Thursday, April 30, 2009

Kodachrome

Immortalised in Song by Simon and Garfunkel, the legendary Kodachrome slides are nearly extinct with only one lab left in the world who develops the K-14 (Dwayne's Photo in Kansas USA).

The only type of the brand left available is 35mm 64iso. Many proffesional and well known users of the film are having to switch to either e-6 process brands, negative film, or digital, I my self had to order it from abroad as it is no longer sold in Ireland. It's as rare as hens teeth to come by.
I bought some through 7dayshop.com for sheer novelty value, I heard that Steve McCurry's famous Afgan girl photo was taken with Kodachrome.
I've rarely used positive slide film, shot a roll or two of velvia, I do love the prospect of seeing your film in positive form, makes editing a hell of a lot easyer.
It costs about €8.50 a roll, which has processing and return postage included, from there you have to spend anouther €1.50 to post to Switzerland (with this lovely envelope proved by Kodak), from there they then send it to Kanas in America.
A week later you receive your slides back.
I heard a lot about it, but it is the best and most acurate colour reproduction of reality I have ever seen.
It's decline over over other brands of slide film leaves me perplexed, it's just so good. What started out as a brief experiment, to test it out, has become something that will permanently be in my arsenal as long as it's made.
These are from the test roll I put through the Leica m6.
I scanned the slide carriers on the light box, to give the touchable effect of how the slides are viewed and handled. Makes a change from moving things about on a viewing box, as opposed to digi files in Adobe bridge.
Tourist throwing up in temple bar.
A rehash of an image I took in B&W last year, I'm repeating my self too much these days.
It's a pity the boys in shadow, the poster in the background is a jockey falling off his horse. This will end up in my maybe limbo bucket.
This well end up in my interesting but requires cropping bucket. The second mans shadow is making a shape totally different from his body, a bit strange, alas I was not close enough, I don't print or use images that require significant cropping. Other wise I don't learn from the mistake.

Not that I'm boasting, but out of 36 shots, one exposure was a dud, not like anyone gives a shit anyway.

To be honest the lack of latitude in shooting chrome, is part of it's appeal, the fact that even if your 1/3 of a stop over or under your screwed, you have to nail there and then, easy for landscape photography, anouther ball game for candid on the street moments of people.
It takes the being there and then to a whole new level, your mentalitly has to be the oposite of the HDR photo manipulaters polluting the internet at the moment.

2 comments:

Sebastian said...

8.49 € is crazy, the shops here in Vienna and even the cheap online shops in Germany seem only to have it for ~ 19.00 €. Thanks for the link. Was wondering what was so special about Kodachrome, thanks to you I got to read more about it now ;)

Seamus T said...

@Sebastian: Wow €19.00 in Vienna what a rip off, yeah 7dayshop.com is the cheapest place I can find it, I order all my films through that site.