Today’s Trains Newswire (9/22/08) had an interesting item about the possibility Kodak might discontinue Kodachrome Film so this prompted some questions.
Do you still use Kodachrome film in railroad photography? If so, which speed do you use?
Do you use other slide films such as Fuji or Ektachrome, and if so, why?
Here is my take. I started in railroad photography with Kodachrome (ASA or ISO 10) in the 1950’s. back then the price of a roll of Kkodachrome included Kodak processing. However, in the mid 50’s Kodak was forced to separate the cost of the film and the cost of processing so the price increased, and I looked for less expensive ways to take pictures. I tried Brand X film with Brand Y processing, but the slides colors deteriorated.
I also looked for faster films even in the Kodak family,but I didn’t use Kodak’s processing, again to save a few bucks. Some of the slides are still good, but some slides have started to change color. All of my Kodachrome slides are still as good today as the day they came back from the processing lab; the same applies to my Ektachrome slides that were processed by Kodak. However, in 2004 I got back some Kodachrome slides that were not processed by Kodak, and one slide of a DART light rail vehicle had a pink cast on the ground. In addition in recent years some of my Kodachrome 200 slides had a sort of a reddish cast. That coupled with the fact I had to mail my slides to a non-Kodak Kodachrome processing lab convinced me to switch back to Ektachrome or Fuji. However, only one lab that I know of processes slide film any more, so I wonder how much longer it will be possible to process any slide film?
I used Kodachrome 25 & 64 right up to three years ago when I bought my first digital SLR. I surprised myself and have not purchased another roll of film since.
I tried Ektachrome 200 back in 1976? or so just because of the speed. I found it to be greenish and only used it occasionally when I needed the high speed. I did try it again in 1984? when they switched the position of the green and blue emulsion on the film (supposedly to correct the greenish tint). That was about the time my photography was giving way to other interests and things like a career, so I never analyzed the new speeds and films. Sooo I Always stuck with the Kodachrome (for color) that I knew would work right.
I used Kodachrome 64 for many years, and did experiment with Ektachrome and Fuji. About 5 years ago I used my first digital camera - Never bought another roll of film after that. I still have 2 Pentex and a Nikon with lots of lens. I thought about selling them on eBay, but the price of old film SLR’s has dropped so fast that I never bothered to try to sell them. I knew Kodak was serious about getting out of film for a number of years - I guess they saw this coming faster than railfans did! It amazes me that guys will argue about how superior film SLR’s are. Sort of reminds me of the tube vs transistor arguments with audio back in the late 60’s/early 70’s…
I also was a Fujifilm and Ektachrome user user until I bought my first digital camera (Nikon D70). However, I kept my F100 film camera, because I felt that the image quality (mostly color satuation) was far superior to digital, plus the 6MP resolution left much to be desired. So I used the digital for my ‘casual’ shooting (most train photos, pets, etc), and I used my film camera for my ‘serious’ shooting (portraits, sunrises, etc).
Earlier this year I got a Nikon D300, and haven’t touched the film camera since. Even though the 12MP image still falls short of the 20-25Mp range that most pros consider to be ASA 100 film equivalent, I am completely satisfied with the D300.
Oh, and by the way, tubes ARE still superior to transistors. Any audiophile (audiophile: a person who brags that their amplifier system is “straight wire with gain”) will confirm this. And these same persons will tell you (correctly) that an LP has superior sound compared to a CD.
Of course, the 99.9% of us that are not audiophiles cannot hear the difference, especially folks that have become accustomed to the horrible sound from a MP3 player.
I don’t, but I’ve thought about picking up some outdated but frozen rolls of Kodachrome 25 just to see what all the buzz is about. Back when I was shooting Kodachrome, I always went with K-64 because I couldn’t stand the grain of K-200 and was worried that K-25 would be too slow for railroad photography. I think the latter is still true for much of railroad photography, but it might be fun to shoot some rosters or something like that just to see what all the hub-bub is about.
Unfortunately K-25 goes for a pretty penny these days on everybody’s favorite auction site. Then again, if it can’t be processed, I imagine I’ll be able to get a lot of it for next to nothing pretty soon. Of course that kind of defeats the purpose, I suppose.
Yes, with my 4x5 camera. I use Provia 100F and occasionally will use a sheet of Velvia. Why? Simply put, there’s nothing like looking at a well exposed large format chrome on a light table. One of these days I’m going to get an 8x10 camera and start shooting some 8x10 chromes. I’ve only seen a few, but the experience was simply breathtaking.
I used to use both Kodak and Fuji films. I never did slides, but rather prints, and I found that when processed by a Kodak lab (the one near me that did that was just torn down last week, but had been out of business for about 5 years) the color and sharpness was much better compared to what Walgreens or Wal-Mart could do. I found that the Fuji film did a fair job as far as color saturation and the end product looked pretty good, well, on the occasions back then when I did take a good photo. I still have my Minolta, and my dad’s old Pentax film SLR’s on a shelf collecting dust.
I went digital about 5 years ago, and while I don’t have a digital SLR yet, I am looking forward to the day when I can get one. Right now my 8MP Fuji S8000 does a good job, and when converting to prints, they look good. I have thought about taking the SLR’s out and shooting some film, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Perhaps in the next week or two…
I still use K-64 and will keep using it until they phase it out/no longer support the processing. Have Kodachromes processed before and after the 1939 change in the process, and the difference between them is dramatic! The earlier ones exhibited a shift to magenta and a fading of the dyes. Those processed after the change are as good as the day they were exposed. Several years ago asked folk at Kodak and at the Eastman Museum about the life-expectancy for Kodachrome slides and got the typical “about 50 years” reply. Those early 40s Kodachromes have not shown one trace of deterioration, even though they’re well on their way to being 65-70 years old. Hope this helps, Art
When I “graduated” from print film to slides, I chose K64 based on it’s reputation. For whatever reason, I took much better pictures with slide film than I did with print film. While slides give better detail and color than prints, I found my composition, exposure and general photography skills improved with slide film. Maybe it was just the mental image of myself as a “serious” photographer.
I do find that digital makes me a lazier photographer. The idea that you can fix it in photoshop leads to bad photography decisions, and the essentially infinite storage on high capacity cards leads to a quantity-over-quality approach to photography.
Don’t get me wrong, I love digital photography. Instant feedback, the ability to quickly share pictures is great, but I do miss my old AE1.
When I shot film, I used Ektachrome, because it was E-6 developed, and I could get the chemicals and develop it myself. Yes, thats right, I used to develop and mount slides myself.
The K-12 chemicals for Kodachrome were much harder to come by.
Sodium ferrocyanide or ferricyanide, used to bleach the developed silver out, both in the Kodachrome and Ektachrome processes, relatively benign stuff, actually. It was the formaldehyde (formalin fixer, mainly) that was nasty stuff in the old days. They got away from that around 1970 or so when they went ahead from E-2, P-122 and the predecessor to C-22 processes. I don’t really miss any of them, because between the formaldehyde vapors and the sulfur dioxide vapors, you could come out of the darkroom with a just plain nasty taste in your mouth and all you did was breathe the stuff.
That being said, I did shoot a lot of K-64 into the 80’s (K-25 was just a little too high contrast for a lot of my subjects). There was a time you could get a 120 Kodachrome, but by the time I got a medium format with the glass that would merit the emulsion, Kodak had stopped making it.
One other Kodachrome memory is working a block away from the LA Kodak lab on Las Palmas in Hollyweird. You could drop a pre-paid mailer off there in the morning and the slides would be in your mailbox the next day.
There is no real argument on any of those points. If my math is right, digital cameras will have to get into the 36 Megapixal-per-color (red, green, blue so 108 Mg total) range to be roughly equal to real film. It isn’t the SLR that is superior it is the infinity-colors-per-dot the film can record over the 16 Million or so colors a digital sensor can do. Likewise, anyone can look back in hindsight and know that tubes are superior. All the really high end stuff today has gone back to the tube. I’ve purchased two different brand “audiophile” quality digital receivers (over $1000 units) hoping to get something even close to the 1960s Macintosh and Marantz systems. Unfortunately they don’t even come close to the 1970s Marantz & Pioneer solid state stuff. sigh.
It all comes down to the “good enough” principle. Most people can’t hear the difference between a CD and cassette tape let alone an LP. CDs and digital amplification is good enough for 99.8% of the population out there. Same with photography. My simple 6.3 MgPixel Canon Digital Rebel is good enough eventhough I know it is no where as good as real film, especially Kodachrome, is.
The fog of nostalgia always makes the past look better than it really was. “They just don’t make 'em like they used to.”
If you shoot film, and take it to a lab to be printed, they are going to scan it and print it digitally. Chromes look better than negative film because film has a greater dynamic range than the print paper, but then, when viewing chromes you have to be concerned with the color temperature of the light source you use to view them.
Neither your eye nor your ear is capable of resolving the detail that you believe.
Vinyl records introduce noise that was not in the original piece, and tape introduces a hiss. Some “audiophiles” think that makes the recordings sound better. Most of us do not. Tubes change their characteristics as they age. The Plates and Anodes are warped by the heat and the filaments and Cathodes (Sometimes the filament WAS the cathode) are consumed by use. The life of a tube is much shorter than that of a solid state device. Macintosh was bought by Clarion 30 years ago. Many people are buying digitally remastered recordings on CD and DVD to replace the exact same performance that they had on Vinyl or tape.
The advantages of digital over film are too numerous to mention here so I will mention only those that would interest model railroaders.
High speeds (ISO 800, 1600, even 3200) are not grainy like their film counterparts, and ISO speeds can be changed without physically changing film. The ability to see a histogram immediately so you can see if you hit the exposure dead on, or if you need to fine tune it and reshoot. Helicon Focus and Photoshop to increase depth of field beyond optical limits, and dynamic range beyond film limits. The a
I had mostly switched over to using Kodachrome 200 slide film when they stopped making it. Before that I was a Kodachrome 64 loyalist but frankly that lower ISO or ASA or whatever the heck we are supposed to call it now, limited what I could do in the way of telephoto lens photography on less than sunny bright days. When the day was perfect and the camera behaved and the photographer didn’t have squat for brains, some really nice images resulted using K64.
I was also finding in the last few years that on a depressingly regular basis, the Kodachrome processing was ruining entire sets of slides, such as with persistent scratches or horizontal lines or mounts that would deteriorate. The locally done Ektachrome/Fujichrome processing was not having those problems. And since most of my railfanning photography was of special events that involved travel and hotels and expense, I was getting more and more irked at this.
Then my “new” Sigma SLR died due to bad electronics. Sigma’s repair facility would never return my emails. So it was back to an old old Canon AE1 that also had some problems.
The combined effect was that I went digital earlier this year. I bought Canon. Sigma I consign to Hades.
A roll or two of Fujichrome is still packed away with the old Canon but I had better remove the batteries from the camera to prevent damage since it is evident I am unlikely to use it except for special events, such as wanting to fill out a particular “slide show” for model railroad clinic purposes with a shot I do not yet have.
Hardly. There is no nostalgia I still have all those units I mentioned (and many more) and I can listen to them side-by-side ever day if I so desire. I used to have them set up so I could bring people in and have them do blind listening challenges.
You don’t have my eyes or ears so how could you possibly know this? That is just an ignorant statement. I assume it is similar to taste. I hear all these people talking about how wonderful a certain dish tastes. I try it and get nothing special. I can only assume their sense of taste is much more acute and sophisticated than mine.
This thread isn’t talking about all the other advantages of digital, simply the resolution which is why I didn’t mention any of them. I was trying to stay on topic. If you would have really read my prior posts you would have learned that once I got a good digital camera I haven’t touched the film. Because even an “obsolete” by today’s standards 6.3Mgp is good enough for me.
Once again you didn’t read my post very well. Perhaps you should post some of the literature and techniques you’ve used to develop reading skills. I’ve been digital for a long time. Just because I use digital SLRs doesn’t change the fact the Kodachrome resoultion beats anything that is available in digital today.
Film can only outresolve a digital sensor in a lab environment shooting black and white test charts. Michael Reichmann has a good article about it here.
Empirically, I’d say that the 6 Mp cameras I shot with (Canon D60 and Pentax K100D) were roughly equivalent to the Fujichrome Provia 100F that I shot with in my pre-digital days. In terms of absolute resolution in a lab, I’m sure that Provia far outresolved the digital sensors. Still, in field conditions, I’d guess that resolution was close between the two. Add in a lack of grain (that even the lovely Provia 100F exhibits) for the digital sensor, and I really preferred the look out of the digital cameras.
Likewise, now with my K20D (14.6 Mp), I think I’m getting close to Medium Format film quality. I don’t think it’s quite there, even in field condition situations (especially for larger MF formats like 6x7 and 6x9), but the differences are small enough that I really don’t worry about it. I have yet to print really, really big with a K20D file, but I’m fairly confident that I’ll be able to do a 20"x30" rather effortlessly. Being able to get that quality without dragging a monstrously big MF kit with me makes me tingle inside!
That’s just my experience. YMMV of course.
As a little aside, I had to order 10 rolls of Kodachrome online today. If this is indeed the last batch that Kodak plans to make, I would like to shoot at least a few more rolls with it. It may be an exercise in nostalgia, but then again, I love to chase steam locomotives, too.
I also used Ektachrome then Kodachrome then Fujichrome then went digital. The only way to go cheaper easier more convient. Whats film and cameras oh that rubbish I better junk one day.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to relegate film to the level of “junk.” There are still guys shooting Daguerreotypes out there. That kind of amazes me because it’s a difficult process and involves mercury vapor as a catalyst to develop the shots. Mercury vapor is pretty nasty stuff.
I don’t know what will happen to color film, but I suspect that B&W photography will exist as long as there are people willing to shoot that way. I just spent an evening in the darkroom developing some 4x5 B&W shots last night, so if a digital believer like me still shoots film, I imagine that film still has a long (if specialized) life left.
Maybe it’s time to think about throwing away my Polariod 250 camera and Kodak 8mm movie camera, both purchased in the 1960’s, since I can no longer get film for either one. Both have been replaced with digital still and video cameras several years ago.