Nostalgia & History > Which Kodachrome

Question back in the days before digital and many of us used Kodachrome which one did you use 25 or 64 or both?  Did you use professional Kodachrome 25 or 64 ?  And yes there was a difference between professional and regular Kodachrome.  Professional Kodachrome was created by taking production lots of Kodachrome that were spec'd to be near perfect and then aged.  In addition Professional Kodachrome when Kodak was still doing the processing was done on separate processing equipment use only for professional Kodachrome and this equipment was kept as close to perfect as possible.

I used Kodachrome 25 and 64 and once it came out I only used the professional version (except for 5 rolls of K25 with processing I purchased at a camera store in Vancouver, BC in August 1987 when I ran out of film) of Kodachrome 25 and 64.  

One reason I am asking the above question is did users of both 25 and 64 noticed the color differences between the two films?

I used 10 until 25 came out and the ongoing series of my photos being posted on TO  are of 10.
As I recall not much difference between 10 and 25, but 64 was not as true a color. But thats many years ago now.
Ed

When I began in 1956,  it was ASA10.   Then there was the so-so Kodachrome II in the early 1970s which tended towards the red end of the spectrum.  Then K25 until I quit Kodak altogether in 2005  when the processing from Fairlawn, NJ became inconsistent.  Fuji Provia 100F from then until today, which I am still using,  A bit of an issue getting film from Chile to Kansas for processing but I'm dealin' with it.   Never liked K64,  color just wasn't there for me.

I used the non pro 25. I did not like 64 all that much so I rarely ever used it. I tried the pro but never did see much of a difference between the regular and the pro. I even tried Kodachrome 200 which really sucked as a film. When I bought a couple of bricks of 25 I would let it set in a cool dry place until it reached 6 months before the expiration date to age it properly. As soon as it hit 6 months before I would put it in the freezer and take it out a day before I needed it to thaw out. I had to plan ahead for my shooting I needed to make sure that I had film aged properly and ready to use when needed. I did not go through a lot of film maybe at most 75 rolls a year. When I ordered film when it arrived it was usually 1 year from expiration so I needed to set it aside for at least 6 months. I really liked the 25 but after Kodak killed it I went to Provia 100F. I really liked that film it was sharper than 25 and just as good of colors if not better. At 2 stops faster I was using F stops and shutter speeds that I never knew existed with 25. Instead of 1/500 F4 I shot at 1/1000 F5.6 for action.

I will say with Digi I take a lot more pictures than I ever did with film. When I would go out for a day of action pictures I would do maybe 2 or 3 rolls (I took extras for trading at the time). Now when I go out it is usually about 500+ pictures I experiment a lot more and take a lot of pictures I never would have done before. I also have F stops and shutter speeds I never even imagined I would use with film. 

Scott O'Dell

Being self taught,I had problems when I started
shooting slides.
My first thought why slides? I can look at a B&W
without any trouble,but have to hold a slide up to
a slight.How silly.I learned a lot later.
My first roll was ASA25.They came out OK as far
as I could tell.However,my second roll was ASA64.
I had no idea about ASA's.What is that? Those
slides looked like I took them at midnight!
Lesson learned stuck with 25 as long as I could get it.
I never liked 64 and when 25 went away I went to
Provia 100.
Uncle Joe
Seffner,Fl.

I used K64 almost exclusively. Processing was using the Kodak mailers that you ordered or found on a good deal at a discount store. There are some Ektachrome examples and some K25 examples in the slide files, buit not many. Starting in the late 90's I went over mainly to Provia and continued that until most of my photo sessions dwindled from  rare to none. I'll shoot some digital today but not much. So many of my photos were roster and detail shots for modeling, and I usually took at least two shots of each subject, ostensibly for trading which I never did. I also took a B&W shot of the same a lot of times. 

Here's a question I've asked others at times - what are you going to do with your photo files? None of my clan has any interest, nor do they even know what the stuff is, so I imagine it'll all get pitched some day.

I'll echo the "What's ASA?" comments, burned me a couple of times.  I started out with Kodachrome II which became K 25.  I never used K 64, and caught a lot of grief for using such a "slow" film.  When Kodachrome 200 came out, it gave me results similar to K 25 so I used that, and when Kodacrhome died, I went to Provia 100, which I still use.  

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

Kodachrome II (ASA 25) was the best color slide film of all time. Remarkable shadow detail, fine warmth. Unfortunately the processing of it was environmentally very hostile and expensive (a lot of silver in it), so Kodak wanted to get out of it. Kodachrome X (ASA 64) was more blue and more grainy, not as good. It also had environmentally hostile and expensive processing.

K25 and K64 were much more contrasty films that made great railfan photography much more difficult. As to which was better, these films were very much moving targets as Kodak tinkered with the processing and film chemistries. Initially (1973-74) K25 was better but then in early 1975 K25 experienced a horrible green shift. This drove many fans to use K64 which was very purple, also bad, but a lot more tolerable than the green-shifted K25. On a sunny day K64 was OK but it was terribly contrasty for making cloudy-day exposures. While the red in K64 was nice, the heavy amount of dark blue was a big problem.

Sometime in 1977 or so the green shift in K25 got fixed, but most fans did not know this and kept shooting K64. The higher speed also was approeciated. But actually, after the green shift was fixed K25 became a much superior film. I regret how long I stayed with K64 not knowing that K25 had been corrected enough to become a superior film.

In later years the color of both films got worse and worse. Eventually most fans moved to the Fuji slide films. Then digital came along.

Best regards,

Rob L.

In the twenty five years that I used Kodachrome I never say those kinds of color shifts.  I did notice that K25 slides that I received from a friend whoused Nikons and Nikon lens that his slides had more contrast than the Canon New F1 and the Canon lens that I used.  Someone once suggested that I use Fuji film in my medium format camera.  I did for a few rolls but the color was so fake it was almost unbelievable.  The blue of the Santa Fe engines looked like a royal blue and not like the blue that the engines were actually painted.  I switched to 120 Kodachrome 64 film once it became available.  

Fuji film is green based designed to be pleasing to the Japanese tastes whcih is fine if that is how you see color.  Note Kodachrome film is red based and Ektachrome film is blue based.

I always thought that i was kind of strange how for still photos Kodachrome was perferred but in the motion picture business the studios using Kodak film used an Ektachhrome type of film.  I know why the copies of motion picture films were Ektachrome based becaused Ektachrome based films take a lot longer to fade from the power lights used to project motion pictures at movie theaters.   But weren't movies shot with Kodachrome.  The only reason I can figure that no one ever used Kodchrome to shot a movie was that only Kodak could process Kodchrome and directors need their dailies.

Of course with any film processing is the key.  I do not like the colors any of my Kodachrome slides after Kodak left the processing business.  I will say this the private A&I Kodachrome processing lab Kodak help setup in Los Angeles in the early 1990's did an excellent job of processing Kodachrome slides.  I believed they left the business because of the lack of business with the death of Kodachrome.

Personally I have always like the colors of my professional Ektachrome 64 Kodak processed slides.  I experimented with Kodak Ektachrome films that came about around 1999.  Sometimes the slides looked great other times especially when I was on vacation the slides looked qiestionable at best.

I have always though that everyone sees color differently so which films you prefer will be the ones with the color you like best.
 

When I first started shooting in the early 70s, I used Ektachrome. After a couple of years I switched to K64 (didn't try K25 because I figured it was too slow for the vagaries of railroad photography) and continued to use it until it was no more. I then switched to Provia 100 and continue to use it today. I quit using Ektachrome because I noticed the bluish cast, but mainly because of the threat of color shift and fading as it aged. However, I must say that my 45+ year old Ektachromes today exhibit neither of those problems, perhaps because I keep them in the original boxes and rarely expose them to light and air. I've been curious about this "new Ektachrome" that Kodak has come out with, but I've yet to meet anyone who has used or even seen it. I like the Provia just fine, so I'll keep using it as long as it's available. 

I began shooting train slides in 1984. I used Kodachrome 64 almost exclusively .K 25 was too slow for the action shooting I was mostly doing. Once Kodak killed K 64 , I went to Provia 100F and liked it except it wasn't as warm in colors as K64 when I shot ATSF or UP power. After viewing the K25 slides I was given by my late friend Bill Hansen, who shot both K64 and K25 in two separate cameras , I think K25 was clearly the better slide film. Now I know why my late friend  John Arbuckle shot K25 until it was killed by Kodak and then he went to K64 reluctantly and finally to Provia 100F as I had done.  Now I shoot digital , but I might get a roll of Provia 100F and have some old fashioned fun with my film Nikon one of these days. 
This was a fun thread to read. --Kelly

I used K-64. Loved it up until about the year 2000. After that it seemed to look muddy when developed no matter who did it. And yes had MANY rolls deemed unusable by Kodak's developing.

Adam

I shot 64K for about a year until advised by two trusted rail photographers to make the switch to K25, which occurred in August, 1982. The color in K25 was sublime and pleasing, and represented detail much better than K64, not to mention a better grain (of course). The way to tell the difference (which we made tests), was to display the images in the best possible environment -- completely dark room, with image projected on a giant, white beaded screen, and good bulb illumination (high bright). To compensate for the slower speed of K25 v. K64, I invested in the best possible fast-glass available from Nikon. This ruled out any zoom lens. Consequently, I had a wide range of fixed lenses, from a 20mm to 300mm. My back pack weighed a ton.  The loss of approximately one stop from K64 to K25 was worth it, and the glass compensated. I would have invested in Zeiss lenses, but they were way out of my price range with my meager income.  All photos were composed on a heavy duty Gitzo tripod. This eliminated any shaking in low light situations.

The camera itself was of no consequence. Cameras hold film, and not much else. Anything else was expensive jewelry. For years I shot with a 1966 Nikon F (used) that lacked a light meter, and I never used a hand-held light meter. Light was judged by the eye, not a meter, and all the settings were adjusted depending upon the situation. It took a while to learn, with normal daylight the easiest, low light (morning and evening) the hardest. And Kodachrome was unforgiving on exposure, unlike B&W, where it can be pushed in processing and then compensated in the dark room. 

The cost of film, though not trivial with my limited budget, was never considered. It didn't stand to reason to invest in expensive glass, then spend good money on the road in gas, food and  lodging, not to mention the blood, sweat, and tears, and then go cheap on film. I always bought  Pro 25,  and plenty of it when available, and steered the processing to labs in the Kodak system I trusted. The Palo Alto lab was my go-to lab until they closed. Then it was Findlay, OH. But as Kodak circled the drain in the mid-90s, the quality deteriorated noticeably. Rumor had it they were substituting chemicals, but since it was company trade secrets, no one really knew. But the K25 in 1982 looked a lot better than K25 in 1999.

As a young Turk In the mid-80s, I was a K25 jihadist, and  couldn't imagine anything replacing its supremacy. But as time teaches, nothing lives at the top forever. K25 was a terrible night-time film (yes, it was known as a Daylight film). Provia 100 was far better, and I was too slow to realize it. And today's digital is far superior. Where this is especially true is in the dynamic range. If I remember correctly, normal eyesight has about 25 stops of dynamic range. This allows one to see details in the shadows of while the low sun shines in a room. I understand digital cameras offer 21 stops, or more. I think I read that Kodachrome K25 had a dynamic range of about 6. This is readily apparent in looking at glint shots taken as the sun set. The glint and sky are dead on, but there's no details in shadows. Pure mud. If we knew that slides would one day be scanned; thus introducing a light component, the proper exposure would have been to shoot the glint "hot," maybe as much as a 1/2 stop over. The reason we know this now is that positive film (i.e. slides) does better slightly overexposed because details are still present in the upper-range, not burned out, yet details emerge in the lower range as a result. Not a lot, but some. Then exposure can be fixed in post-processing. But who knew?
 

DGOLDE Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I always thought that i was kind of strange how
> for still photos Kodachrome was perferred but in
> the motion picture business the studios using
> Kodak film used an Ektachhrome type of film.

For the same reason the studios didn't use 3-strip Technicolor as a standard. Cost.

Studios have always been about the highest profits possible, and as long as the viewing was acceptable, film stock was not a great consideration. The DP may have wanted to create a work of art, using the best methods available, but the studio heads were always slicing the budget. The return on investment was on the stars, not film stock, and the idea of preservation and quality was unknown. Even though Hollywood portrays an image of culture and art, to the studios, it was crank out the films as if they were Model Ts. A film might have a life of about a a month, and then shipped overseas.

Incidentally, Kodak did make Kodachrome 35mm reversal film for the motion pictures. Kodachrome 35 reversal was introduced in 1936 and Kodachrome 5267 was introduced in 1942. I'm not sure how wide-spread 5267 was. My guess is that the contact prints were not Kodachrome.  



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/20 00:42 by BCHellman.

I rarely shot K25, sadly, was always pushed by the other railfans sans one to shoot K64, owing to getting the extra stop.  Over the last few years I have been scanning in slides taken from the 1970s and 80s.  On a good note, little or no fading (and honestly that includes the few rolls of Ektachrome I shot) of the slides.  However, the colo balance is awful, with huge shifts in color.  Im not sure if it was the emulsion, processing, or something else, but the consistancy was very poor.  I did switch to Fuji Provia and Velvia by 1990, and the consistency of those emulstions was excellent.

I broke in to slide shooting in the mid-1970s. My original mentor was a 100% K-25 photographer. But as I slipped more & more into fast action (70 MPH trains) & telephoto shooting I had to convert to K-64 for the "extra stop". As a coincidence, I started getting heavily into night time, time exposure photography primarily in available light. I found that K-64 performed so much better than K-25 at night. When I started using multiple cameras I loaded one exculsively with with K-25. And I tried (sometimes succeeding) to use it for nothing but roster shooting and/so static shooting. When Kodachrome was in its death throes I tried shooting that Japanese stuff. But I didn't like it at all. In the early 90s, for non-related reasons I was slipping into a sort of railfan hibernation anyhow. I didn't come out of it until digital technology was well established (ca 2009). Even if Kodachrome was to make a Lazarus-type return, I'll never again shoot slides.

DD40 Wrote: > ... nor do they even know what the stuff is, so I imagine it'll all get pitched some day ...

Good grief, Charlie Brown!!! By ALL means, do a bit of research, or ask around your trusted friends and find a RR Historical Society group who will keep/maintain your collection per your wishes. It doesn't necessarily have to be the Society of the RR you shot the most. Or better yet, befriend and get to know well a fellow railfan many years your junior and make arrangements for him/her to be the heir to your collection. Having your collection end up in a dumpster is completely unacceptable. It's NOT an option. No matter how good/bad/indifferent you think the quality of your collection is, it WILL be a golden treasure source of reseach or nostalgia for some railfan who may not even be born yet. NO DUMPSTERS!!! Once that visual history is trashed, it's gone forever...

Lance/199

 My brother gave me an Argus Reflex camera (look down into the viewfinder) in 1958 and I took Kodachrome II size 620 (2 and a half by 2 and a half) slides until I switched around 1963 to a 35 mm camera and started using Kodachrome II and then Kodachrome 25 from then until they stopped making the film. When the Long Island Railroad under the NY MTA  purchased the second set of Alco C420 engines they were delivered in a blue (almost violet) and yellow color scheme. I claimed that the blue color of these engines was accurately registered by my Kodachrome 25 ASA while it was different on my brother's Kodachrome 64. This was a debatable contention for about a year when side by side we took a brand new yellow box car and compared the 25 to the 64 on the screen - and low and behold they were two different colors! Of course today with computerized juggling it doesn't matter any longer. I did switch to Fuji Provia 100 and am still shooting today.     One major observation is that none of the slides developed by Kodak have ever faded over 57 years. Kodak guaranteed non fading for about 35 years, tops.   I echo the last comment about tossing photographs (above mine) - the attitudes of what I call the FOOY FENG SHOOEY set of thinkers have to be cut short if we are ever to have a history from which to learn!