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This article is about the color film. The musician Paul Simon included a song titled "Kodachrome" on his 1973 album There Goes Rhymin' Simon. There is also a Kodachrome Basin State Park, in Utah. Both the song and the park are named after the color film. The Southern Pacific Santa Fe Railroad paint scheme was called Kodachrome because its colors were the same as the boxes that Kodachrome film was packaged in.

Kodachrome (also known as Tripack) is a brand of color transparency (slide) film sold by Kodak. It was first sold as 16mm movie film in 1935, and as 8mm movie film and 35mm film in 1936. Kodachrome is the oldest successfully mass-marketed color still film using a subtractive method (see color photography for details of earlier additive/'screenplate' methods such as Autochrome). Kodachrome has been through many incarnations and processing processes over the years; the current (as of 2003) is the K14-process Kodachrome. Kodachrome is widely regarded as one of the best films available for the consumer because of its fine grain and vivid color reproduction.

The structure of the Kodachrome emulsion is fundamentally different from that of other slide films. Nearly all other color films have dye couplers incorporated into the three emulsion layers to ensure that the correct dye forms in the correct layer when all three are developed at the same time. In Kodachrome, however, the dye couplers are introduced during the development process. This makes its rendering of color and response to light unique. Furthermore, the dye couplers in other color films require thicker emulsion layers that allow light to scatter, but Kodachrome's thinner layers are generally sharper.

Similar to other reversal films, Kodachrome is at first developed into a black and white negative and stopped but not fixed. Then the correct color dye couplers are added by performing a second, non-camera "fogging" exposure followed by development of the subtractive layers, one at a time, adding the dye couplers during each of the three individual color developments.

A Kodachrome slide is quickly detectable by an expert reviewing a series of slides of indeterminate origin: Kodachromes tend to exhibit a kind of visible "relief" image on the emulsion side. Their long-term "dark-keeping" stability under ordinary conditions is superior to any other color film: slides over fifty years old still retain accruate color and grain. (This is mostly because, unlike other color slides, they have no unused color couplers remaining after processing.) However, Kodachrome color stability under bright light, i.e., projection, is quite inferior to E-6 process slide films, mentioned below.

The Kodachrome slide developing process, K14, is very complex, exacting, and proprietary to Kodak; it precludes its use by home amateurs or "minilabs". For many years Kodachrome was sold at a price which included processing by Kodak at a few large labs. Users must wait days or weeks for the completed slides to be returned in the mail, all the while worrying about damage or loss in transit.

Kodachrome film has mostly been replaced by E-6 process transparency films (e.g. Ektachrome), though it still finds use for applications where its dark storage archival stability is valued. Kodachrome 25 was taken off the market in 2002, though Kodachrome 64 and 200 remain available as of 2006. Kodak has recently reduced their production of Kodachrome, and only three labs (none run by Kodak) still develop it. There are still many loyal Kodachrome photographers, but the film is no longer stocked in most consumer-oriented stores.

See also

• Ektachrome
• List of products manufactured by Kodak

External links

• Technical data on Kodachrome 40 movie film
• Dwayne's Photo - the only remaining Kodachrome developer in the U.S.

• Photographic films