Kodachrome 64 vs Extachrome 100 at todays price ?

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<p>I speak as someone who used K64 and K25 exclusively for about 20 years. I love the film, but I have to say I think there are better films around today that are more useful and flexible and I think you should be aware the K64 is not really the "wonder film" suggested by many posters.</p>

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<p>No offense, but are you sure you are using it right Robin? Did you click on any of the links I provided above?</p>

<p>The more I use this film now, the more I like it over the faked out and truncated look of films like Velvia. And as far as fine grain goes, no, K-64 is not as fine grained as newer E-6 films, but when printed large, it has better edge detail than any other color film I have used because of the relief image and the shape of the grains. Scanning it is a breeze with my Nikon 9000ED and Silverfast Ai, I almost never have to do any adjustments.</p>

<p>This image shot on Kodachrome 25 last November is only slightly less grainy than K-64, it is in my apartment printed at 65 inches wide and just blows your mind:</p><div></div>

<p>Gorgeous shot Daniel!!!</p>

<p>How did you have it printed?</p>

<p>He did say he did. I must say that his print is very large!<br>

"This image shot on Kodachrome 25 last November is only slightly less grainy than K-64, it is in my apartment printed at 65 inches wide and just blows your mind" -Daniel Bayer</p>

 

<p>Hi Dave,</p>

<p>Thanks!<br /> It was on a large format Epson printer at a local lab. My girlfriend wanted it since the colors match our bedroom decor.</p>

<p>To get a look at Kodachrome, past and present, we have 42 different collections of Kodachrome images at the <a href="http://ronald.andrews.googlepages.com/kodachrome">Kodachrome Celebration Website</a>. (Many were submitted by photo.net members.) They go back to the late 30's. We would like to find an example of the original dye bleach process (prior to 1938). We have everything from famous work by professional protographers to routine amateur pictures. If you have something to add, send me a link and I'll post it. </p>

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<p>look of films like Velvia.<br>

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<p>Hi Daniel,<br>

<br>

I'm not on an anti-Kodachrome crusade, but I think there needs a bit of balance to the unusually high numbers of Kodachrome proselytizers there are on this forum!<br>

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One <em>can</em> scan Kodachrome successfully and I do it myself - but personally I find that it suffers from noisy shadows and high grain in 35mm compared to Astia 100F (my usual film). It is not fair to compare K64 with Velvia - they are totally different films with radically different colors - a more reasonable comparison is with a film like Astia 100F or indeed perhaps one of the more neutral Ektachromes (I used to use E100S). My experience is that Astia makes life much easier for me especially as Astia is less contrasty, but not so low in contrast that it makes overcast shots dull. Also E6 films have more punchy blues and greens too which is nice and to my way more balanced than Kodachrome. I agree with you the edge acutance of K64 is stunning and in low contrast situations it looks fantastic projected. But this is also its Achilles' heel in high contrast situations.</p>

<p>The number of posts on this very forum also attest to the problems of scanning it and getting a good color balance. Once you know what to do with it on your system you can make it accurate, but its not like E6 which most scanners get close to correct on first scan. Maybe the Coolscan 9000 is special-I don't have one so I don't know-but it seems to me that there are very many people who would agree with me that it is just not a great first choice for scanning, especially for neophytes.</p>

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<p>But this is also its Achilles' heel in high contrast situations.</p>

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<p>Then why did Ernst Haas do well with it in high contrast? Why does Alex Webb do outstanding with it in high contrast?<br>

Because they not only understand the limits of the film, they play off of it brilliantly. This is one of the main reasons Kodachrome is so unique, it forces you to understand the nuances of light unlike any other color film. I use Velvia and Astia in 120mm, but not in 35. That is mostly because of my project. And part of that project is to make the very best Kodachrome images I can for the next year or two. So I get it done, I don't make excuses, because excuses don't make pictures, photographers do.<br>

Kodachrome is not for everyone, it is not the best film in the world but it is unique enough to try. But if you look at what has been done with it that stands out, that can be the very metaphor that pushes you to strive for that understanding of light and how Kodachrome works in it. I am looking out the front door right now. The light is pale and flat like winter in the Rockies can be on "Milky" sky days. There are also times in the Summer when the grass outside looks flat and dull and the blue in the sky is not as deep or naturally polarized as other days. I find that Kodachrome depicts that naturally where as other films ramp it up and make it look more saturated. <br>

If I need to ramp it up, I use either a film or a digital technique that does that. But I never blame Kodachrome for a dull image, I blame my self or the light. But that's just me..and I am an odd duck..:-)</p>

<p>Ron, I am looking to re-do the site a bit. Once that is done, pertinent links to places like your site will be on the main blog page. That way, we can all be a powerful places for people to come and check out the likes of Kodachrome for years to come.</p>

<p>Cheers,<br>

Dan</p>

<p>There is no such thing as the 'best film' anymore than you can have the 'best camera' or car, or house, or lens, etc. Everything has its purpose.</p>

<p>Oh, and i've had enough trouble scanning some frames of provia or sensia films to know that, even with a properly exposed frame, you can spend a lot of time cleaning up the colors.</p>

<p>John,<br>

You're juggling around too many different films all at once. Stick with a certain film for awhile, and you'll get good at/with it. Each film has a personality of it's own, some similar, some unique.<br>

Also, are you using a polarizing filter? If not, you should.</p>

<p>One place left:</p>

<p>http://www.kansas.com/static/slides/1130kodachrome/</p>

<p>I notice you don't like the color reproduction from negative film, and you said you're using an Epson V500 scanner.</p>

<p>I've used that scanner on 35mm negative ad slide film and the issue I had was that the color profiling for negative film in default settings was... well, crap. The slides looked fantastic but it's way simpler to scan slides.</p>

<p>What I ended up doing was futzing with the color in Aperture then copying the changes to all the negative scans, and ended up with results I was happy with, though still not quite as good as the slides. (This was with $6-per-4-pack Fuji film from Target which is surprisingly good, especially considering it costs nothing.) Part of the problem is that the negative film didn't deliver the same level of color response as the slide film, but a much larger part was the scanner/software.</p>