging & repair shop while the third was rented by my grandmother and she had a beauty & hair salon.

They have the equipment and darkroom for black & whites but they would send the colored film elsewhere. My fondest memories there were not about photography though. It was the fireworks & rockets we built and flew in the backyard which was still a farmland then. Those were fun times and our elders do not mind hearing explosions the whole year round.