Kodachrome 25 K14 – My first and last ever 2 rolls and remembering the ContaxG Pages site

In memory of my friend and mentor Lincoln Michaud born February 12th 1940 in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, p[assed away on March 29th 2015 in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
Give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah..

Paul Simon

Ah the legendary Kodachrome, probably the most famous camera film ever. Paul Simon further immortalized the film with his song of the same name, but Mama Capitalism took it away and I doubt we shall ever see the like again.

A shame as youngsters now meddling with Film photography can never ever use it, all they can do is look at Photographs and if they’re lucky, some slides on a light box or even better; projected. But they will never be able to make their own Photographs and memories with it.

There are ‘Film Recipes’ and such Photoshop Plug-in software for people to get to mimic it using digital cameras, but this is much like pissing in the wind. You cannot mimic it, the colour was unique and even scanners have a hard time getting them right, even with IT8 Profiles you’ll get a dogs dinner of what the slide is actually like. All you can do is get something which probably feels like it. I know as I have tried a few Plug-in plug ins and they’re all pretty shite.

I’m of course writing about my own personal experience with Plug-in software and Scanning, so I might have cocked things up two ways from Sunday and need some educating, I’m always willing to learn from those wiser and better than myself.

Contax G Pages

Back to Kodachrome K14. I’d been a regular at the Contax G Pages website since 2005, which was set up by Glen Campbell back in 1999. If you never had the pleasure of visiting the site in its heyday, you can still find an archive of it here or on The Wayback Machine.

I strongly urge you to do so, look at the Hall of Fame images from page 1, you’ll see some masterpieces, no surprise as regular contributors included some very talented and well known Photographers, worldwide and from all styles, who used the Contax G1 and G2 to capture the likes of which I’ve yet to see again. For me the ContaxG Pages has always been The Benchmark. The HoF images are which I’ve ever since aspired to reach the level of; to no avail.

The Website was taken down in 2012 because of vulnerabilities and a huge hack which cost Glen Terabytes worth of damage and costs, 40% of the images didn’t survive.

The ContaxG site was created and run by Glen Campbell from 1999 to 2012. At its peak, the site had more than 5,000 members and was receiving several hundred new images per day.

This site contains photographs and details restored from a backup made in 2012, some months before the system crash that closed the site. About 60% of the images referenced in the database have survived. Only users with surviving images are listed.

It was here that I met Lincoln Michaud, a keen Photographer who had previously served as an US Army Officer in Korea and in The Horn of Africa in the 50ies and 60ies, where his skill as a Photographer enabled him to capture the types of photographs seen in old issues of National Geographic. He shot most of his work on Kodachrome K15. it was Linc who introduced me to K15 and sent me the two rolls I had. he had been urging me to at least try the 64 ASA variety which at the time was readily available here in Britain. To my regret I didn’t, I procrastinated and just as with Agfa Scala 200X as I have written HERE it was always a case of “soon”, “one day” etc. What puts me off and still puts me off is having to Mail a Film off. At least with Agfa Scala I didn’t have to post it abroad, whereas with Kodachrome there were only two places which I could get that Film developed; Dwaynes in the US or a place in Switzerland. So my two rolls stayed and they stayed until a few years later in 2009 it was announced that Kodachrome is to be discontinued and any exposed rolls are best sent for development as soon as possible. Sheet! I thought, and panicked! Man, how I regret that, I should’ve shot these Films and shot some more ages ago, but being a twit I didn’t. Lincoln died in a car accident in Las Cruces NM. His website which had his wonderful Photographs from Africa and America is now gone, you can see his beautiful  Contax G2 photographs (mostly from NM and The White Sands) on the Contax G Page Archive, albeit a small selection at a very small resolution.

Kodachrome 25

Kodakchrome is a fantastic Film. The two rolls I had had expired back in the mid 90ies but I was assured there would be absolutely no colour shift or any discrepancy, unlike with every other Film, the K14 processed Film just kept its stable state and could be stored for ages. Its archival qualities are much better than anything from Ektachrome or Fujichrome, Agfachrome or any other Chrome, I can attest to the fact that my K14 slides are fresh as the day they were laid by the Lab at Dwayne’s, unlike my Fujichromes and Ektachromes which attract dust and have already deteriorated with dirt, grime and in some cases deterioration of the Emulsion. Sure, much of this is my fault with storage, but the K14’s were stored in the same boxes with those other Chromes! They’re clean as a whistle!

Some people may ask what K14 is, it’s just the development process, preceded by K12, K11 etc. Both Kodachrome 25 (discontinued 2002) and Kodachrome 64 (discontinued 2009) were K14 process.

Linc told me that the Kodachrome 25 was better than the 64, I’ve now no way of finding that out anymore. But at least I managed to shoot two rolls, packed them up in their ‘Process by Kodak’ Mailing envelope and sent them to Linc, who sent them to Dwayne’s for me.

Kodak did give snappers a window of about 6 months or so to get the Films back to them. I shot my two rolls in late Summer and Autumn of 2010, with the cut of date being December that year.

The first roll I shot during a trip to, guess where? Yes, Wales. I along with a few friends went to Snowdonia for a weekend and took a trek up to the summit of Mt. Snowdon and then I visited Caerphilly Castle, Raglan Castle, Llanthony Priory Tretower Castle and my usual haunt; The Roman City of Isca at Caerleon. The following month, I shot as normal with my Contax G2.

Linc had kindly sent me the slides back along with a DVD of the scans he made with is Minolta Dimage Scan Pro 5400. His scans are good but they maintain the colour shift which happens when you scan them. The scans develop a Blue cast which one can read about everywhere.

Scanning and Post Process

I then went to work on his scans, and scanned a few of the slides myself as well using the Film profile I have. To my chagrin the Scans were exactly the same as Lincs. I compared them to the Slides on a light table and as with Projection, there was a difference in colour.

For those who haven’t had the pleasure, there’s simply no comparison with a Scan to the slide as viewed on the Light table or Projected, no comparison at all. Get yourself a bright Projector with an excellent lens, turn off the lights and marvel as the Photos come alive on your wall. Or use a loupe to view them on a Light table. You’ll soon wonder what the mental problems are with pixel peepers and such nerds on the Photo Web, there’s simply no comparison.

It took much time and tweaking of every variable until I managed to get the TIFF scans looking more or less something akin to the Slides. My iPhone 12 pro came in handy as the camera manages to capture whatever it does with more or less accurate colour. I used the iPhone pictures of the Slides on the Light Box to determine colour accuracy. Sure, I could’ve purchased one of those contraptions that turns your phone into a Slide scanner and in hindsight I should have, but at the time I didn’t think of it. But it was a case of looking at the iPhone shots then the Slides themselves, back and forth. Of course the iPhone isn’t 100% accurate but it helped a great deal.

• I’d like to add that as the colour was applied during development, there don’t seem to be any shifts in the slides (bar the shifts during scanning) the colours are all consistent!

The Slides

I only worked on a selection, that you see here from the 72 or so Slides. Please excuse the verticals, happens with Wide Angles and alas no PC lens on the Contax.

iPhone 12 Pro shot of the Slide on the Light Table. Compare with the tweaked image below where I have almost matched the colour. The Blue was especially tricky. Bear in mind the image below is almost bang on accurate to the slide on the table, the iPhone shot is pretty good and almost there.

So there we have it, a selection from my First and Last ever two rolls of Kodakchrome 25 K14. Looking at these, the colour is very very distinctive, I understand why people prefer Fujichrome Velvia for more saturated punchy colours, but that cannot do skin tones, this nails it along with that distinctive *look* which I adore, and I kick myself for not being proactive enough to have Photographed with over the years, I missed so so so much, I can only imagine if I had shot with it in The Hindu Kush, Karakoram, Punjab and even in London or anywhere else with it, instead I’m left with boring Blue and Green slides with castles.

The biggest ever regret in my Photographic life.

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