The good and the bad of Kodachrome shooting

As you know, I’m currently experimenting with shooting Kodachrome film for the rest of the year, shooting until the last processing plant in the world (Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Ks.) runs out of developing chemicals for processing the film.

About two weeks ago, I shot four rolls of Kodachrome – three rolls of Kodachrome 64 and one roll of the more sensitive 200.  I’ve acquired these rolls from eBay purchases, especially those from dealers who specifically state “they’ve been cold stored in a freezer since the day I bought them.”

Now I have to take this on faith.  And when I take the Kiev-19 and the Kodachrome out for a shoot, I follow two simple guidelines, just in case.

1. If it’s a photo that you really really want to get, and it’s something you might not get a shot at ever again, shoot it with the Nikon D700 digital first.

2. If it’s a photo you can replace or re-shoot at another time, use the Kodachrome exclusively.

I don’t have to worry about my Kodachrome 64.  The seller I deal with on eBay has a good stock of it and it’s very clean and has not expired.  I don’t have to worry about shooting Kodachrome 40 either (thanks, Larry).  I haven’t gotten my mitts on Kodachrome 25 yet, the sellers on eBay are offering it for either tremendously speculative prices ($25 per roll?!?) or they’re offering stock that’s older than the Kiev-19 I shoot with!

So I shot three rolls of 64-speed Kodachrome on April 23 and 24, and the shots came out really well – especially the shots I took at Washington Park just as the tulips were in bloom.  I showed some shots on this blog that I took with Kodak Portra 160VC film earlier, but here’s some tulips to stare at – and considering what happened with the rains, this may be the best tulip shots you’re going to get).

And then I went over to Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, and got this shot of some lilies growing near a gravestone.  I might consider this for a future contest photo:

And I even went back to Schenectady to photograph that Coca-Cola “ghost sign” on Broadway – you know, the one I couldn’t put in my book the last time due to Coca-Cola wanting to protect their copyrights.

But the next day, I slapped in a roll of Kodachrome 200, and took some pictures in Saratoga Springs.

Now here’s the problem. The person I purchased the Kodachrome 200 from sent me six rolls of it – dirt cheap – and told me it was stored in his freezer all this time.

Well, apparently it wasn’t stored in a plugged-in freezer, because the Kodachrome had color-shifted and expired.

In other words, while the photos themselves are technically sharp – to the point where you can see the horse’s hooves clearly as he’s pacing (or trotting, I never can tell the difference) – the sky was not magenta colored that day.  Okay, granted, I could use flickr’s “piknik” software to color-correct the images, but the idea of me shooting with Kodachrome was so that I would get the images in the color that the iconic slide film provided.

The problem is, I’ve still got five more rolls of this suspect Kodachrome 200 in my fridge.

I thought about going to Stuyvesant Photo and purchasing some green colored filters to counterbalance the magenta shift.  But I decided against that option – thinking instead that maybe I can use the magenta color to my adantage, maybe using the shift in photos involving sunrises and sunsets.

As for these rolls of Kodachrome 200, I’m just going to have to apply the concept of that old T-shirt slogan that once said, “I’ll be using these to my advantage.”

However, I don’t think the girl wearing that shirt was talking about 35mm film rolls.