Kodachrome 25 -- Did you use it?

[fredrik_sandstrom]

> I've heard from different sources that there are one or possibly two "private" labs, for industry and military use.

 

There are such rumors yes. Can't comment on that. However, we know for sure that Rocky Mountain can do K-14 (but they are very expensive and have long turnaround times) and Kodak themselves maintain a private line at Rochester I think. So no, Dwayne's are not the only ones on earth that can process Kodachrome, but they're the only practical choice for consumers.

[tbs]

Excuse my ignorance, but:

 

why would the military, in the year 2008, care about getting K-14 processing?

[clay2]

Kodachrome has been my favourite film since the 1950's. Shot

ASA 10 untill unavailable, ASA 25 untill it ended, then

Kodachrome-X renamed to Kodachrome 64. Still shoot it.

Have never tried the Kodachrome 200.Check out this new site:

 

http://www.kodachromeproject.com

 

/Clay

[terry_m7]

To Ron Andrews: Ron, if Kodachrome is going to be saved, then Kodak has to offer it in other Formats -- especially 8mm&16mm! By all appearances, the pencil pushers at Kodak are content to see its demise.

 

Regarding the Fair Lawn Kodachrome Plant, here's what Jeff Adler said on another Thread:

 

"I used the Kodak lab in Fair Lawn, NJ on and off between 1971 and when it closed a few years ago. When Qualex took over the quality of the work suffered badly. I complained to the plant manager and I was told that it was the intent of Kodak and Qualex to get rid of any experienced employees and to replace them with lower cost new employees who had no experience. Their plan worked and quality was secondary. Eventually Kodak had to send its own people back to straighten them out. By that time it was too late to win back many of the customers, especially the professional photographers. In about 1990 Fuji introduced Velvia. It was close enough in sharpness and grain to the Kodachrome 64 and 25 films and offered the convenience of E-6 processing. The exact look and characteristics of Kodachrome were not duplicated by Velvia but not having to deal with the Kodak/Qualex labs for processing was a big advantage."

[jim_devlin]

To echo what several others have posted, I used Kodachrome 25 a few times but found myself hamstrung by its slow speed in less-than-optimal lighting. I was young and broke back then and could not afford a dedicated K-25 camera, so I stuck with K-64 as my primary film.

 

It's too bad that Kodak ended further development of the Kodachrome line so many years ago - with the advances we've seen in E-6 film, I can't help but think that we should have seen an absolutely killer new 'Kodachrome 100' or updated K-64 product by now.

 

Jim D.

[clay2]

Check out the 100-year-old-photo site:

 

http://www.shorpy.com

 

4x5 Kodachromes from WW2. +300 pages and growing daily.

 

/Clay

[douglas_vitello]

I wonder if the popularity of the convenient but "slow" zoom lens had something to do with the demise of K25.I remember in the early days a lot of 35mm film was shot with fast primes.

[jeff_drew4]

Yes! I have been using it since about 1957 . . . I shot a lot of 8mm in a Kodak movie camera. I also shot lots of travel slides with K25. Yes I still shoot it when I feel the need, but I am down to my last 3 bricks of it. Too bad, really as it is one of the best of breed films! Luckily my old slides are still mint when i view them and reminisce . . . 50 years later! I still have old Kodachrome movies of my first dog and my parents...now long gone. The family trips in the old, wood paneled station wagon all look as they did 50+ years ago. Vive Paul Simon & Kodak! :-)

[russ_butner___portland__or]

Yes. I learned on Kodachrome 25. Loved the stuff. I rated it @ 32, and got wonderful results. I did tend to use it and K-chrome 64 less often, with the advent of Velvia 50.

 

Russ

[randrew1]

Terry,

 

The pencil pushers are content to see Kodachrome go down the tubes. There are a number of people in the company who would are fans and would like to see it continue, but I doubt they can sway the upper management. (I hope I'm wrong.)

 

It would be possible to slit K-64 to 16mm. It could be processed in the processing machine at Dwaynes. There is no market for it. All of the other reversal 16mm films have been discontinued for lack of sales. There was a time (before camcorders) when the 125 speed Ektachrome 16mm motion picture film was the biggest money maker at Kodak. (It was bigger than Kodacolor when I started working at Kodak.) While this market held on far longer than many experts predicted, it is now gone.

 

Super 8 is a bigger problem. It requires a separate processing machine running with higher agitation. The last super 8 K-14 line shut down in Switzerland a few years ago. I know Dwaynes was processing s-8 film in their 35mm process, but the results were not good.

 

I would agree with what Jeff Adler said about Fairlawn. There was a time when Fairlawn had the most consistent K-14 process in the world. We moved our Kodachrome production testing from the Rochester lab to Fairlawn in the mid 1980's because Fairlawn was more consistent. It was sad to see the demise of that serivce. (Internal testing was moved back to Rochester when a dedicated testing process machine was installed.)

[randrew1]

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

 

I haven't shot the new Velvia 50, but the original product was closer to 40 speed. K-25 consistently ran closer to 32 speed. Velvia was about 1/3 to 1/2 stop faster than K-25, not the full stop that the product names would imply.

[reuben_c]

<blockquote><hr><i>There are such rumors yes. Can't comment on that. However, we know for sure that Rocky Mountain can do K-14 (but they are very expensive and have long turnaround times) and Kodak themselves maintain a private line at Rochester I think. So no, Dwayne's are not the only ones on earth that can process Kodachrome, but they're the only practical choice for consumers.</i><hr></blockquote>

<p>

Well, great -- the rumor mill cranks up another yet notch.

<P>

By the way, I was aware of the Rochester basket line -- Ron Mowrey mentioned it here, what was it, two years ago? And in any case, it stands to reason that they'd need such a thing in order to manufacture the film (and create the various test batces that never saw light of day other than the few rolls used by employees and truly lucky outsiders who got the test rolls handed out to them.)

<p>

By the same token I didn't reference the perhaps half-dozen folks who have successfully processed Kodachrome at home (it <k>can</I> be done -- the two challenges are getting hold of the color couplers, one color developer (CD6?), and working out reexposure times/levels for the red and blue selective reversal exposures). I've always wished I had a friend or relative working at a Kodachrome lab, so that I could "recycle" the chems when they were dumped at end of life. If you think about it, at exhaustion, when it's time to stop replenishing, and replace the chemicals, they ARE working properly, even if they won't take further replenishment. So they ought to work OK for one-shot home use.)

<P>

About the question of why the military would care about Kodachrome, the rumor goes that they started a long-term project that required a truly massive amount of film, all of the same emulsion batch (or, identical characteristics, if from more than one batch), and, along with the film, the means to process it. The project was rumored to be located at one of the South Pole stations. It's been so long ago that I heard this that I can't recall any other details. Same thing with the others. Life is rife with rumors, and I don't catalog them -- although I do tend to remember the general details of those which strike me as being likely to be more than mere rumor.

[nickc1]

Not really - I was amazed when Kodachrome II came out - 25 ASA instead of 10!, and shot a few rolls, but I could not afford many when I was a pre-teen. In the UK the extra stop provided by Agfa CT18 was useful and I (and most of my friends in the school photo club) switched to that - and the Agfa came in plastic mounts and boxes before Kodak did, which was cute. 64ASA Kodachrome X was a grainy and unpleasant film to look at (IMHO - no flaming please) so it was not an alternative. When Fuji R100 came in in the early 70s I changed again and have never gone back. I suppose to summarise, Kodachrome II/25 was too slow, and we never thought about either its ultimate quality and longevity as teenagers - now its too late.

[randrew1]

I believe the basket line that Ron Mowrey described was used for development purposes. It could have been moved to another building when Building 69 was demolished, but I doubt it. There is (at least two years ago there was) a continuous processing mahcine in the film testing area. This K-14 was set up to be as consistent as possible. It COULD be used to process customer film, but it would be very expersive--several times what Dwaynes charges.

 

As for the military K-14 line in Antarctica, I can't prove a negative, but in the 30 years of working at Kodak in film manufacturing and R&D, I have never heard this rumor.

[kelly_flanigan1]

When Kodachrome 25 first came out there were some color shifts and bugs to work out. Folks horded the older Kodachrome II with the older K12 process; until the newer films got in control. For pro usage most folks mastered the Kodachrome II and 25's contast and subtle ways. For amateurs often the simpler color print films fit their ways; when lighting ratios were too great. Here I started with Kodachrome at asa 10; then it went to asa 25 as Kodachrome II in the early 1960's.

[kelly_flanigan1]

In cine work I use to shoot alot of 16mm 100ft Kodachrome 25 rolls; and some regular 8 cine too. In one lunar eclipse in the 1970's I shot about 30 rolls of 35mm still Kodachrome; using a telescope that has a 1220mm focal length.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Many of us just bought Kodachrome II and 25 in bricks from major dealers; and froze the stuff so one knew what one had for a shoot; a consistant product.<BR><BR>When Velvia came out it seemed to be a pumped up toys are us saturated product for amateurs at first who craved unreal and supersaturated scenes; once its nickname was Velveda.:) For old school copying of artwork the traditional controlled non kodachromes or even kodachromes were once the staple to use for color accuracy; not goosed ill saturated documention images. Velvia probably now is more acceptable; as well as moving the saturation control on Photostyler and Photoshop; to create images that are more like graphics than images sometimes. Velva had quality problems at first too; being too green, batches too magentna. Many amateurs craving saturation helped clear out the initial crap offered; until it was a more controlled pro product. In the 1970's the E4 fujichrome came in snap caps; if bumped or dropped or sent thru the mail the internal spool would come out and the flm was hosed. This happened local bag services too where films went to a e4 or e6 processor by bag. One would place the fuji e4 in its film container and prey to god that the clerk didnt remove the flm can in the back room.<BR><BR>Many products work best after a few years; and before end of life. The processes are smooth; the bugs worked out. Thus newcomers to Kodachrome will say it was crap

[robert_johnson15]

Ron Andrews, I have it on "good authority" that maybe 18 months back, the head of a big Hollywood processing lab, while at Kodak being "updated" on the latest movie film processing "ins and outs", was eating with some Kodak people in an EK cafeteria. The question came up about Kodachrome film since this person was quite a big Kodachrome user on the personal side. She was told that yes, there were other labs processing it besides Dwayne's, BUT they were not for public use. Basically she was told about one in California that apparently serviced only "government" type processing. Exactly the types of K-14 film and quantity used/processed were "secrets" the EK people couldn't divulge or they didn't know.

 

I have run it by everyone I know out on the west coast and they asked around, but only came up with possible users and no real for sure answers. I'll list a few possibilities. One could be someone that processes film for government archiving, like the Library of Congress. They would need the longest archival qualities of film around. Another could be a lab that is located at some big government facility in CA that because of "Top Secret or above Top Secret" clearance needed, the film they used/shot couldn?t be sent elsewhere for processing. Edwards AFB, Area 51, JPL operations, the Nevada proving grounds/Nellis AFB come to mind. You just can't send out film showing the gum-mint testing the latest secret stealth aircraft, "UFO's" from who knows where or film from that secret Apollo 20 trip to the backside of the moon. Oh, that's a story for another time. <g>

 

I do know for sure besides that test coating of a 400/500 speed Kodachrome that Ron Mowrey mentions, there was a test coating of a 100 speed t-grain (some that received test bricks claim it was more like 80) Kodachrome back when the K-lab machines were first introduced. I know this film got passed around at SI/Time-Life and also at a meeting of Kodachrome processors. I'm not sure where the meeting was held, but it was somewhere between Rochester and the Washington, DC area. The person telling me this didn't want to spill all the beans since it was a "secret." He is now deceased, so I can't go back and ask him for more info. I did try and check with the SI people since I was a "stringer" for them during that time period. Basically the people I dealt with said to call Heinz (Klutmeier) or the person in charge of the equipment vault/locker. I didn't knew either personally, so I didn't follow up.

 

Robert Johnson

 

me@robertejohnson.com if you know more "secrets" or find out other "details" I might know, but don't have the space to list here!

[randrew1]

There were at least three projects at different times to design a Kodachrome 100 film. They all followed a predictable pattern.

 

1. Overly ambitious goals

 

2. A prototype that, while advancing the SOTA, fell short of the goals

 

3. A business case that was prepared near the end of the program predicts minimal if any profit

 

4. project cancellation

 

(Kodak has since learned to prepare business cases early in projects.)

I was not aware that they passed out samples from the last effort, but I wouldn't be surprised. The person who was responsible for K-lab was also a staff photographer for SI.

 

There is an interesting story behind the introduction of K-200. The prototype had great sharpness, but not very good grain. The viability of the product was questioned. Two rolls of the prototype were sent to Popular Photography by "a friend". Pop photo writes a glowing review and the product is launched. Many of us suspected that "a friend" was a certain high level executive in the company, but since we never had any proof, I wont mention his name.

[ed_sawyer]

I still use it! Have several rolls in the freezer and still actively seeking more. Great that Dwaynes is still processing it. It's also great to read up on all these rumors and lore about K25 and K-14 process. Keep em coming...

 

thanks

-Ed

[robert_johnson15]

Ron, Yes I know Dick Mackson. I think he is still with EK as a VP of something or another? FYI, I have been the recipient of some of those plain black cassettes in the plain yellow boxes that at the most say "Eastman Kodak, Rochester NY" along with a "Limitation of Liability Statement" and not much else. Oh, it might have the ISO rating if you are lucky and a suggested process. Last time I got a few plain yellow boxes at some NPPA event/convention, the Fuji guy a few tables down was swapping some rolls of Provia for every yellow box he could get his hands on! <g> Now the EK and Fuji film reps, if they still exist, don't go to any press events! It's 99% digital!

 

Thanks for confirming a few things, but more rumors about Kodachrome keep popping up almost monthly. I have 60 rolls of fresh KL200 in the freezer. Maybe 15 rolls of K25, 10 of which are very old, but still good enough. Just bought another 50 rolls of K64 from B&H, which should last til maybe the start of summer. Gotta keep those three Nikon F6's "well oiled!"

 

Robert Johnson me@robertejohnson.com

[terry_m7]

TO Ron Andrews: Ron, I'm not sure what you mean that 16mm Reversal Films have been discontinued. Only K40A was cancelled in 16mm. Kodak still offers beautiful E100D, and Fuji of course offers 16mm Films. (Small developing houses actually cut up other brands into 16mm and Super8mm formats.) I don't agree that there is no demand for Kodachrome in 16mm. The reason K40 demand was lower in 16mm is because of the delays in processing. However, if they had offered K40A to Super8mm and 135 & 120 users, demand obviously would have been higher. As I noted, it appears that they are trying to kill off Kodachrome. 16mm Movie Film use in general is actually on the increase. Unlike still Photographers, Movie Cinematographers are not deceived by the con of Digital. They recognize Digital's colour deficiencies.

 

You are right that Super8mm needs the Swiss Kodachrome Lab which, in my proposal to Kodak, I noted needed re-opening. Since they wanted to close that Lab, they didn't offer the 16mm K40A to Super8 users when they cancelled the special Super8mm K40A Stock in 2005. They also deliberately didn't offer K64 -- offering E64T instead. A private house (Spectra Film & Video) offers E100D to Super8 users. This is much more popular than E64T, but Postage Fees to people outside of the U.S. are prohibitive to buying from Spectra. Spectra also charges for developing with their E100D S8 Cartridge which is no good for those outside the U.S. So, European and other Super8 users are basically stuck with E64T.

 

Each 50 foot S8 Cartridge amounts to fully 11.4 feet of 35mm Film -- which is about 94 Still Pictures! Each 400 feet of 16mm Film amounts to 183 feet of 35mm! Do you see how much more film Movie Cinematographers use than Still Photographers? Just imagine how much more K200 Film Kodak would have sold if they had offered that Stock to 16mm users. Just imagine how much more K64 Kodak would sell if they offered it to 8mm & 16mm users. The question is: why don't they offer it? I believe they want to kill it.

[randrew1]

Lets consider three models for why Kodak does the things they do:

 

1. They are evil people conspiring to deprive us of the products we prefer.

 

2. They are incompetent and have no idea of how to run a company.

 

3. They are in a desperate fight for survival and will take ruthless actions to save the company.

 

I know many of the people at Kodak involved in film production. It pains them to cancel products. Those who have survived as Kodak employees recognize that they need to deliver profits in order for the company to survive. It may seem stupid to throw previously valued items overboard, but if your ship is sinking, sentiment goes out the window.

[DB_Gallery]

I started using Kodachrome at age 13 in 1980 with 25. I never had a problem with the

slow speed, I used it on a tripod quite a bit.

 

I have 150 rolls of the last batch, expiration 2003 that I am using for my project.

 

To second Clay's plug, come on over to:

 

http://www.kodachromeproject.com/forum/index.php

 

Seriously, folks, don't just sit around being old fuddy-duddy's, find a cool project and

shoot it on Kodachrome!!

[terry_m7]

Daniel, I can't believe that you have 150 Rolls of K25. You wouldn't be interested in selling a few would you?

 

Ron, I would never begrudge Kodak making profit on all Films. However, how much profit do the pencil pushers want? They are too greedy. As I recently told Ron Mowrey: "Regarding Sheet Format etc., perhaps I'm missing something, but, if Kodak is going to produce a given Stock of Film (such as K64), I just don't get why they can cut it up into 135 Format -- but not into 120, Sheet, 8mm and 16mm. How complicated and expensive is it to slice up a huge sheet of Film into different sizes? They're already making K64, and to offer it in other sizes will increase sales and profits. I tell you, Kodak has got to start serving smaller customers. Small profits over time add up to big profits. A company that only focuses on the big picture will eventually fail. Just look up Canada's Nortel Networks (Northern Telecom). Kodak under Perez is repeating Nortel's mistakes of excessive downsizing! Also just look at how well HP has done since Perez left them."