Now that Kadachrome is gone.....

kgruber

kgruber

Final Approach
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Now that Kodachrome is gone.....

I'm dusting off an old 3D camera from the 50's.

Now that Kodachrome is gone, what is the distant second best. I'd do Ektachrome.................only if there isn't something better.:dunno:
 
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kgruber said:
I'm dusting off an old 3D camera from the 50's.

Now that Kodachrome is gone, what is the distant second best. I'd do Ektachrome.................only if there isn't something better.:dunno:
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E-6 films (my preference was always Fujichrome) are the only practical options left. The other option is to replace the film altogether by getting a couple of CCDs to mount to the camera back replacing the the film, but that's an expensive and difficult proposition, and for the 3D printing the files still need to go to a film recorder which will use E-6 film, unless someone has a digital replacement printing process.

There may be one other option, Agfa used to also make a K-14 process film (same dye transfer process Kodachrome used), however I'm not sure if there is anyone left running a K-14 machine.:dunno:

If you want to make 35mm transparencies, the only practical material to use now is an E-6 film.
 
I always loved the warm, hyper saturated tones of Fuji's Velvia. Pretty sure it's still available. A lot of pro's used it when I was in the ad biz...
 
I like Velvia. Also Provia.

Not much choice as Ektachrome has also been discontinued.

(I used Ektachrome for years, but find that the saturation & longevity was never as good as Kodachrome (result of when the dyes are added to each). It was a good option when you needed film speed faster than Kodachrome.)

For B&W, I'm very partial to Ilford.
 
Rocky Mountain Film Lab claims they can develop old film, including K-14. They also have a list of companies supplying film

Suggest checking with a camera store in a large city to get the film your camera could use (if it isn't 35 mm). Also check on a photography forum since there are a number of people still using film.

As for 3-d digital images, note the Fuji FinePix 3-d camera used to take digital stereo images. The images are viewed on screen, and can be printed on a color printer with the appropriate software. Although replacing the film with CCD or CMOS chips is impractical, there are digital solutions available so some of the information posted earlfier isn't correct.
 
I'd like that Fuji 3D camera, but I'm just having fun with an old Realist 3D format Kodak camera...........just for the memories.

I'm going to look for some Fuji slide film.......off to eBay!
 
Wish I could help ya. I'd still use my Canon AE-1 Program if I knew where to get film developed.
 
The process (for things other than K-14) isn't that hard. E-6 you could do in your kitchen.
Kodak's rapidly exiting the film business (I'm surprised they haven't sold the rights to those processes in their attempt to raise capital).
 
OkieFlyer said:
Wish I could help ya. I'd still use my Canon AE-1 Program if I knew where to get film developed.
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Buy a Jobo drum processor and you can do it at home fairly cheaply. Heck these days you old probably buy an abandoned Refrema E-6 machine for the same price, or get a Quadrachrome for free.:lol:
 
flyingron said:
The process (for things other than K-14) isn't that hard. E-6 you could do in your kitchen.
Kodak's rapidly exiting the film business (I'm surprised they haven't sold the rights to those processes in their attempt to raise capital).
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I saw a Kodak Film sign (in Hungarian) at the castle in Budapest today. I haven't seen one of those outside a shop in years. Should have taken a picture of it.
 
flyingron said:
The process (for things other than K-14) isn't that hard. E-6 you could do in your kitchen.
Kodak's rapidly exiting the film business (I'm surprised they haven't sold the rights to those processes in their attempt to raise capital).
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Do they own the rights to the K-14 process still?:dunno: As long as it's been around I'd suspect the patents are over. The only really tricky part about processing the film at the home scale is maintains a precise temp on the chemistry, that and loading the film on the reels inside a black bag if you don't have a room that's light proof.

I doubt anyone can still make a profit with K-14.
 
Henning said:
I doubt anyone can still make a profit with K-14.
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Which is really too bad. I used to use a significant (to me, anyway) amount of Kodachrome 64 in my Minolta SRT-102. Good camera (and lenses), but without good 35mm film it just gathers dust in an old camera bag. Of course, doing away with mercury cell batteries forced me to zinc-air technology batteries for the internal light meter. 6 months after activation they are dead. Used or not. And they weren't cheap, either. Oh well, DSLRs do have a cost advantage. Not to mention immediate ability to see if you set up the picture right and, if not, take it again.
 
Ghery said:
Which is really too bad. I used to use a significant (to me, anyway) amount of Kodachrome 64 in my Minolta SRT-102. Good camera (and lenses), but without good 35mm film it just gathers dust in an old camera bag. Of course, doing away with mercury cell batteries forced me to zinc-air technology batteries for the internal light meter. 6 months after activation they are dead. Used or not. And they weren't cheap, either. Oh well, DSLRs do have a cost advantage. Not to mention immediate ability to see if you set up the picture right and, if not, take it again.
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Yeah, I used up a lot of Kodachrome myself, but even 25 doesn't hold up to the imaging quality available from digital. Even my old Fuji S2 pro would allow me to print 24x30 with better quality than my 120 film cameras, 35mm pretty much maxed out at 16x20 before the grain blew out. Plus the pro digital printing is all dye transfer archival quality. Unless you were printing a Cibachrome process, color prints are pretty life limited before degradation of color.
 
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Henning said:
Yeah, I used up a lot of Kodachrome myself, but even 25 doesn't hold up to the imaging quality available from digital. Even my old Fuji S2 pro would allow me to print 24x30 with better quality than my 120 film cameras, 35mm pretty much maxed out at 16x20 before the grain blew out. Plus the pro digital printing is all dye transfer archival quality. Unless you were printing a Cibachrome process, color prints are pretty life limited before degradation of color.
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Interestingly enough, I have a bunch of slides I took on a trip to Europe in 1971 using Kodachrome 25 that still look great. My old 3 in 1 printer had the ability in its SW to fix the color when scanning slides that had changed with age. The only Kodachrome slides I had with any problems dated back to the late 1940s / early 1950s. Dad's slides, not mine. :D Now, the commercial slides I had purchased in 1971 all needed correction as they had faded badly. Agfa, IIRC.
 
Ghery said:
Interestingly enough, I have a bunch of slides I took on a trip to Europe in 1971 using Kodachrome 25 that still look great. My old 3 in 1 printer had the ability in its SW to fix the color when scanning slides that had changed with age. The only Kodachrome slides I had with any problems dated back to the late 1940s / early 1950s. Dad's slides, not mine. :D Now, the commercial slides I had purchased in 1971 all needed correction as they had faded badly. Agfa, IIRC.
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Only the K-14 process films were dye transfer and archival quality, all the E-4 and E-6 films had the dye built in and the color degrades with time, it's a pity really. :(
 
Henning said:
Do they own the rights to the K-14 process still?:dunno: As long as it's been around I'd suspect the patents are over. The only really tricky part about processing the film at the home scale is maintains a precise temp on the chemistry, that and loading the film on the reels inside a black bag if you don't have a room that's light proof.

I doubt anyone can still make a profit with K-14.
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Kodak's patents on Kodachrome and K-14 expired long before they stopped making the film and selling the process. It just never was practical for anybody else to develop their own chemicals and processing equipment to do it until Kodak left the biz and it became a niche market. The only person doing it wants a lot of money and they wait until they have sufficient film waiting for processing to run the machine.

It's way more than temperature regulation. You have to remove the rem-jet antihalation backing which from it's outset is more than just a simple fill tank operation. Also the re-exposure for each color needs to be done with the proper filters and quite a deal more care than most people are going to accomplish with commonly available film processing equipment.

E-6 processing on the other hand is trivial. Even the Kodak process with the additional steps are easy: first developer, stop bath, reversal, color developer, stop bath, beach, rinse, fixer, rinse, fixer, rinse. Some of the non-Kodak E-6 chemical sets are even simpler, combining the bleach/fixer stages into one.
 
Ghery said:
Interestingly enough, I have a bunch of slides I took on a trip to Europe in 1971 using Kodachrome 25 that still look great.
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In those days, film and processing were a major part of the cost of a trip.

On a five-week student tour of Europe in 1968, ten 36-exposure rolls of Agfachrome was all I could afford for my Canon 4 rangefinder camera.

crf2f212.jpg


I just got back in June from ten days in Italy and Germany and brought back an SD card with over 1,500 digital images. Plus video. What a difference. What's more, I can even go back and scan those 1968 slides and finally fix the bad exposures and composition, tilted frames, etc. :)
 
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flyingron said:
Kodak's patents on Kodachrome and K-14 expired long before they stopped making the film and selling the process. It just never was practical for anybody else to develop their own chemicals and processing equipment to do it until Kodak left the biz and it became a niche market. The only person doing it wants a lot of money and they wait until they have sufficient film waiting for processing to run the machine.

It's way more than temperature regulation. You have to remove the rem-jet antihalation backing which from it's outset is more than just a simple fill tank operation. Also the re-exposure for each color needs to be done with the proper filters and quite a deal more care than most people are going to accomplish with commonly available film processing equipment.

E-6 processing on the other hand is trivial. Even the Kodak process with the additional steps are easy: first developer, stop bath, reversal, color developer, stop bath, beach, rinse, fixer, rinse, fixer, rinse. Some of the non-Kodak E-6 chemical sets are even simpler, combining the bleach/fixer stages into one.
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Yeah, sorry I confused the issues, K-14 is impossible as an "at home process" I was referring to E-4, E-6, or C-41 processes. Not even sure if the false color infrared E-4 process film still exists. Thing about E-6 is that even a 1/2° temp shift causes a color and contrast shift.
 
Henning said:
Do they own the rights to the K-14 process still?:dunno: As long as it's been around I'd suspect the patents are over. The only really tricky part about processing the film at the home scale is maintains a precise temp on the chemistry, that and loading the film on the reels inside a black bag if you don't have a room that's light proof.

I doubt anyone can still make a profit with K-14.
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These people do:
http://rockymountainfilm.com/oldfilm.htm K-14 is listed.

Henning said:
Only the K-14 process films were dye transfer and archival quality, all the E-4 and E-6 films had the dye built in and the color degrades with time, it's a pity really. :(
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See Ghery's response below...

Ghery said:
Interestingly enough, I have a bunch of slides I took on a trip to Europe in 1971 using Kodachrome 25 that still look great. My old 3 in 1 printer had the ability in its SW to fix the color when scanning slides that had changed with age. The only Kodachrome slides I had with any problems dated back to the late 1940s / early 1950s. Dad's slides, not mine. :D Now, the commercial slides I had purchased in 1971 all needed correction as they had faded badly. Agfa, IIRC.
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Scan it in, digitize it like he did.

There's a lot of film and movies lost due to the limitations of the materials. films based on nitrocellulose and cellulose acetate both decay over time.
 
I had a home darkroom for a while. I did both E-6 and type R printing. It's not that involved. In fact all you need is a sink and a thermometer and a film tank and some place to load the tank. E-6 is trivial home darkroom stuff. Type R printing is a whole lot easier than printing from negs.

This is one of these obsolete skill sets I learned (along with setting type and programming IBM card processing equipment). At least I know where the terms dodge and burn-in come from when doing digital manipulations.
 
Henning said:
Do they own the rights to the K-14 process still?:dunno: As long as it's been around I'd suspect the patents are over. The only really tricky part about processing the film at the home scale is maintains a precise temp on the chemistry, that and loading the film on the reels inside a black bag if you don't have a room that's light proof.

I doubt anyone can still make a profit with K-14.
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I believe the chemicals were proprietary. The patents expired long ago, but without the exact formulation of the chemicals and dyes, the process is worthless. I suspect that the chemical and dye formulation were covered as "trade secrets" (and are kinda worthless to re-engineer without any film to develop).

Ghery said:
Interestingly enough, I have a bunch of slides I took on a trip to Europe in 1971 using Kodachrome 25 that still look great. My old 3 in 1 printer had the ability in its SW to fix the color when scanning slides that had changed with age. The only Kodachrome slides I had with any problems dated back to the late 1940s / early 1950s. Dad's slides, not mine. :D Now, the commercial slides I had purchased in 1971 all needed correction as they had faded badly. Agfa, IIRC.
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Because the dyes were incorporated in the processing (unlike E6/Ektachrome, where the dyes are in the film), they tend to be much more stable. I have some of my dad's Kodachrome from the 40's and 50's that looks like the photos were taken yesterday. A few faded, but those appear to be overexposed. Wonderful color.....

flyingron said:
Kodak's patents on Kodachrome and K-14 expired long before they stopped making the film and selling the process. It just never was practical for anybody else to develop their own chemicals and processing equipment to do it until Kodak left the biz and it became a niche market. The only person doing it wants a lot of money and they wait until they have sufficient film waiting for processing to run the machine.

It's way more than temperature regulation. You have to remove the rem-jet antihalation backing which from it's outset is more than just a simple fill tank operation. Also the re-exposure for each color needs to be done with the proper filters and quite a deal more care than most people are going to accomplish with commonly available film processing equipment.

E-6 processing on the other hand is trivial. Even the Kodak process with the additional steps are easy: first developer, stop bath, reversal, color developer, stop bath, beach, rinse, fixer, rinse, fixer, rinse. Some of the non-Kodak E-6 chemical sets are even simpler, combining the bleach/fixer stages into one.
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Rocky Mountain Photo will develop Kodachrome, but only in B&W - they can't incorporate the dyes.

I had a moment of panic when I was going through my dad's stuff a couple of years ago and found 2-3 metal film cans that had stuff in them (he shot lots and lots of Kodachrome). And then relief when I opened them to a slight whiff of vinegar and discovered several rolls of very old B&W negatives (all processed, but I'd never ever seen the prints).... post WWII Europe and the US. I can actually date some of them to a specific date they were taken (1945-1946).

flyingron said:
I had a home darkroom for a while. I did both E-6 and type R printing. It's not that involved. In fact all you need is a sink and a thermometer and a film tank and some place to load the tank. E-6 is trivial home darkroom stuff. Type R printing is a whole lot easier than printing from negs.

This is one of these obsolete skill sets I learned (along with setting type and programming IBM card processing equipment). At least I know where the terms dodge and burn-in come from when doing digital manipulations.
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As did I. I still have a processing drum and some other stuff down in the garage. All worthless except for historical purposes (we won't talk about the Z80 computer that's also down there....)
 
This was shot on Kodachrome in 1950-something. It's slightly overexposed. Shot on an Argus C3 camera. Unknown whether he was using a light meter or not (the C3 had no built-in metering).

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I have a quite a few slides from the 1950s and 60s. Kodachrome seems to have held its color much better. Ektachrome turns red with age.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
I always loved the warm, hyper saturated tones of Fuji's Velvia. Pretty sure it's still available. A lot of pro's used it when I was in the ad biz...
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Fuji Velvia. Yes.
 
Pilawt said:
In those days, film and processing were a major part of the cost of a trip.

On a five-week student tour of Europe in 1968, ten 36-exposure rolls of Agfachrome was all I could afford for my Canon 4 rangefinder camera.

crf2f212.jpg


I just got back in June from ten days in Italy and Germany and brought back an SD card with over 1,500 digital images. Plus video. What a difference. What's more, I can even go back and scan those 1968 slides and finally fix the bad exposures and composition, tilted frames, etc. :)
Click to expand...

Our band trip to Europe in 1971 saw me carry 10 rolls of 36 exposure Kodachrome 25. I used my Dad's Kodak 35, one of the original 35 mm cameras they made. Dated back to the 1930s, IIRC. My grandmother had given it to him when she moved to a different camera. She kicked herself for years because it took such good pictures. I used a Weston Master II light meter, took a quick reading, set shutter speed and aperture and then focused using the separate view finder with split image focusing. Then back to the main viewfinder to compose the shot and take it. I got pretty good (and fast) with all that on that trip. Now, I take my DSLR, point and shoot (most of the time). Much faster. And, that camera paid for itself due to not having to pay for developing film. Not sure how many pictures I've taken already this trip, but it's a bunch more than I took in 1971 (in 45 days).
 
I probably have 2600 slides in Sawyers trays kicking around plus more in boxes that I need to sort through and see if any are worth digitizing. Most are from my tours of Africa, South American, and Russia in 1974. I also have a drawer full of various film that never got developed but probably does have inconsequential stuff on it.

I do have four boxes of RUINED slides that KODAK misprocessed (please have a free roll of film on us) from my trip to Taiwan back in 1989. Now I am careful to unload my Canon D20 at the end of each day's shooting.
 
First... Can the OP correct the spelling in the thread title:dunno::rolleyes:..

Second...... It seems we have a large group of film fanatics in POA... So , my question is...

Back 40 years ago, I got heavily into movie film stuff using Super 8 cameras... I bought a Sankyo 620 ... It had all kinds of neat functions like slow motion, lap dissolve and other ( back then) where kool to have... I know it is completely outdated and worthless..

http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/Graphics/Cameras/sankyo_620.jpg

Then one day a neighbor sold me a pretty trick Canon Super 8 camera...

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/history/canon_story/1955_1969/img/1968_1218_l.jpg

The optics /lens are outstanding and I hate to just ditch it in the trash... Since there are numerous video producers here in Jackson that do ski films, snow board films and snowmobile films ( and some of them are quite successful) and they produce so high quality products...

Do / can people ( companies ) gut the camera and install digital stuff to make it a functioning and high quality video camera???

Thanks in advance for all feedback...
 
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N801BH said:
First... Can the OP correct the spelling in the thread title:dunno::rolleyes:..

Second...... It seems we have a large group of film fanatics in POA... So , me question is...

Back 40 years ago I got heavily into movie film stuff using Super 8 cameras... I bought a Sankyo 620 ... It had all kinds of neat functions like slow motion, lap dissolve and other ( back then) where kool to have... I know it is completely outdated and worthless..

http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/Graphics/Cameras/sankyo_620.jpg

Then one day a neighbor sold me a pretty trick Canon Super 8 camera...

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/history/canon_story/1955_1969/img/1968_1218_l.jpg

The optics /lens are outstanding and I hate to just ditch it in the trash... Since there are numerous video producers here in Jackson that do ski films, snow board films and snowmobile films ( and some of them are quite successful) and they produce so high quality products...

Do / can people ( companies ) gut the camera and install digital stuff to make it a functioning and high quality video camera???

Thanks in advance for all feedback...
Click to expand...

No, it makes no sense to do it since the new digital cameras are smaller and better. If you want to do it for ****s and giggles, go for it.
 
N801BH said:
First... Can the OP correct the spelling in the thread title:dunno::rolleyes:..

Second...... It seems we have a large group of film fanatics in POA... So , me question is...

Back 40 years ago I got heavily into movie film stuff using Super 8 cameras... I bought a Sankyo 620 ... It had all kinds of neat functions like slow motion, lap dissolve and other ( back then) where kool to have... I know it is completely outdated and worthless..

http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/Graphics/Cameras/sankyo_620.jpg

Then one day a neighbor sold me a pretty trick Canon Super 8 camera...

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/history/canon_story/1955_1969/img/1968_1218_l.jpg

The optics /lens are outstanding and I hate to just ditch it in the trash... Since there are numerous video producers here in Jackson that do ski films, snow board films and snowmobile films ( and some of them are quite successful) and they produce so high quality products...

Do / can people ( companies ) gut the camera and install digital stuff to make it a functioning and high quality video camera???

Thanks in advance for all feedback...
Click to expand...
People have done so on a whim; they've put the digital part of a modern camera in a film camera. To make it work, they've had to build a new back( 3-d print it) so they can both get the sensor in the right place and get the controls accessible for the digital camera to work, and to hold all of the support circuitry that the sensor needs. This is the easy way to do it.

The hard way is to get a sensor and roll-your-own digital camera. One needs the processor, and needs to program it to work with the sensor and store the images. I did this sort of work once, where we took high-end cameras that only captured an image, we wrote the software that took the sensor data to a computer where we could process it. This sort of thing only makes sense if you have special needs, such as what we were doing.

Either option for your situation only makes sense if the optics are so good nothing else works as well. It is usually much easier to make an adapter and put the optics on a digital camera.
 
N801BH said:
First... Can the OP correct the spelling in the thread title:dunno::rolleyes:..

Second...... It seems we have a large group of film fanatics in POA... So , my question is...

Back 40 years ago, I got heavily into movie film stuff using Super 8 cameras... I bought a Sankyo 620 ... It had all kinds of neat functions like slow motion, lap dissolve and other ( back then) where kool to have... I know it is completely outdated and worthless..

http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/Graphics/Cameras/sankyo_620.jpg

Then one day a neighbor sold me a pretty trick Canon Super 8 camera...

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/history/canon_story/1955_1969/img/1968_1218_l.jpg

The optics /lens are outstanding and I hate to just ditch it in the trash... Since there are numerous video producers here in Jackson that do ski films, snow board films and snowmobile films ( and some of them are quite successful) and they produce so high quality products...

Do / can people ( companies ) gut the camera and install digital stuff to make it a functioning and high quality video camera???

Thanks in advance for all feedback...
Click to expand...
Not really for video - there's way too much quality digital cameras ou there that are reasonably priced. Heck, even the 8 mm tape cameras and pro-Beta cameras are essentially worthless. The early digital stuff isn't worth much, either.

There are a handful of high-end still cameras that had/have digital backs available. 'Blads for one. But I gotta say that the newer digital SLRs are pretty much as good, if not better.
 
wsuffa said:
Not really for video - there's way too much quality digital cameras ou there that are reasonably priced. Heck, even the 8 mm tape cameras and pro-Beta cameras are essentially worthless. The early digital stuff isn't worth much, either.

There are a handful of high-end still cameras that had/have digital backs available. 'Blads for one. But I gotta say that the newer digital SLRs are pretty much as good, if not better.
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$15k for the digital back. :yikes:
 
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