Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Jason on the YouTube channel Grainydays was lamenting recently that he never shot Kodachrome, Kodak had stopped making it or stopped processing it before he started shooting film. Kodachrome was a very special film, it was a color transparency film.  It was unique in the the color layers were added in the processing, not embedded in the film when the film was made.  The process is similar to dye transfer printing.  In addition to having a unique color profile, warm, with strong yellows, greens and reds, it has also proven to be one of the most durable of color films.  

I shot a fair amount of Kodachrome in the 1970's, but I also shot a lot of Ektachrome and other E-6 process transparency films.  By far, the Kodachrome has much better color retention. Some of the E-6 process films have faded, others have huge color shifts over the years.   

My film time, from the early 1970s into the early 2000s was really an ideal time. There were a lot of options available, and film speeds were rapidly increasing. Yes, I have shot 25 ASA black and white film stock.  It is a real challenge to expose well.  

The flip side of it today, is if you master digital editing software (I have not done so) you can change the color profile of most images.  Back into the film days, you largely had what you had.  Some color correction could be done in printing, but not nearly the changes that are possible in digital images.  Very few people did manual color printing, professional labs could color correct, but the process was labor intensive and expensive.  Today, you can make those corrections on any computer, and many phones.  

Something we are unsure of is the archival quality of digital.  In theory digital images should have an infinite life, but we thought that about Ektachrome and believe me, it didn't work out that way.