Not Quite All the News...

Today's NY Times has an article, sweet, gentle and nostalgic, about the last roll of Kodachrome being processed - NY Times Kodachrome article.

While it's touching and all, and some of the reasons Kodachrome was so well liked are mentioned, there are a few glaring omissions. First of all it was incredibly fine grained film, coming in two daylight speeds - 25 and 64 ASA (ISO) and one tungsten version (40 ASA). It was remarkably accurate as far as color went as long as the contrast of the original scene was low, and most startling of all, it offered real permanence, something which the Ektachrome type and Kodacolor type films could not guarantee (see all those prints from the 1970's, or not, since they all turned orange). The special quality the reporter refers to is simply the fact that the film boosted color in low contrast situations.

It was far from perfect - there were drawbacks... For a long time only Kodak would process it. When independent labs were finally allowed to run Kodachrome, a Kodak trained technician had to be present. Later on, labs could, and did, buy table top processors. It was not a rapid access film, and was not great for fast turn around. It was contrasty as hell, and required great care in exposure and printing (if you needed prints). But again - IT WAS PERMANENT. Slide form the 1930's still look pretty damn good. Oh - yeah - it wasn't cheap. Thirty six exposure rolls used to run me about $15.00 with processing. When you calculate the cost of film (because you had to bracket like mad), shooting was a pretty pricey affair.

In my personal opinion, Kodachrome was doomed the minute high speed, stable, fine grain color negative materials - like Fuji 800 - came on the market. When scanners and digital conversion hit, slide film was pretty much doomed, when the last generation of digital cameras arrived - buggy whip time.

"You pick up contrast and lose detail" - a sentence not heard anymore. This is what would happen when you made a second generation image from film. The blacks would go blacker, the highlights blow out, noise (grain) creeps in, and colors go out of whack. Duping Kodachrome was a real struggle.

Not anymore...