Kodachrome

I love the poppy shot. I had a load of 20+ year old Kodachrome 64 pics scanned last year but the colours on a lot of them had gone funny. I also ended up with lines from the scanner, which was annoying as I had them done "professionally".

Here's two of them, circa 1981, taken on a Spotmatic, not sure what lens.

Sunrise over the Danube at Noviodunum, August 2010. Pentax MX, Kodachrome 64.




K.

Romanian cat. Taken in Isaccea, Romania, August 2010. Pentax MX, Kodachrome 64.




K.

Danubian sunrise (2). SMC K 24mm lens.




K.

Thanks to the sunshine yesterday, I shot most of my last two rolls. I finished off the last five frames this morning in the snow. I'll get them in the post today and they should make the end of November deadline... just.

For old times sake I shot the last roll using an ME Super (not my original one) and the last few frames were taken using my original SMC Pentax-M 50mm f1:2 lens. The first photograph I ever took using an SLR was using this combination on the 19th July 1982.

Oh well, all good things come to an end.

Best wishes, Kris.

End of an era....

[quote:3496ace15f="aliengrove"]I love the poppy shot. I had a load of 20+ year old Kodachrome 64 pics scanned last year but the colours on a lot of them had gone funny. I also ended up with lines from the scanner, which was annoying as I had them done "professionally".

Hi Aliengrove

I 'once' scanned a photo for a friend and got lines just like those - to my surprise, following a desparate measure of running the image through neat iamge the lines had gone - can't explain why this happened or what made me try it but it may be worth trying for you

Cheers


Stu

I'm really annoyed that I never got to shoot any Kodachrome now, it has an even better "retro" look than the Boots colour slide I buy now (got a few rolls in store and one on the go at the moment).

Weirdly my Grandmother recently sorted her old wardrobe out and came up with a small box of slide photos taken in the late 1950s on Kodachrome. The colours are as good as if they'd been taken yesterday!

I've also been digging some up from Dad's slide collection (runs from his buying a K2 in the late '70s through to the last time he took it on a family holiday in the mid 1990s), unfortunately some of those have gone mouldy. I managed to clean some of it off with a dampened cotton bud but I think it'll be a scanner/GIMP job to recover them fully. That said, I might just try projecting them and photographing them with the K-m as I'm guessing I'll get better results that way...

I have boxes and boxes of slides taken by my husband on a Boots Amica 35mm camera , dating , I think , from 1968 . there are slides of my daughters [ I think ] and also from holidays. We mainly used slide , though at some point I was shooting in B&W and believe it or not I used a light meter for every shot .

I don't know what to do with these - honest I don't

Try some PEC fluid. Expensive, but goes a long way and effective. They also do lint-free PEC pads (essentially tissues) too.

K.

I don't feel very excited about the colour of these shots to be honest. They don't look like the best Kodachrome slides I've seen. I think it's probably because Kodachrome does not scan well so the scanning has not done the images any favours.

Kodachrome is vibrant and virtually grain free and also holds its colour better than any E-6 film can. However, it needs to be kept in a dark, cool, dry environment. It fades quicker under light than any E-6 film does.

There is a Kodachrome setting on my Nikon Coolscan V, but I've never been impressed with the results from those scans either.

As I have said several times elsewhere, I agree with you. The original slides have much nicer colours than these scans and are much sharper. For some reason, all my scanned slides of whatever make (Kodak, Fuji, Agfa, boots...) end up with a purple/magenta hue which I can sometimes get rid of (if there is a neutral shade to click on), sometimes I just cannot seem to correct it. Vuescan (when it hasn't crashed yet again) does have a K14 setting. Also, I really ought to put them in glass mounts to improve the focus. Sadly, my funds don't really stretch to a top-of-the-line slide scanner or paying to get them done professionally. Mind you, I have read a lot of comments about how disappointed people have been with "pro" scans.

As to fading, most of my slides are stored in archival quality hanging files. Once I have got some new filing cabinets (I binned the old one when I moved earlier in the year), I will purchase enough hanging files for the remainder of my slides. The K64 images are as good as the day I got them back from Kodak. Some of the others have faded, particularly the Boots home-brand ones. After yesterday, I doubt I'll ever shoot another 35mm transparency although I'll keep on shooting medium and large format ones.

Kris.

My last roll.




I know, I'm a nerd.

K.

Rather sad to see it go, but in the old days I was very much a Fuji man. I loved the rich greens and reds.

Some very nice shots here, Kris, particularly the sunrises.

Does anyone know of a place which will scan Kodachrome slides? (preferbly in Manchester)

I only ask as my only two rolls have come back and I am struggling to get decent digital versions from the scans I have done.