[dup6121]

[dup6121]

[h0001244]

Time flies
10 years ago they were still in good sales....but now

[reflexboy]

how come u don't have any kodakchrome in you collection? especially the legendary kodakchrome64 ha ha.......

[dup6121]

香港冇得沖E14,因為香港政府未能舉辦奧運會,蘿蔔林想做不過分賬講不成,

[reflexboy]

that wasn't the fact!

the price you paid for a roll of kodakchrome has included the processing fee. so it's rather pricey! one roll of kodakchrome would cost you more than $250 hkd in the past. also, the processing job must be done in kodak labs either in australia or in japan (for asia pacific region). and it was called k14 rather than e14.

[dup6121]

1935年4月12日柯達的兩位研究人員Leopold Godoesky及Leopold Mannes 發明的,同年柯達就對外發表,那時的Kodachrome只有16mm的電影片.

1936年9月Kodachrome才有35mm的規格,從此彩色攝影才開始普及. Kodachrome在最初的階段就擁有極優異的特性,當時軟片只能拍18張,感光度只有ASA 8 ,價格要3.5美元,換成今日幣值約50美元(含沖片費).此時的沖片程序很複雜,需要三臺機器處理三個色層,共28道程序,耗時約三個半小時.

1937年開始發售幻燈機.

1938年發售Kodachrome的頁裝軟片.

1939年的世界博覽會,柯達公司將一張Kodachrome放映在一個22X186的螢幕上,放大比例約五萬倍.Kodachrome自此名聲大噪,35mm也延續至今,歷久不衰.

1941年柯達開始提供沖片服務.

1954年柯達將繁複的沖洗程序改為P-14,而後又改為K-11,同年在美國反托辣斯法下,柯達公布Kodachrome的沖洗步驟,讓外面的沖洗公司也能沖洗Kodachrome.在此之前Kocachrome的售價皆包含沖片費,而且一定要寄回柯達沖片.

1955年因為Ektachrome發售頁裝軟片,因此Kodachrome停售頁裝軟片,因為Ektachrome的優異特性,已可滿足攝影師的需求,且沖洗方便.

1961年推出KodachromeII,感光度增高為ASA25,沖洗配方改為K-12.

1962年推出Kodachrome X 64.

1974年5月Kodachrome的沖片程序改為K-14迄今,沖洗時間約36分鐘.

1983年推出專業用的PKR,PKM.

近年來才有PKL(200)及PKR120.

Kodachrome為何是超級軟片呢?
1.它的顆粒細,影像銳利度高,透明度高.
2.在黑暗中控制溫濕度Kodachrome可保存75~100年不褪色(色彩真實性及密度),而一般正片再小心也不過20年.
3.在保存上幾乎可當黑白軟片處理,不像其他軟片容易遇熱變質.但是它並不適合幻燈機放映,如此掛得比一般正片快.

Kodachrome為何會那麼優秀呢?
1.它的感光乳劑中沒有染料,只有三層對紅綠藍感光的鹵化銀塗層,而染料是在顯影時才加上去的,不像一般正片的染料是附在感光乳劑上.
2.在顯影的過程中Kodachrome的染料是先在顯影劑中產生,再附著到軟片上,其粒子細膩.而一般軟片的染料是顯影時在軟片上形成的,粒子的形成不容易控制,容易變粗.

Kodachrome感光乳劑染料系統與一般正片不同,所以不能用E-6程序沖片.
E-6系統的軟片係加色法的染料系統,其紅藍綠三色染料的耦合體原本就塗在軟片上,經感光沖洗後排除未感光的耦合體,而形成彩色影像.而Kodachrome則是相反方式,如前所述它的只有三色感光層,而在後三次的彩色顯影中,將彩色染料加入已感光的色層中,形成彩色影像.
由上述文字可知Kodachrome的感光乳劑比一般正片薄.

個人資料有限,如有謬誤還請多多指正.

copy from www.old.photosharp.com.tw

[reflexboy]

Is the rich-hued Kodachrome era fading to black?
By BEN DOBBIN

It is an elaborately crafted photographic film, extolled for its sharpness, vivid colors and archival durability. Yet die-hard fan Alex Webb is convinced the digital age soon will take his Kodachrome away.

"Part of me feels like, boy, if only I'd been born 20 years earlier," says the 56-year-old photographer, whose work has appeared in National Geographic magazine. "I wish they would keep making it forever. I still have a lot of pictures to take in my life."

Only one commercial lab in the world, Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kan., still develops Kodachrome, a once ubiquitous brand that has freeze-framed the world in rich but authentic hues since it was introduced in the Great Depression.

Eastman Kodak Co. now makes the slide and motion-picture film in just one 35mm format, and production runs — in which a master sheet nearly a mile long is cut up into more than 20,000 rolls — fall at least a year apart.

Kodak won't say when the last one occurred nor hint at Kodachrome's prospects. Kodachrome stocks currently on sale have a 2009 expiration date. If the machines aren't fired up again, the company might just sell out the remaining supplies, and that would be the end.

"It's a low-volume product; all volumes (of color film) are down," says spokesman Chris Veronda.

For decades, Kodachrome was the standard choice for professional color photography and avant-garde filmmaking. At its peak, a reverential Paul Simon crooned "Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away" in 1973. It's the only film to have a state park named after it — photogenic Kodachrome Basin State Park in the red-rock canyons of southern Utah.

During its mass-market heyday in the 1960s and '70s, countless snapshooters put friendships in peril every time they hauled out a carousel projector and trays of slides to replay a family vacation.

But the landmark color-transparency created by Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes — "God and Man" in photo research circles — went into a tailspin a generation ago. It was eclipsed by video, easy-to-process color negative films and a tidal-wave preference for hand-sized prints.

Nowadays, Kodachrome is confined to a small global market of devotees who wouldn't settle for anything else. And before long, industry watchers say, Kodak might well stop serving that steadily shrinking niche as the 128-year-old photography pioneer bets its future on electronic imaging.

The digital revolution is undermining all varieties of film, even a storied one that garnered its share of spectacular images: the giant Hindenburg zeppelin dissolving in a red-orange fireball in 1936; Edmund Hillary's dreamy snapshot of his Sherpa climbing partner atop Everest in 1953; and, most iconic of all, Abraham Zapruder's 8-millimeter reel of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

Steve McCurry's portrait of an Afghan refugee girl with haunting gray-green eyes that landed on the cover of National Geographic in 1985 is considered one of the finest illustrations of the film's subtle rendering of light, contrast and color harmony.

"You just look at it and think, this is better than life," says McCurry, 58, who has relied heavily on Kodachrome for all but the last two years of a 33-year career.

John Larish, a consultant and writer on photography, marvels at its staying power. "I've got Kodachromes from the 1930s and the blue skies look as bright as they did in the 1930s," he says.

Collectors of airplane and train images value its unsurpassed fade resistance. Assorted dentists, plastic surgeons and ophthalmologists still rely on its clarity and unique palette, especially for multiyear studies.

"Different eye diseases can have different colors," says Thomas Link, an ophthalmic photographer at Minnesota's Mayo Clinic who shoots 10 to 15 rolls of Kodachrome a week to help doctors diagnose and treat illnesses. "Even now we will go back and look through images taken 30 years ago for research purposes."

If Kodachrome should vanish, "we'd either change to a different type of film or do it digitally," Link says, but long-term studies that hinge on image consistency might suffer.

Alarm bells have been ringing since Kodak exited the film-processing business in 1988. One by one, its Kodachrome home-movie and still-film formats have been discontinued, and only a 64-speed remains. (Film speed is a measure of its sensitivity to light; low-speed films require a longer exposure).

An even slower 25-speed version departed in 2002, an equally beloved 200-speed in 2006, a Super 8 movie stock in 2005 — all supplanted by standardized films far easier and cheaper to process.

Dwayne's, the Kodak subcontractor in Kansas that has had the market to itself since a Kodachrome lab in Tokyo closed in December, still processes tens of thousands of rolls annually but admits sales are sliding.

"If Kodak doesn't feel it's economical, they might stop making the film itself," says owner Grant Steinle. And "if film volumes become so small that we're unable to economically process it, then we might stop."

Unlike any other color film, Kodachrome is purely black and white when exposed. The three primary colors that mix to form the spectrum are added in three development steps rather than built into its micrometer-thin emulsion layers.

There's a high price for this: Dwayne's charges $8.45 per roll plus $9 for development. That's at least 50 percent more than color negative film, the kind that prints are made from.

As slide-film sales began to plummet in the 1980s, an already limited number of independent photofinishers willing to make use of Kodak's exacting color-diffusion development formulas fell away. Customers then evaporated when it became much harder to get Kodachrome processed quickly.

Ektachrome — another line of Kodak slide films — and similar products from Fuji, Konica and Agfa were well within the capabilities of all processors and took over the market as they improved in quality.

McCurry, who shot the "Afghan Girl" picture with Kodachrome, is turning to digital cameras as the technology gap closes.

"I like to shoot in extremely low light, inside of a home, a mosque, a covered bazaar," he says. "To stop movement, it's just absolutely impossible to do that with Kodachrome or with practically any film."

Yet aficionados like Webb remain bewitched by Kodachrome's "vibrant but not oversaturated colors."

"It has an emotional punchiness that really always seemed right for me," especially in tropical urban locales he gravitates to in the Caribbean and in "mucky light" near dawn or dusk. Digital boasts "remarkable clarity," he says, but "it's almost too clear and doesn't seem to have depth and texture the way film does."

Webb was "incredibly distressed" when Kodachrome 200, his all-time favorite, bit the dust in November 2006. He stockpiled 600 rolls and is using up the last 150 to complete a photography book on Cuba this fall.

"It seems kind of appropriate because Cuba is a world of the '50s on some level," Webb says. "It has existed in a bubble outside the world of globalization now for 50 years, and Kodachrome goes hand-in-hand."



Copyright © The Associated Press.

[dup6121]

還記得第一次用kodakchrome拍攝一位妙齡女子,地點在海運大廈頂層停車場,在一個剛下雨後的晚上,站在大形多彩招牌光管下,將相機放在腳架上,外加閃燈補光拍攝,拍畢三星期後取回,菲林的色彩表現令人印像難忘,如果想做複印效果卻強差人意,最後發現有一種專用duplicate film for kodakchrome 不過pro lab很少會用到,