Kodachrome (the film)

[twobjshelbys]

I'm on a film scanning mission. I bought a Nikon Coolscan 9000 last spring. I experimented with it to convince myself it worked and recognizing the magnitude of my task, put it away. Not it's winter and can't drive the cars so I'm going to start scanning. I bought a new Lenovo Thinkpad W510 (the W series is the root of the "new digital darkroom" with color calibrator and wicked dislay). Nikon software for the scanner is not supported on Windows 7 and I found two candidates. If you've got an older scanner that stopped working with Windows 7 try VueScan. Chances are 99% it supports the old beast. Silverfast is also a contender but it's very expensive, and the whiz-bang technology they use for scanning Kodachrome only works on the Mac...

To get the best out of the 9000 you need to calibrate it (regardless of what software you use). This is done with a so-called IT-8 target - a color and grey scale image that looks like the color picker for your monitor. This is especially true for Kodachrome. Which brings me to the reason for this topic...

Kodak stopped making Kodachrome in 2009 and believes the last of it was off the shelves near the end of 2009.

Processing Kodachrome will end at the end of 2010... So if you have a roll of Kodachrome in your junk drawer, send it lickety split to:

Dwayne's Photo Service
415 S. 32nd Street
Parsons, KS 67357
(620) 421-3940
Toll Free: 1-800-522-3940
Fax: (620) 421-3174

or forever hold your peace.

Kodachrome processing was incredibly complex, involved something like 30 steps and was never made available outside of blessed Kodak labs. The temperature and timing and the noxious chemicals were deemed too complex, time consuming and dangerous for home use (something about your city's wastewater treatment department would hate you for). I processed Ektachorme in the darkroom but Kodachrome was sent to Kodak.

Even Kodak admits that none of their current films can match Kodachrome.

[twobjshelbys]

I'm earnestly into my image scanning project (see below). I'm locked on a slide film right now since the cataloging is easier. I put them in 2x2 slide sheets (with 36 exposure rolls back to back). I haven't decided how to deal yet with the thousands of envelopes of negatives and prints - still looking for a storage solution.

One thing I can say is that the Kodachorome slides just have so much "punch" that even on some 35+ year slides, they still look great, and (independent of age) the colors are so much more saturated than any Ektachrome.

Scanning Kodachrome is difficult. The normal dust and scratch removal doesn't always work (contrary to what they say, it does work to some degree most of the time).

The project:
I have been seriously taking pictures since I was in college. I earned a fair amount of spending money taking wedding photos and, like CPR, go into "wedding mode" when I shoot. It's automatic to do the sequence. Anyway, because I had pro equipment (starting with a Nikon F2 and a Hasselblad clone) I have an equal mix of 35mm and medium format (6cm x 6cm) medium, and within that, a rich mix of negative and positive film. I estimate I have in excess of 10,000 images that I've located and I know there are slides and prints in boxes I haven't pulled yet, including 4 Grand Canyon trips that are still in slide trays.

The choices for scanning these for archival purposes are: (1) Spend up to $5/image to have it done on a drum scanner, which also involves removing slides from mounts or (2) a Nikon Coolscan 9000. I bought the Coolscan last spring and recognizing the magnitude of the task put it aside to winter. I'm getting about a roll a day done. I even get up at night to feed the scanner. It can take up to 20 minutes per image. The 35mm slide holder holds 5 slides, the negative holder up to 12 - 2x6 image strips, but most photo finishing places cut them to 4 although all of my developed/cut are in 6s.

I'm absolutely amazed at the quality of the Coolscan scans. I'll post up a few later.

[Wayne Maybury]

Tony

This sounds like a fun project. However as a total amateur, this also sounds quite complex. I have many 35mm slides taken 20 to 30 years ago as well as lots of prints (with the negatives). I recently purchased a Nikon D3000 and I have been taking digitals photos. I will be retiring within the next year and I thought that it would be fun to convert the slides and prints into digital photographs.

I have read your post but I don't really understand the process but of course I have not looked into this as yet. A friend has been taking digital photos of his prints but it looks like you are talking about a much better process. Can you give me a brief explanation how this works and what is the cost?

Wayne

[crowbar]

Here's a piece CBS Sunday morning did on the last of the processing chemicals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPvF1MOU2kE

[twobjshelbys]

Originally Posted by Wayne Maybury

Tony

This sounds like a fun project. However as a total amateur, this also sounds quite complex. I have many 35mm slides taken 20 to 30 years ago as well as lots of prints (with the negatives). I recently purchased a Nikon D3000 and I have been taking digitals photos. I will be retiring within the next year and I thought that it would be fun to convert the slides and prints into digital photographs.

I have read your post but I don't really understand the process but of course I have not looked into this as yet. A friend has been taking digital photos of his prints but it looks like you are talking about a much better process. Can you give me a brief explanation how this works and what is the cost?

Wayne

You have two different problems.

Capturing negatives requires a film scanner. At one time there were many out there, but most have been discontinued. Minolta made a pretty good one but it only did 35mm. Nikon's Coolscan 5000 is a good choice for 35mm only and it has an automated slide loader that really helps the process that the Coolscan 9000 lacks because it also processes medium format (120 roll film in various frame sizes). I'm going to claim that the 5000's automated loader isn't too helpful since I'm finding I want to tweek the exposure on each frame anyway so 5 at a time is OK.

For prints it's different. I suppose taking digital photos of the prints is one way. Way back when I used to do that for doing restoration. I'd place the original photo on a flat surface with a frame above it (they actually made these) and use a film specially designed for this purpose - very low ISO and very small grain for B&W and what was called internegative film for color. Then you'd fix the flaws in the print in the darkroom. You can do the same thing with prints and digital camera except your darkroom is Photoshop. It's not the method I would prefer.

For prints instead I would (and do and will for some we don't have negatives for) use a flatbed scanner. They have incredible resolution these days, and with the scanner software will offer color and fading restoration that will do wonders. My flatbed is old and not supported on Windows 7 but the VueScan software does support it with the same basic workflow as the film scanner so I get the benefit of the same color correction and fading restoration that I get with the film.

Once you decide on a scanning strategy you then have to figure out how to manage the digital data. I haven't completely figured that out yet. But one thing is to remember that storage is cheap. I'm scanning for archiving, meaning the scanner captures at the highest resolution. All scans are saved in both TIFF and JPG format. I'll archive the TIFF files onto a DVD since they can be used in Photoshop later and keep the JPGs on the hard drive for viewing. The slides (and negatives) along with the DVD and a "contact sheet" are going into 3-ring binder sized storage sleeves. A binder really won't work because of the sizes but there are hanging folder storage systems that will work.

No matter what, remember that the digital storage is now your "repository" but is not safe. I will be buying a network attached storage device that supports RAID and use RAID1 (Mirroring). Periodically I will synchronize the set and pull one of the drives and put it into the safety deposit box and replace it in the raid set.

Physical indexing is one thing but also indexing of the digital data. I've not done that in the past (and I have at least a terabyte already of just digital photos taken with my D100 and D700). I will be using one of the indexing systems from Adobe - don't know which one yet - and start with the scanning data. I'll merge the pure digital stuff into this data base later.

It's a daunting task, and before I'm even close to being done cars will eat into the time I can dedicate. This weekend I've got to pull the radiator on the Cobra to get a rock-ding-leak fixed and that's going to take approximately 4 rolls of film down time

Good luck!

P.S. I'm looking at photos and slides from the early 70's that I forgot I even had! It's a hoot! One thing I'll have to try to remember is why in the photography class in college I decided to take a roll of the nude model with infrared slide film. Very difficult to scan.

[Wayne Maybury]

Thanks Tony

I will not be retiring for a few months yet, then it will be cars and sailing until the fall. I may very well be asking you some questions at this time next year.

Wayne

[twobjshelbys]

I started with slides since they were on top of the box. Well, I've already scanned well over 1000 images and I'm pretty convinced that I severely underestimated the size of the project. I keep finding more boxes with stuff in them.

I'm becoming less than enamored with VueScan. The scans look great in the preview window, yet the saved scans always look flat. I've emailed the guy a dozen times demonstrating his bug, but he is in denial. The differences are very subtle but noticeable in a side-by-side comparison. I'm evaluating SilverScan which has a better reputation but can't get it working on Windows 7 - the driver refuses to load. It also has a high-volume workflow and cataloging feature that may make it worth the money.

I also added a 8TB (yes, TeraByte) Seagate NAS440. Each 35mm 36 exposure scan is taking somewhere around 8.5Gb (a dual-layer DVD) but the 12 exposure rolls of 2-1/4 x 2-1/4 slides are up to about 10GB each. I'll scan and catalog and keep them on the hard drive and then archive later.