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| Irony (click to enlarge) |
This digital scan is from on old (30 years at least and I admit underexposed) Kodachrome 64 slide. For those of you who never used slide film, the dynamic range was about 5 stops, at best. Since the dynamic range was so narrow, the prevailing thought was to underexpose your subject by about 1/3 stop to keep the highlight detail, which was deemed more important to the eye than shadow detail. If you underexposed even a bit too much, like I did here, you lost all shadow detail, never to be recovered. Additionally, I didn't have quite enough depth of field so the house in the background is a bit soft. By the time the film was returned from development and mounting from Kodak several days later, any mistakes were no longer correctable as it is in digital photography today.
Also, as you can see, Kodachrome's colors didn't fade like other slide or color negative film as it was actually a black and white film and the color was infused during the development process. How many of you knew that?
Ahhhh. The trials and tribulations of film photography... Be thankful for the digital tools you have today!
Thanks for looking. Enjoy!
Dennis A. Mook
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Yep, ironic, but I imagine that old house was easy kindling for a fire.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea that slide film was B&W film with colors added! Oh, those nutty Kodak chemists!
Just Kodachrome, Mike. The other films, both slide and negative, had layers of dye clouds that was part of the emulsion. Each layer reacted to different colors and produced the color image. Kodachrome was unique in that regard. In black and white fil, Ali g with Kodachrome, we had grain made from particles of silver. In Ektachrome as well as the other manufacturers' slide film and color negative film, there was no grain from silver. The "grain" was actually dye clouds from the various layers of emulsion.
DeleteDennis--
ReplyDeleteYes, I did know that Kodachrome was (in camera) a black-and-white film. I took my first Kodachromes (KII) in 1964, and they still look good. I'd like to bring some of them (1964-c. 2001) into the digital age, losing as little information as possible. Which brings me to a question:
How did you make the digital copy of the slide? (I suspect it involves your Nikon 810, which is not among my resources! �� [I think that's my first emoji use.]) Are you using the system you were testing at the end of 2013? If memory serves, you were still working out your system, though I may have missed a post. Would you consider this--i.e., your current technique--as a possible subject for a future post?
Walter Foreman
namerof@uky.edu
Looks pretty good to me, Dennis. Slide film has always been my preferred medium, and I never found the dynamic range to be a limiting factor. The perfectness of digital photography is greatly overrated.
ReplyDeleteIf I had found this shot in Georgia it would be in my book!
ReplyDeleteInteresting image, but my technical execution was flawed at the time. Thanks, Dave
DeleteNice shot! Although the technicalities, I love it!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mauricio. I appreciate you taking time to comment.
DeleteAlthough the technicalities, I love this shot!
ReplyDeleteDennis--
ReplyDeleteA comment I made about 24 hours ago has not appeared yet. I hope I didn't inadvertently say something rude or inflammatory. If I did, I apologize. (I thought I was asking an innocent question about digitizing slides!)
Best wishes.
Walter Foreman
namerof@uky.edu
Walter,
DeleteThe manner in which Blogger is designed to work is when a reader leaves a comment, I receive an email with the comment as well as choices to publish, delete or mark as spam. That is how it works the vast majority of the time.
After receiving the email, I will then publish it. When I have an opportunity, I will then go onto the blog directly and craft a reply. That may be immediately or sometimes even the next day.
Recently, I have found, and your comment is a good example, that for whatever technological reason, sometimes I am not notified. However, when having a need to go to the blog editing screen, I will see icomments sitting there marked as a new comment awaiting disposition. That is where I just found your original comment, along with two others.
No, you didn't do anything that would keep me from publishing your comment, I simply had no knowledge that you left it.
As far as digitizing that particular slide, when I first pulled out several hundred to digitize, I sent them to Scan Cafe to have them commercially done. That was back when I had the Nikon D700, which is only 12mp. They do a very good job for a very modest cost. The downside is that the slides are shipped to India to be hand scanned and it takes several weeks to have them returned. As I said, the work was well done and the cost moderate.
When acquiring first the D800E, then the D810, I devised a method to copy them myself with equal or sometimes better quality and at very little cost. The real cost, however, is that the process becomes very labor intensive with a large number of slide.
I guess there still is no free lunch!
Dennis
Dennis--
DeleteThanks for explaining how the commenting works. I've wondered what would happen if I commented on a several-years-old post--e.g., one of your posts about photographing the Pacific Northwest. I guess the answer is that if the system worked, you would get the comment.
On slide copying: I remember trying to copy slides to slides or having slides printed and they never really looked very good (not nearly as good as the original slides). (I guess I never used the proper copy film or paid enough for the printing!) Digital seems to offer the chance (doing the work myself) to print pictures I took in the 60s (the ones on Kodachrome) and have them turn out well. From the examples you posted here and back in December 2013 it would appear that buildup of contrast is not the problem it was in film-to-film slide copies.
I'm using an OM-D E-M5 (the original version), so I wouldn't have the detail of the D810. I might try stitching two shots. (And maybe the Hi-Res mode on the Mark II might do a good job, if I had one.)
Anyway, thanks for your reply, and for your ongoing blog!
Walt
There are a lot of irony, but I like the composition of photo, especially red accent.
ReplyDeleteThank you Linda.
Delete