Kodachrome 25 -- Did you use it?

I'm interested to know from those of you who shot Kodachrome 25: did you quit

using it even before it was cancelled by Kodak? I know that many of you lost

K25 when Kodak cancelled it on you, but I'm interested to know why those of you,

who voluntarily quit using it, did so. Kodak says that it was cancelled due to

low demand. I believe that there would be sufficient demand for K25 if Kodak

offered it to ALL of their customers: 135, 120, 4"&8" Sheet, 8mm and 16mm. The

fact that they didn't offer it to everyone is a reason why demand was low.

However, they blame you for not using K25. So, if you shot K25, why did you quit?

 

Terry Mester

I made the compromise of switching to Kodachrome 64 for a little extra speed when shooting without a tripod. I was a graduate student when I switched, with little money for film, so that my contribution to (or blame for) the demise of Kodachrome 25 was even less than that of the average photographer. I switched in the 1970s. I don't think that Kodachrome 200 was available then. I used it sometimes after it came out, but I seem to recall that that was quite a different film.

Back in the late 70s, K25 was my favorite color film. Period. I shot a little K64 only when I really needed some extra speed.

 

Then in the early to mid 80s, I abandoned photography altogether. When I returned a few years ago, I discovered that K25 had been killed in my absence.

 

If it were available today, I'd shoot it. Then again, I'd shoot Panatomic-X if it were still available. (Not for all B&W work, of course. But I'd certainly welcome it back.)

I used it until I was no longer able to get it at which time I switched to Kodachrome 64. I shot

it at ASA 32 and the 64 at ASA 80 as I found that those settings helped compensate for the

brightness of my slide projector. Boy-K25, K64, slide projectors. memories! cb :-)

Yes,I did. I quit long before it was dicountinued : inconsistent and then finally out and out bad processing were the reasons .

...it was the perfect film in the day (1973-74).

Paul Simon even made a song about it.

I shot about 2-3 rolls a week and waited an extra few days to get back the slides.

"...inconsistent and then finally out and out bad processing were the reasons ." --Ellis.

 

Of course, bad processing of Kodachrome wasn't limited to ASA 25. I had a large batch of Kodachrome 64 processed as E-6! Now I wish I could scan the result of that and show you, but those trannies are gone.

A few rolls when I started seriously shooting slides around 1990. I was young and silly and shot mostly K64 for the speed before I switched to Velvia a few years later. I really liked it and now wish I'd shot more, though I probably still would have switched to Velvia.

"Of course, bad processing of Kodachrome wasn't limited to ASA 25."

 

No it wasn't. the very last time I used Kodachrome (processed by Qualex) there was a scratch 16 or 17 rolls long. Yes, the same continuous scratch, caused by a roller set improperly. Kodak diagnosed the problem and compensated me for it.

 

Terry,

 

The environmental problems and clean up costs created by the by products in the manufacturing and processing of Kodachrome played a major part in its demise but it was the bad processing that made photographers move away from it and to Velvia.

Too slow unless the camera was on a tripod or it was a really sunny day.Shot a lot of K64 but even that was pretty slow film for the day.Nonetheless both were about the best thing out there up until the early 80's.K200 never was that good because of the heavy grain.

I pretty much always used Kodachrome 64 for the speed. There were no transparent sources of information in those pre-Internet days, so I had no idea Kodachrome 25 was so much better. I think I only shot one roll of Kodachrome 25 in the 1970's. When I was doing serious interior work, I used High Speed Ektachrome, sometimes with push processing.

 

I bought three frozen rolls of Kodachrome 25 recently, and have used one so far. I plan to use it up before the end of next year.

 

Unless you want to squeeze in an interior shot (which I often did), the slower speed of Kodachrome 25 isn't a big difference from Kodachrome 64.

 

I did get to love Kodachrome 200 for a while, but only in the Professional version. The amateur version was too often off-color, but they made the Professional version dead-on in color balance.

 

K-14 Kodachrome wasn't that environmentally bad. (K-12 was a nasty process.) But Kodak ran the Kodachrome plants with a blatant disregard to environmental concerns, even in the K-14 era. The Choke Cherry Road plant in Maryland was a Superfund site, they dumped dirty drums of cleaning fluids (trichlorethylene, etc.) off the loading dock into the ground.

 

I wasn't using Kodachrome in the years when Fair Lawn, New Jersey was the last Kodak Kodachrome line, and it apparently was really bad in the last years. I've only had one or two single-frame flaws in probably 70-100 rolls of Kodachrome.

I cut my eye teeth (photographically speaking) on K-II. I shot a reasonable amount of K-25. In my case, my use of K-25 went way down when I transferred from Kodachrome production to color negative R&D work. I usually shot whatever product I was working on.

 

The idea that Kodak could easily offer Kodachrome to 135, 120, and 4x5 users does not make economic sense. I know Kodachrome was once offered in sheet film (I have some examples), but that was discontinued in the 1950's. 120 film was offered in the 1980's but there was never enough of it sold to keep a processing machine running. When the 120 processing machines at Fairlawn and A&I bit the dust, so did K-64 in 120.

 

The eventual demise of Kodachrome was sealed in November of 1984 when Kodak re-organized into a line-of-business arrangement. While this arrangement did great things for the Professional Photographic Division, they split off the processing labs and told them they had to make a profit on their own. They were concerned about the 10 cents they lost on every roll of Kodachrome processed. The consumer and professional photographic divisions were making many times that amount in profit on each roll of film sold, but they were reluctant to share their money with the processing labs. The death spirals started when the Atlanta lab closed. There were several attempts to revive Kodachrome with 120 format, a 200 speed film, and the K-lab small processing machine, but none of these efforts worked.

 

The other factor contributing to the demise was the lack of new products. K-200 was introduced in 1985, but K-25 and K-64 were never upgraded. When Velvia was introduced with similar grain and sharpness and brighter colors, there was a noticeable drop in Kodachrome sales. There were plenty of fans of Kodachrome among Kodak managers who wanted to invest in new products. One project after another was shot down when the pencil pushers determined that they could get more for their investment by spending the money on other products. With no new products and a declining base of processing labs, the eventual fate was sealed.

 

Of course Kodachrome is not dead yet. If redemption is always possible for people, then maybe it is for products as well. Maybe Kodak will decide they can make a bit more money on the product. I'm planning to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the product line in 2010 by shooting a few rolls and getting them processed.

I shot a few rolls of K-25 and liked it very much. However, for my (at that time it was my Dad's) Kodak stereo camera I had to keep away from slow shutter speeds due to mismatch between left and right shutters at slower speeds, so I only used K-64 and some Ektachrome in that camera at the time. Also at the time I only had one Minolta body and I was always frustrated around frame 10 that I had the wrong type of film in the camera for what I wanted to do next. I often switched in the darkroom mid-roll and started mounting my own slides due to sometimes skipping a frame and a half and was concerned about mis-mounts by automated labs. Also, I started processing my own slides and obviously that precluded Kodachrome.

 

 

More recently, I had more bodies and was unhappy to not have the K-25 to choose from.

As I recall, they sold the processing facilities. The new operator did not get correct color consistently, so the little color I shot was switched to Ektachrome 64 and processed by local photo district labs.

I'm still using it.

 

I have a pretty good supply of "late-vintage" K25 in my dedicated film freezer (0 degrees F), and am still shooting slides with it, mostly with good results. I won't say that there never is a shot with a little color shift or a hint of magenta shading, but for the most part the results continue to be excellent: very sharp, colorful and with a remarkable sense depth when projected.

 

I also have a good supply of K200, and continue to buy K64 when it suits my needs.

I still have one roll of 35mm Kodachrome 25 left in the freezer that I bought new in the 90s. I'd buy it today if it was available, especially in 120. No other film is more archival.

 

I suppose I'd better use it while one processing machine still exists....

I started using K25 in my Retina IIa when Kodak stopped making KII. Processing was consistently good from Rochester, when they closed I tried Kodak Fairlawn, NJ a few times which was consistently bad, and switched to Kodak Findlay, OH which was the best of all. I never liked K64 and now use EliteChrome 100. I don't know where CVS sends it, maybe Dwaynes, but it is also consistently good. If K25 came back I would try to use it again.

The last few rolls of Kodachrome 25 that I shoot (about a year go) were processed at

Dwayne's Photo in Parsons Kansas; as the Fairlawn, NJ Kodak processing center stopped

doing that quite some time ago. I'm not even sure if that processing facility is even open

any longer. What a loss!

 

I can only hope that whomever has a stash of Kodachrome 25 film (in their freezer) will

still be able to shoot it and find a place that can develop (process) it.

 

What a wonderful color film! Especially, when projected via high end projector, lens and

quality projection screen.

 

That makes me think of my other favorite film.... Panatomic-X!!! Those were the days!

 

Hard to think about "digital capture" in the company of those two magnificent films..

Dwaynes in Kansas is the only place left on planet earth that processes Kodachrome.

"Dwaynes in Kansas is the only place left on planet earth that processes Kodachrome."

 

And they are still going strong! With very few exceptions, I have found their K-14 processing to be some of the best I've ever seen, since I started using Kodachrome back in 1980.

I think Dwayne's does an excellent job with Kodachrome. I've shot and processed through them over a dozen rolls over the past six months without any problems.

 

SHOOT K64 NOW BEFORE IT'S GONE!

I shot a few rolls between 84 to 90, but switched to Velvia 50 for the extra speed.

 

Seeing that Kodachrome 64 is NO Kodachrome 25, I perfer to shoot Provia 100F or even the 100UC or 160VC Note: I will be trying the new Velvia 50 this spring.

 

The biggest problem with such a low ASA film (25 & 50) is, that if your camera does not have Mirror Lock-UP you'll get mirror slap. That is unless you want to shoot with large apeture openings. Then there goes your depth of field.

K25 and Panatomic-X were my two main films. I used both until discontinued. Always had the K25 developed by Kodak and shot mostly with Nikons and Leica's. It was so sharp you could just about cut yourself from the emulsion side.<g> My understanding was that it was discontinued because the development process was so hazardous to the environment.

<blockquote><I><hr>The biggest problem with such a low ASA film (25 & 50) is, that if your camera does not have Mirror Lock-UP you'll get mirror slap. That is unless you want to shoot with large apeture openings. Then there goes your depth of field.<hr></i></blockquote>

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Really?

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I shot Kodachrome (ASA 10) handheld, with no problems. Tack sharp. NO mirror slap at all. Absolutely ZERO mirror slap.

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But then, I was using a rangefinder camera, so I guess it was my fault.

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<blockquote><I><hr>Dwaynes in Kansas is the only place left on planet earth that processes Kodachrome.<hr></i></blockquote>

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You sure of that? I've heard from different sources that there are one or possibly two "private" labs, for industry and military use. Not sure where; if rumors have anything to them, one would be somewhere around Oregon or somewhere in that vicinity, and the other in Antarctica.

I shot a few rolls of 25 recently when my daughter was a baby. It was difficult to scan because of the dense shadows. Her blue eyes came out dark brown, even when projected. I have been scanning some of my Dad's Kodachromes, and the stuff from the early 70's ( Kodachrome II ) is much better with amazingly realistic colours. The 25 is just too contrasty, so I sold the remaining stuff on E***.