tbs

I'm getting a scanner in about two weeks. Until then, no samples, alas. (My wife promised me a Nikon CoolScan 5000ED for Christmas, to scan all the Kodachromes I've been taking since I was 11 years old.)

After all these years (25?) of shooting slides (mostly Kodachrome) I find that I

am still puzzled by what seems like a very elementary subject: how to use a

polarizing filter.

 

I just got back three rolls of slides of a recent trip, mostly of Grand Canyon

and Red Rock Canyon (near Las Vegas), some of which were shot with polarizer,

some without. Some of the shots using polarizer look good, colors slightly

enhanced, improved shadow detail, reduced glare from bright rocks. Some other

of the shots with polarizer look like I was photographing during a solar eclipse

with a piece of clear blue plastic over the lens. This has happened other

times, and as I get pickier about the results, I find myself more and more

frustrated when this happens.

 

The lenses were all recent Nikon AF lenses, with a B+W PL-C (circular) filter,

the ISO was set correctly (the camera does it automatically, but I always check

anyway), and I made sure to have the sun behind me or to the side, never right

in front of me. I don't think the camera's meter has any problems.

 

Any hints?

I just received some Kodak slide mailers I ordered from B&H, so that I can send

rolls of Kodachrome straight to Dwyane's when I'm on vacation, rather than

waiting until I get home. I notice that the mailers are marked "valid until

2/28/07". This seems strange. I don't remember mailers expiring. The most

recent rolls of Kodachrome I've purchased have "process by" date of 01/2008, so

clearly the stuff is still available and intended to be processed far after

February of 2007. I also noticed that the mailers are addressed to some place

in Maryland, so I've already put new, Dwayne's lables on them.

 

Anybody have any info on this "expires" business?

Thanks to all for your responses. I really haven't understood how *any* color film worked, to tell the truth, and this has been quite enlightening. I processed and printed my own B&W photos in a Jr. High class many years ago, but everything I learned there, naturally, concerned single-layer black and white film.

 

This was helpful.

As a 25+ year user of Kodachrome (since I was 12) I am surprised to have to ask

this question, but...

 

How exactly does Kodachrome work? I've read things on Wikipedia and such, that

tell me some things, but I am still unclear on many more things. I am to

understand that there is not a drop, or speck, of color in the little magazine

of Kodachrome that I am about to install in my Nikon camera right now (really!).

It is three layers of black-and-white film, I am told, that gets the color

added during the processing.

 

That's where my big "huh?" is. If all that's there after I take a shot is a

latent black-and-white image, how does a K-14 machine know later what colors to

add and in what intensities? Are the three layers not "really" black and white,

like, say, Pan-X or TechPan, but, in fact, three layers of monochromatic film,

each sensitive to a different range of the spectrum? And that when they are

processed, each one separately I am told, that is what gives the machines their

clues as to the actual colors present at the time of shooting?

 

Or am I totally off base here?

How different do you think Kodachrome 25 and 64 look? I don't see a lot of difference in many cases in test shots I made of both fairly recently. The K25 was just a little sharper than the 64 in certain cases, but the colors and balance seemed almost identical.

 

Do let us know, though, if you try a Provia 100F pull experiment. I'm always interested in hearing about options.

Brian, I assume you meant K25 is not coming back, which I wouldn't argue with. K64 is still very much with us, at least for a while longer.

 

And just to clarify, I'm happy for all the Velvia 50 lovers who are getting their favorite film back. I'm also happy I sold my last pro-packs of Velvia 50 on Ebay *before* the announcement came out.

I know this is a matter of tastes, and I don't want to start any religious wars here, but...

 

Some of us still consider Kodachrome the King of Films. Velvia never did it for me. Bringing back K25 would truly be a "Return of the King" for me. Barring that most unlikely event: K64 'til death do us part!

I've come to pretty much the same answer as Richard. Out-of-date film can sometimes be fine, but sometimes it is not, and it is hard to tell until you've shot it. With slide film this is particularly problematic, since what you shoot is what you get (unless you tweak it on the computer.)

 

I recently decided to stop messing with almost all of the out-of-date film in my freezer. As I finally realized: new Kodachrome 64 beats questionable, old Kodachrome 25 any day. If you want slides (as I usually do) use new film, if the results matter.

After a careful examination, I can say that they pinkish tint shows up on:

 

White objects, such as clouds or mist.

 

Off-white objects, such as clouds, lifeboats on the side of a cruise ship (but only very moderately.)

 

White to medium grey objects, such as more clouds and various rocks (again, very moderately.)

 

I don't know how to be any more precise without showing you, and, alas, I don't yet have the scanner I have my heart set on (Nikon Supercoolscan 5000.)

 

Again, any helpful hints would be...helpful.

I recently shot 10 rolls of Kodachrome on a vacation. All of them came back

looking good, except for one, which had a strange, slightly pinkish cast (which,

unfortunately, I can't show here.) Most of the rolls were K64, but this

particular roll was K200, very fresh, dated 10/2007. I've shot other rolls from

the same batch of K200 with perfect results.

 

I was using a new B+W skylight filter when I shot this roll, I think, which has

a slight pinkish tint to it. The pinkish cast is most noticable on some

overcast cloud shots, but also on some light morning mist shots as well. Could

the filter be the cause? If so, any guesses as to why the other rolls all

looked fine?

 

The roll was finished while out on a morning boat ride, and sat in my backpack

for several hours during a very hot day. Could this be the problem? I've left

exposed rolls of Kodachrome in backpack for several days on other occasions with

no such problems (e.g., two or three bright, sunny days of summer down in the

Grand Canyon, 110 degree heat.)

 

I suppose its possible that Dwayne's messed something up, but that would be

unlike them, and it would seem like a rather strange mistake to make. And, like

I said before, every other roll from the trip looked great.

 

Most puzzling.

As far as the volume of Kodachrome work at Dwayne's: a newspaper article a month or so ago claimed that they were processing around 1500 rolls of Kodachrome 35mm slide film each weekday, and had hired more help for their Kodachrome lines, in order to be able to take on the 1000 or so additional rolls per day expected to start coming in from the European Kodachrome market, now that Swiss lab is closed. Hard to say just how much the actual numbers vary from day to day, but when I asked them about their volume of Kodachrome work, the lady on the phone said it sure kept them busy.

 

We may have K-14 around for a while longer; I sure hope so.

I actually prefer cardboard mounts over plastic ones. Maybe its just the traditionalist in me, but also, I can easily write on cardboard mounts. Plastic ones are a pain to lable.

I recently turned a roll of Kodachrome in to my local photo store (Keeble & Shuchat, here in the SF Bay Area) on a Monday. Usually the turnaround is 8-10 days, since they send it, via Kodak, to Parsons KS just like everyone else. This time, however, I was stunned to get a call on Friday of the same week, telling me my slides were in. They looked fine, too.

 

I probably shouldn't count on similar things in the future, but I was still quite pleased. I can't recall such fast turnaround on K-14 since I started using it as a little kid in the 1980s!

I have used Ektachrome E200 for pushing up to EI800, usually with good results.

 

However, I am puzzled by something. Nearly everyone I speak to about this

confirms what I have long understood to be the case: an ASA 200 film shot at 800

needs a two-stop push in the developing stage to look correct. This is exactly

as I remember learning, i.e., 100 goes to 200, 200 goes to 400, 400 goes to 800,

800 goes to 1600, 1600 goes to 3200, stop by stop. The experienced,

knowledgable people at the photo store I take the film to also believe this to

be the case.

 

Yet from time to time on this forum, and a few other places, I read that E200

should be exposed at 320 for a one-stop push, 500-600 for a two-stop push, and

800 for a three-stop push. Additionally, inside the little cardboard box Kodak

packages the film in, it says something very much like this, 320 for one stop,

640 for two stops, 800 for 3 stops (unless I am reading it very wrong!)

 

What is the correct answer? I thought film ASAs or ISOs were a strict doubling

scale.

I can't answer for E100G, but if you want to push, you should try the newer E200, a fairly recent slide flim which Kodak specifically designed for pushing to 800. (It actually says so right on the box: "push to 800".) It has the same grain structure as the E100, but with added tolerance for exposure at high speeds.

 

I've shot it several times at 800, mostly for night photography at stadiums, and the results were very, very nice. There is, obviously, an increase in grain and, I think, contrast, but the images are still quite sharp and colorful.

What results have people here gotten pushing Kodachrome 200?

 

I've been a long-time K64 user, with occasional forays into K200 (shot at 200),

but I'm curious what the results of 1 or 2 stop pushes of K200 would be. I've

recently shot Ektachrome 200G at ISO 800 with excellent results, but am curious

if I could do the same with Kodachrome.

Not all of us Kodachrome lovers are geezers! I'm still well under 40, and just shot 11 rolls of the stuff last week on a cruise to Mexico. They were mostly professional K64, but there were a few K25s and a roll of K200 mixed in also. I turned them in yesterday to my local high-end camera shop, which will send them (via Kodak) to Dwyane's; if recent experience is indicative, I should have them back in about ten days.

 

I love the stuff!

This may seem like a screamingly simple question to answer, but I want to be

sure I'm doing this right. Projectors are getting harder to find these days,

and I want to preserve mine for as long as possible.

 

I recently bought a late-model, used Ektagraphic AMT projector. The Kodak

instruction booklet says that for the autofocus to work, you should manually

focus the first slide of a set, and then after that let the machine

automatically place all of the rest of the slides from the same set.

 

My question is: during the time I'm setting that first slide manually, should

the AF (autofocus) button be on AF or on OFF? In other words, should the

autofocus be off while I set the first slide where I want it, and THEN I flip

the switch to autofocus, or should I ALREADY have autofocus on when I'm setting

that first slide, so that the machine knows that I'm trying to set it? Or, to

put it one more way, am I doing any damage to the projector's autofocus

machinery anytime I fiddle with the focus myself (using either the remote or

on-machine dial) when the button is set to AF (i.e., autofocus on)?

 

Sorry if this seems overly dense on my part. I'm just not sure from the

instructions in the Kodak manual exactly what to do here.

I've been using "Print File" 2x2 20B sheets for storing my cardboard-mounted

slides. They are listed as "archival" and use 8 mil polypropylene. Print File

also appears to offer 10 mil, "extra heavyweight", and 16 mil, "super

heavyweight" sheets, as well as a 10 mil "frosted back" version. Is there any

reason to prefer one version over another, and change what I've been doing?

 

I like the whole sheets-in-a-3-ring-binder idea, so I'm just curious what the

best thing for this is. Thank you.

I grew up using Kodachrome, and love the look very much. I recently used some Elitechrome 100 and thought it was OK, but didn't like it nearly as well as my usual K64. I found the colors of the Elite more saturated than I like and the sharpness not as high as Kodachrome.

 

Interestingly, even more recently, I used some Ektachrome 200, one roll at ISO 200 for a daylight shoot, the other pushed to ISO 800 to photograph a night game at a baseball stadium. Both rolls came out very, very well, and impressed me greatly, much more than the Elitechrome. I liked the colors much more than the Elitechrome colors, and found the images much sharper, with very little grain (even at ISO 800!). I don't know why this should be the case, since they are supposed to be very similar products, but that's how I saw it. It (the Ektachrome) didn't quite make me want to kick my Kodachrome habit, but if I ever couldn't get Kodachrome, Ektachrome 200 would continue to make me a happy slide shooter.

"Who cares about "living fossil" films like Kodachrome?"

 

Um...apparently we do. Haven't you been reading the above?

 

I hope both K-14 and E-6 survive. I wouldn't make bets either way, but I'd love to have both around.

I have often fantasized recently about some specialized business entity "taking over" Kodachrome if Kodak decided to drop it completely, but I have no idea about the business/economic issues involved. All I know is that I'd use it! Someone wants to make fresh K25, I'm there! Need a tester for a Kodachrome 400 or such, call me! Someone wants to open an independent K-14 lab, all power to them, tell me where to buy the mailers!

 

I love, love, love Kodachrome!

 

BTW, none of this should be taken as a slam on Dwayne's or anything; personally, I've had nothing but great experiences with them.

I've been watching ebay a bit lately, noticing, among other things, the sales of

Kodachrome 25, often in bricks of 10 rolls. Many of them are "late vintage",

from 2001, with process-by dates of 2002. A little recent personal windfall has

made me wonder about trying for some. (I've used Kodachrome 64 my entire

photographic life.)

 

Is there anyone here who has bought any Kodachrome 25 recently (say, the last

year or so) and can comment on how it looked? Were the colors OK? Any fogging?

Still sharp? If the film really was kept frozen since 2002, or whatever year

of manufacture, should it still be alright? Are there any issues in shipping an

older film, such as likeliness to fry in the back of a hot USPS or UPS truck?

 

I know that buying on ebay entails certain risks, you pays your money you takes

your chances, etc. But if anyone has any information here, I'd appreciate

hearing it.

 

Alternatively, is there anyone who has kept some Kodachrome 25 in his freezer

(with no plan to sell), shot some recently, and can comment on how it looks?

 

Thank you.

I must say that my results with Kodachrome processed by Dwayne's has been excellent. They look as good as all my previous Kodachromes from the last 20 years.