The Death of Kodachrome
Jan. 30th, 2011 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deirdreI wore a t-shirt to a photo show on Saturday that got a lot of comments:
A number of people asked me where to get it (Dwayne's Photo), and several people commented that it was the best film ever made.
Guiltily, I admitted to one person that I hadn't really used it that much Kodachrome, and I blurted out "because it was too slow." I thought about that for a while, and I realized that when I went to an SLR, I bought a zoom lens (as so many people do).
Zoom lenses are typically very slow. I'm going to use a digital camera to make the comparison here, but the issue's the same.
The Panasonic GF1 I have comes with either a 20mm f/1.7 lens, or a 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. At best, the 3.5 is 2-1/3 stops slower than the 1.7. Each full stop has half the light gathering of the one before, so 2-1/3 stops basically means it gathers less than 1/4 as much light. And that's at best; at the 45mm end, you're about 3-1/4 stops, so less than 1/8 as much light.
So if we were talking a film camera and I'd been using Kodachrome (which either came in ISO 25 or 64 -- though there were also 40 and 200, they were not the main sellers) with the f/1.7 lens, I'd probably have been using 64 unless it was a controlled lighting situation. I'd have to replace that with a film with an ISO of more than 250 to use the same shutter speed. Or 500 at the 45mm end. The higher the film speed, the more grainy the shot.
You may not be able to pick shutter speed: the general rule of thumb is that you can't hand-hold better than one over the focal length. At the 45mm end, you'd need to be at most 1/45 a second. That might sound like a lot, but many of my pictures were taken a lot faster than that, and still aren't really particularly acceptable at full resolution. This "Under the Sea" image, for example, was shot at 1/90 (at f/1.9 with a 28mm lens, so in theory 1/30 would be "fast enough") and if you look at the original, you can see it suffers even at that quick a speed. I could have benefitted from a tripod, but it would have been essential with a zoom lens.
As zoom lenses got good, they got popular, and now most people wouldn't consider not getting a zoom lens as their primary lens. And, I also gotta say it: there's an advantage in a cheap camera to having a slower lens: focus is less important because the depth of field is greater. But I digress.
The realization I had today: digital didn't kill Kodachrome, zoom lenses did. The demand changed over time even within the film-loving community. There's plenty of other films doing perfectly well. Sure, most people have switched to digital, but many, if not most, serious photographers still have and use film too. But if you have to commit to shooting a roll, you'll tend to pick a film that will work with most of the lenses you're carrying with you. And if, like many amateur photographers, you've got just one or two lenses and at least one's a zoom, that means you probably wouldn't pick Kodachrome.
Obviously, there's another aspect to Kodachrome: it was the only film that used that process, though even the Kodachrome process underwent several revisions over its 75-year history.
One of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, Afghan Girl (Sharbat Gula), was filmed by Steve McCurry on Kodachrome.
A number of people asked me where to get it (Dwayne's Photo), and several people commented that it was the best film ever made.
Guiltily, I admitted to one person that I hadn't really used it that much Kodachrome, and I blurted out "because it was too slow." I thought about that for a while, and I realized that when I went to an SLR, I bought a zoom lens (as so many people do).
Zoom lenses are typically very slow. I'm going to use a digital camera to make the comparison here, but the issue's the same.
The Panasonic GF1 I have comes with either a 20mm f/1.7 lens, or a 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. At best, the 3.5 is 2-1/3 stops slower than the 1.7. Each full stop has half the light gathering of the one before, so 2-1/3 stops basically means it gathers less than 1/4 as much light. And that's at best; at the 45mm end, you're about 3-1/4 stops, so less than 1/8 as much light.
So if we were talking a film camera and I'd been using Kodachrome (which either came in ISO 25 or 64 -- though there were also 40 and 200, they were not the main sellers) with the f/1.7 lens, I'd probably have been using 64 unless it was a controlled lighting situation. I'd have to replace that with a film with an ISO of more than 250 to use the same shutter speed. Or 500 at the 45mm end. The higher the film speed, the more grainy the shot.
You may not be able to pick shutter speed: the general rule of thumb is that you can't hand-hold better than one over the focal length. At the 45mm end, you'd need to be at most 1/45 a second. That might sound like a lot, but many of my pictures were taken a lot faster than that, and still aren't really particularly acceptable at full resolution. This "Under the Sea" image, for example, was shot at 1/90 (at f/1.9 with a 28mm lens, so in theory 1/30 would be "fast enough") and if you look at the original, you can see it suffers even at that quick a speed. I could have benefitted from a tripod, but it would have been essential with a zoom lens.
As zoom lenses got good, they got popular, and now most people wouldn't consider not getting a zoom lens as their primary lens. And, I also gotta say it: there's an advantage in a cheap camera to having a slower lens: focus is less important because the depth of field is greater. But I digress.
The realization I had today: digital didn't kill Kodachrome, zoom lenses did. The demand changed over time even within the film-loving community. There's plenty of other films doing perfectly well. Sure, most people have switched to digital, but many, if not most, serious photographers still have and use film too. But if you have to commit to shooting a roll, you'll tend to pick a film that will work with most of the lenses you're carrying with you. And if, like many amateur photographers, you've got just one or two lenses and at least one's a zoom, that means you probably wouldn't pick Kodachrome.
Obviously, there's another aspect to Kodachrome: it was the only film that used that process, though even the Kodachrome process underwent several revisions over its 75-year history.
One of the most famous photographs of the 20th century, Afghan Girl (Sharbat Gula), was filmed by Steve McCurry on Kodachrome.