What are the qualities of Kodachrome film?

Answer 1

Kodachrome was one of Kodak's signature lines of color film, noted for reproducing lifelike color. (It was also immortalized in a Paul Simon song, in the early 1970s.) It was available in both still and movie versions. Kodachrome color movie film is just what the name says; color film for home movies. Kodak largely discontinued home movie equipment in the 1980s, when home video became popular, but continued to make movie film for years afterwards. (It got scarcer and pricier as time went on and demand continued to fall.) Kodak announced this year that it will discontinue Kodachrome film; digital Photography has largely taken over the market. But we're still humming that Paul Simon song.

Answer 2

Kodachrome was the name of a popular slide film the Eastman Kodak company made for 35 mm cameras. The film was first produced in 1935, but was gradually phased out between 2002 and 2009 when film sales dropped due to increased use of digital cameras.

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In the fiftieth year of Kodachrome, the company announced they would continue to make it as long as it was a "viable product." Four things combined to make it a non-viable product, and digital cameras weren't one of them.

First, Kodachrome was very hard to get processed. A lab that wanted to process Kodachrome had to own a separate machine (it's called a K-Lab) to run it on, and use chemicals that only work in that process. Because Kodachrome's color couplers--the colorless chemicals that react with the developing process to make dye--are in the developer rather than the film--except for Kodachrome, all color materials have the couplers in the emulsion--you have to buy color couplers in pound jars. (Kodachrome chemistry didn't come premixed. They gave you a cookbook of sorts for the ten different solutions in the process, sold you the bulk chemicals and left you to your own devices.) A pound of yellow coupler goes a LONG way. And the chemicals themselves are an environmental hazard worse than any other process. Combine print film and very good slide films you can get processed in two hours in any decent-size city, and the market for Kodachrome was restricted to people who loved its unique color palette. The fact that no other film manufacturer ever released a Kodachrome-process film to compete with it should tell you something.

Second, Kodachrome's lightfastness isn't very good. For decades we were told, "use Kodachrome because it doesn't fade." If you never look at your pictures, this is true. If you project Kodachromes frequently, they fade faster than Ektachromes do. We were also told, "if you project your slides a lot, duplicate them onto Ektachrome and project those." Dupes don't look as good as originals, and as it turns out a lot of the new E-6 films--Fuji in particular--are just about as colorfast as Kodachrome.

Third is that Kodachrome was always a really slow film--it had a low ISO rating. The "good stuff" was Kodachrome 25, which is ISO 25 film. There is a Fuji film called Velvia that's twice as fast and the pictures look better. They called it the Kodachrome Killer when it hit the market--and that's exactly what it did. Plus, it seems to be every bit as dark-stable as Kodachrome, with better light stability.

The fourth is aesthetic: Kodachrome's highlights are green. The people who loved Kodachrome called it "Kodachrome's unique palette"; scanner operators have a DIFFERENT name for it that we won't repeat here. Most of the Kodachrome shot in the last fifty years wound up in print, so this was a huge problem. Ektachrome didn't have green highlights, and neither did anyone else's film.

Answer 3

A Kodachrome film has many unique and distinguishable qualities. These include, but are not limited to, extreme sharpness, good color, and a high contrast.