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Revision as of 00:10, 12 November 2005 by 144.135.0.4 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)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.
Kodachrome is a brand of color transparency (slide) film sold by Kodak. First sold in 1935, it is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) 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 to 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. Kodachrome, however, does not, and the dye couplers are instead introduced during the development process. This makes its rendering of color and response to light unique. Further, the dye couplers in other color films require thicker emulsion layers that allow light to scatter. The absence of couplers in Kodachrome film and the resulting thin layers produce excellent sharpness.
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 is superior to any extant color film.
Kodachrome film has mostly been replaced by E-6 process transparency films, though it still finds use for applications where its archival stability is valued. Much of that stability is because, unlike other chromogenic materials, Kodachromes have no un-used color couplers remaining in the film after processing. Kodachrome 25 was taken off the market in 2002, though Kodachrome 64 and 200 remain available as of 2004. A recent Kodak announcement that it will be reducing the number of production runs of the remaining Kodachrome films coupled with the dwindling number of labs which process Kodachrome are expected to expedite the film's demise. Despite these trends there are still a number of loyal Kodachrome photographers.