Kodachrome

In response to the previous post I thought it would be a good idea to investigate into the film stock the footage was exposed onto. This aims to understand the film stock and what sort of images can be produced on it, determining the advantages, weaknesses of the stocks limits.

"Kodachrome,
They give us those nice bright colors,
They give us the greens of summers,
Makes you think all the world's,
a sunny day."

- Paul Simon

The footage on the super 8 film in the previous post was captured on Kodachrome II. Kodachrome, manufactured by Kodak is a colour reversal film which is more commonly found on 35mm photographic film. This produces a positive image on a transparent base which is then processed to produce transparencies or diapositives instead of the more common negatives and prints. Reversal film is used in super 8 and super 16 formats as well as some other motion picture film formats to yield a positive image on the camera original, avoiding the expense and slight degradation of image quality resulting from using negative film, and copying to a positive to produce a print for projection.

London Piccadilly, Kodachrome Photograph, Chalmers Butterfield, circa 1949

Kodachrome was the first comerically succesful colour film stock which used the subtractive colour method compared earlier additive "screenplate" methods like Autochrome and Dufaycolor. It went on to become the oldest surving brand of colour film, manufactured for 74 years in many formats to suit still and motion picture cameras including 8mm, Super 8, 16mm and 35mm for film cameras. It was also used for many years for 35mm, 120, 110, 126, 828 and large format still photography, specifically for images for publication in print media. 

 Subtractive Colour - The use of paints, dyes and inks and natural colours to create colour by absorbing some wavelengths of light and reflecting or transmitting others. This action is the basis of photographic filters, films and colour papers.  

As a stock Kodachrome is known for its dark storage longevity in archival resources, so much so that the majority of Canadian material is archived onto Kodachrome as it can be transferred into different formats with no worry of backwards compatibility with original prints on film stills. However with the introduction of competing film such as Fujichrome and Ektachrome (also released by Kodak) which use the E-6 process, a more simpler, quicker and more importantly less expensive was of processing, Kodachrome lost much of its market share from the 1980's through to the 1990's.   

E-6 process - The photographic process for developing Ektachrome, Fujichrome and other colour reversal slide photographic film.    

Differently to transparency and neagtive colour film with dye couplers incorporated into the emulsion layers Kodachrome had none, these were added during the processing. Without these the emulsion initially layers would be thinner, causing less light scattering, allowing the film to record sharper images. the processing of Kodachrome was a tricky process and wouldn't be able to be completed by amateurs, something Ektachrome could.

"If you have good light and you’re at a fairly high shutter speed, it’s going to be a brilliant color photograph. It had a great color palette. It wasn’t too garish. Some films are like you’re on a drug or something. Velvia made everything so saturated and wildly over-the-top, too electric. Kodachrome had more poetry in it, a softness, an elegance. With digital photography, you gain many benefits [but] you have to put in post-production. (With Kodachrome) ,you take it out of the box and the pictures are already brilliant"

- David Friend 

Kodachrome is no longer available however its memory and legacy lives on through the images it produced. The images are high in contrast and super rich in colour and although we have lost it as a stock, its longevity ensures we can enjoy its images for sometime,