Kodachrome 25: CanTodays Films Duplicate

[Drew Wiley]

I don't think Astia resembles Kodachrome at all, except in the neutrality of the midtones. Kodachrome was much higher contrast and printed quite differently. I loved
the stuff, especially during its short representation as a 120 film. But since I'm primarily
a large-format shooter, its demise is not going to affect me a lot. With PS you can
boost the saturation of Astia, but it just doesn't have the same look in my opinion.
But in its own right, Astia is one of my favorite sheet films, and I just wish it was easier to acquire in 8X10.

[rguinter]

Drew: OK thanks for your comments. Three previous readers suggested I try Astia so I ordered a box. I did use a few rolls of it while visiting friends in Alaska summer before last in 120. And I didn't like the look. I did not think to compare it to Kodachrome and, at least the few 120 frames I shot, did not resemble K-25 in the least if I remember.

Perhaps most LF photographers here never shot K-25 or remember the look to be able to compare. Frankly with all the hundreds and hundreds of 120 and 4x5 frames I've shot over the years there has never been another film I've found to resemble the K-25 in color palette. Perhaps it was unique and will never be duplicated. I don't know. But it is totally against my religion to doctor the colors of my film scans with Photoshop. I'm an old fogie and very old fashioned in my photography as well as other things.

Regards. Bob G.

[Nathan Potter]

Bob G., I didn't mean to imply that you'll find an equivalent to Kodachrome film, either in color palette or texture, but maybe the closest you can come is with Fuji Astia. I think Drew has a good point in the neutrality of the midtones if I look again at my recent sensitometric curves (Jun 09).

I'm looking at recent chromes done by Praus of Velvia 50 and Astia 100 and the highlight toes of the sensitometric curves are very similar at rated ASA but the shadow shoulders are quite distinctive. The velvia 50 has no shoulder but rockets linearly straight up past logD 3.0 while Astia 100 starts to level off at logD 2.25 and is near asymtotic to a maximum at log 2.75 density. So the low light capability of the Velvia 50 will be superior to the Velvia 100 if given enough exposure. That is to say that darn second derivative d^2D/dE^2 at the low light end is much more useful with Velvia 50 than with Astia 100, but of course to make use of it you'll blow the highlights for any subject range exceeding about 4 f/stops. Midrange the slopes (gammas) are about equivalent, which I think is what Brian eluded to. That very high contrast feature of Kodachrome is more consistent with Velvia 50 than with Astia 100 but for me the closest you'll come to the "midrange" color palette is probably with Astia 100.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[rguinter]

Nate:

My goodness all that math. It was such fun doing all that back in the 80s... engineering physics IV with Einstein's theory of relativity right at chapter 1. And to think I ground through all that and enjoyed it at the time. I probably still would but today the highest math I have to do usually involves basic algebra. So the bottom line is I rarely think of asymptotes and 2nd derivatives when taking photos.

But the comments about Astia seem on the mark for all who mentioned it and I'll be testing it out when my order arrives. I bought a box of 50-sheets so there should be enough for me to get some nice comparisons. I also took all my RAP 120 out of the deep freeze to thaw that I've had in there for a couple of years.

I went back and looked through the few Astia frames I took in Summer 2007 and scanned one which is attached here. It's a photo of Chughach Mtn in Alaska. At the time I didn't look at it too closely but now I am seeing the color resemblance to the old KR-25. The Kodachrome attachment was taken many years before on top of Mt. Washington so I'm guessing they were both done at similar altitudes. I see certainly the blues and greens have a strong similarity. Not enough red or yellow in the Astia to do a really good comparison.

So anyway, thanks again for reminding me about the Astia that I put aside.

Cheers,

Bob G.

[Nathan Potter]

Bob, seems like a pretty good comparison of color and I think I notice a bit of pink similarity in the clouds. I certainly recognize some of the junk on top of Mt. Washington. My post was just following your comment "In god we trust, all others bring data"; so I thought I would. To me data is sacrosanct.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[rguinter]

Bob, seems like a pretty good comparison of color and I think I notice a bit of pink similarity in the clouds. I certainly recognize some of the junk on top of Mt. Washington. My post was just following your comment "In god we trust, all others bring data"; so I thought I would. To me data is sacrosanct.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

Nate: I appreciate the data and I haven't studied the concept of sensitometric curves. so now I plan to review it. Perhaps something I should have looked at some time ago. Thanks for the tip. Bob G.

[David Luttmann]

Kodachrome WAS available in 4x5 starting during WW 2. I think Adams work, particularly for the Kodak Colorama Murals in Grand Central Station in NYC were done with early Kodak Color Negative materials.

I just recently picked up a book that highlights Ansel's color work. In it are photographs from 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 Kodachrome is memory serves.

I'd say Astia is indeed the best color match. That, coupled with Astia's finer grain should work as a reasonable substitute for K25.

[mrladewig]

Having shot with both Astia and E100G, (and KR64 not 25) Astia seems to be a good match in the blues and neutrals, but the red and yellow on Astia are pretty flat in my experience. E100G is an equal match on the neutrals and the red and yellow have a stronger signature, but I think the blue may be too strong and magenta too weak.

E100G, no filters



RMS grainularity measurement seems to vary between manufacturers a bit. Fuji rates Astia at 7 and Kodak rates E100G at 8. In practical application, I can't tell any difference in the grain between these two extremely fine grained films. I know Fuji is the dominant player in slide film these days, but E100G is a very competent film. I use all of the 4X5 slide films, which one depends on the situation.

[Drew Wiley]

I find Astia and E100G to be very different in hue as well as exposure range. I shoot
both in LF. I require polyester film base for registration puposes, so use E100G as my
mid-contrast or "normal" color film. Astia has lower contrast, plus I use it in the lab for
dupes (works better than official duplicating film). Velvia, or course, is on the high end
of contrast and saturation, but I rarely use it in 8x10. Kodachrome 25 and 64 were more similar to each other, though 25 was my favorite. I still have a lot of old slides
but will probably never print them.

[Ivan J. Eberle]

Besides accutance, what I loved best about Kodachrome, both K25 and K64, was that when shooting to hold the highlights/shadows be damned, the shadows often went really and truly BLACK. (Velvia and Astia and Kodak E6 have muddier shadows). Might have had something to do with Kodachrome being essentially 4 layers of B&W film until it was processed when the dyes were introduced, IIRC.

But I find Astia to have more subtlety in the shadows by far than Velvia or K25. Though if I weren't shooting nowadays for hybrid workflow, I'd be complaining that Astia colors get a bit goofily yellow-brown down in the toe, but this is easily corrected in PP.

K64 was more accurate color-wise in the case of low-key work. I've also got a few K64 transparencies with exceedingly difficult 10-stop range that hold detail in both shadow and highlight. I just couldn't do much with slides like these (even with unsharp masking on Pan Masking film) until I got a really great 16-bit film scanner and started working with them in PP.

The issue with Kodachrome 64 in recent years wasn't that I couldn't use it and get results for my wildlife and 35mm macro work, but that the grain was so objectionable from inconsistent processing it prompted me to start doing my own E6. (Too, with subject matter like landscapes and night photography, Kodachrome always suffered from reciprocity beyond about a second, a realm where E6 films are greatly superior.)