Thought you might enjoy this set.

Thanks for sharing, beautiful photos :-)
 
10x8 Kodachrome, wow! Really great photos, thanks for the link!

Looky here, it's Paul Simon. Who'd have thought?
 
Those are amazing, its just the sheer naturalness yet vivid colours that always get me with Kodachrome and as pointed out their archival properties are unmatched by any other colour medium except Cibachromes. My dad has Kodachomes from the laste 1960's to present and all of them look like they were shot yesterday.

Its a shame though that they stopped manufacturing sheet Kodachrome in the early 1950's in favour of Ektachrome, apparently it was extremely difficult to make with the exacting tolerances needed using the coating techology of the time, and it was part of Kodaks plan (which never fully happened) to gradually phase out Kodachrome in favour of the easier to produce and process Ektachrome, but demand kept it in production with periodic updates.
 
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Photo Engineer over at APUG occasionally reminds people how there was going to be a ISO400 Kodachrome with t-grain technology (the grain in Delta, T-Max and Portra) but it didn't gain enough popularity to be released in the 80s-90s.
 
I've never seen colour photographs from the 1940's before o.O
 
Fantastic colours and tones, bit annoyed i never got to shoot some Kodachrome :( I've got some of my dads Kodachrome shots from the 80's and they look very clear (also very 80's ;) but thats nothing to do with the film, just the subject matter :p)
 
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Wow those are amazing, thank you for the links.
 
I hate to be a sceptic but they look just too sharp to be 40's shots, I've no doubt Kopdachrome could have produced that quailty its just I doubt the cameras/lenses would have been that good. We'd have been looking at Iso 25 maximum and with the dof in those shots meaning a small aperture (f16 perhaps) the shutter speed would have been mighty slow, tripod and absolutely no movement in the subject matter, which I just cant see happening with real live people.
I'd love to be proven wrong though.

Matt
 
MatBin said:
I hate to be a sceptic but they look just too sharp to be 40's shots
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Many of the shots are completely static, and the subjects in positions that can be held for a while. Judging from the lighting on some of the indoor shots, there were flash bulbs used to aid the exposure, and the outdoor more action photos look like they were done in very bright sunshine.

The first few decades of photography were done with real live people being very still... additionally, it was taken on such a large negative that any possible blurriness would be difficult to see because I reckon at web resolution this is barely much larger than 1.5x enlargement, if that.

There are many examples of Kodachrome in the 40s and 50s which also look like these, who would make up something like this?
 
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Don't underestimate old lens designs either, i mean Planar and Tessar are both well over a hundred years old at this point and even today they can be considered among the best. Even triplets can take lovely, sharp images.

As for the cameras, well all it really needs to do is stay still and not let any light in.
 
Superewza said:
Don't underestimate old lens designs either, i mean Planar and Tessar are both well over a hundred years old at this point and even today they can be considered among the best.
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That's very true, a lot of optical designs were only improved over the decades with multi-coating - the optical formulae tended to stay true to the originals.
 
MatBin said:
I hate to be a sceptic but they look just too sharp to be 40's shots, I've no doubt Kopdachrome could have produced that quailty its just I doubt the cameras/lenses would have been that good. We'd have been looking at Iso 25 maximum and with the dof in those shots meaning a small aperture (f16 perhaps) the shutter speed would have been mighty slow, tripod and absolutely no movement in the subject matter, which I just cant see happening with real live people.
I'd love to be proven wrong though.

Matt
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Since posting that Shorpy link ^, and this is what happens every time I post a shorpy link, I end up browsing the flippin place for an hour afterwards...lol.
Anyway, been browsing and I kinda know what you're saying, even though I know these are old kodachromes I've browsed a hundred times before, there are a few "family" snaps that on quick inspection look every bit modern day top notch imagery, such is the quality of reproduction.
Its not till you properly inspect the objects in the photo's, the clothes people are wearing, their hair and everything else that you realise these are genuine and pretty typical old kodachromes.
 
I also find it hard to believe the age of them. Not that I'm denying it, it's just surprising!

5x4 or 10x8 anything is generally very sharp, providing it's in focus & not blurred, etc, because, as Freecom says, there is little-no enlargment here. And they're Kodachrome, that helps me get my hear around it, if it was Provia or something I don't think I'd believe it.
 
Mm, the quality is unbelievable for colour photography in that day & age, I've loved looking at these! The 1940's is usually rather black & white.
 
And people still wonder what all the hoo harr was about Kodak cutting manufacture.
It wasn't until you couldn't buy it any more that peeps realised exactly what is lost.
I'm pretty balled off that I could never shoot Kodachrome 120, in fact I only got to shoot 10 or so rolls of 35mm.
I'm a 120 shooter exclusively, I only actually own 35mm gear to shoot Kodachrome.....so that's that then..:(
 
Superewza said:
Relevant, even if it is digital :(

http://todaystomorrow.tumblr.com/post/19109939479/the-5dmkii-view-camera

The images are perfectly sharp and fine. The flare is caused by the lack of coatings.
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Ive seen a few of these sort of things kicking around. One of my friends at uni uses a 1940's 16mm Cine lens on his Lumix and gets very nice results from it. It's something ive considered as a summer project but i never have the heart to kill a camera, even if it will get a new life :'(
 
Mm, I simply have no idea how I'd create something like this but would love to get my paws on an older camera body to play with this idea if I could!
 
IamAshlyRose said:
Mm, I simply have no idea how I'd create something like this but would love to get my paws on an older camera body to play with this idea if I could!
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It's not massively difficult to get some initial results - on the left hand side of the viewfinder housing on the 5d mkII is a white mark that looks a bit like a london tube sign (circle with a bar through it). This is the focal plane mark - it's where the sensor is. Knowing that, you then need to mount the other lens/camera body so that where it expects the film to be is aligned to the focal plane mark (on a folding camera, that could be by leaving the back open and not fully extending the bellows so that the sensor mark is the same distance from the lens as the film would be with the camera fully opened, whereas with an old lens you'd need to know the registration distance). Then, if it's a camera with an integrated shutter, open it onbulb mode and get the right exposure using iso and speed on the canon. Biggest difficulty will be mounting the lens/old body so that it's reasonably light tight and doesn't block the canon controls.

Note that I said it's easy to get some results - you'll need to spend a bit of time on working out the best mount to get good results :)
 
Cuchulainn said:
It's not massively difficult to get some initial results - on the left hand side of the viewfinder housing on the 5d mkII is a white mark that looks a bit like a london tube sign (circle with a bar through it). This is the focal plane mark - it's where the sensor is. Knowing that, you then need to mount the other lens/camera body so that where it expects the film to be is aligned to the focal plane mark (on a folding camera, that could be by leaving the back open and not fully extending the bellows so that the sensor mark is the same distance from the lens as the film would be with the camera fully opened, whereas with an old lens you'd need to know the registration distance). Then, if it's a camera with an integrated shutter, open it onbulb mode and get the right exposure using iso and speed on the canon. Biggest difficulty will be mounting the lens/old body so that it's reasonably light tight and doesn't block the canon controls.

Note that I said it's easy to get some results - you'll need to spend a bit of time on working out the best mount to get good results :)
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Is it really that complicated? I just got my Kodex folder out and held it in front of my D80 with no lens and played with the bellows extension a bit to get focus and things came out fairly well. Of course it wasn't great because I didn't lightproof anything, but it seems that all you need to do is put a camera in front of another one :bonk:

By the way, what is it about older lenses that makes them that much nicer than modern ones? My guess is that it's because they're less contrasty, or have lost it over the years, therefore capturing more detail. Hmm.
 
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Seems pretty technical o.O
Might have a play with a 1935 model "B" camera my great grandad left me tho? See if I can produce anything by aligning it with my 5D MKII body.
 
Joenail said:
By the way, what is it about older lenses that makes them that much nicer than modern ones? My guess is that it's because they're less contrasty, or have lost it over the years, therefore capturing more detail. Hmm.
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They are technically less able - more chromatic abberations, more flare, more everything that all the various letters in front of modern lenses try to combat (ED, UD, whatever other letters). But the simpler coatings tend to render B&W nicely, and the lenses often give a more traditional look. Additionally, the way that film renders an image is very different from the way a sensor does.
 
Joenail said:
Is it really that complicated? I just got my Kodex folder out and held it in front of my D80 with no lens and played with the bellows extension a bit to get focus and things came out fairly well. Of course it wasn't great because I didn't lightproof anything, but it seems that all you need to do is put a camera in front of another one :bonk:
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It's a horses for courses deal - you're absolutely right that if you do it your way you'll get (possibly quite nice) images really quickly. I'm just thinking of how to do it in a way that would help you get a better handle on how the lens renders images and do some quick testing. Definite merits in both approaches though!
 
Might as well put this here:

9ATyw.jpg
 
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