
Kodachrome was the Instagram of its time - Tomte
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/mid-century-memories-kodachrome/index.html
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smacktoward
I feel like, if you wanted to pick the film-photography version of Instagram,
a better choice would be Polaroid:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_Corporation)

Kodachrome was always preferred by serious photographers (at least until the
Japanese film companies started muscling their way into the US in the
mid-'80s), but Polaroid was the peoples' choice -- cheap, social and fun.
People would crowd around a Polaroid exposure taken at a party, watching the
image develop and commenting to each other on it. Nobody ever confused it for
high quality film, but for the purposes it was put to, that didn't matter.

~~~
armadsen
I agree. Even more directly, Instagram's early icons were pretty clearly
inspired by Polaroid, with one of them even a straight up illustration of a
specific Polaroid camera.

See the second icon here: [https://images.squarespace-
cdn.com/content/54bb4cfce4b045585...](https://images.squarespace-
cdn.com/content/54bb4cfce4b045585ada36f7/1464087195265-470BIQAP3J8KAOXQ878J/)

It's a Polaroid OneStep with Q-Light:
[https://i.pinimg.com/736x/bb/16/a4/bb16a4b51206b9fdbc73135c6...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/bb/16/a4/bb16a4b51206b9fdbc73135c6f6a5af0.jpg)

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mauvehaus
I only ever shot one roll of it. In 2006 film was well and truly on its way
out. I had just graduated college, and was bicycle touring the United States.
In or around Yosemite, I picked up a roll at (I believe) a gas station of all
places.

Even in 2006, the last place you could get it developed was Dwayne's Photo in
Kansas. Kodachrome is a completely different process than any other film. The
crazy thing about the film is that the development process actually removes
layers of emulsion depending on what color light the film was exposed to. You
can actually see this with the naked eye looking at the emulsion side of the
film; it looks a little bit like a relief carving.

I'd like to say the results were magical, but honestly, my inexperience with
the film meant they looked pretty normal. The color rendering really is
different from other emulsions, and getting the most out of it probably
requires some practice.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome)

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markemer
Man I miss Kodachrome. Of course, I hadn’t shot it in decades. I miss the idea
of it more, I guess.

~~~
pampa
I never shot kodachrome, but did shoot a lot of medium format provia and
velvia with a Rolleiflex TLR in 2004-2015.

I made prints from the slides digitally, because direct printing with
cibachrome/ilfochrome was virtually unobtainable. Stopped shooting film
completely when i got my 1st gen Sony A7R. Somehow the colors out of this
camera were as pleasing as a roll of provia, with just a little
exposure/contrast adjustment.

~~~
projektfu
+1 on Velvia. Ektachrome was also pretty, especially for landscapes and green
eyed people.

~~~
i_am_proteus
And it still is--- it was reintroduced recently.

~~~
projektfu
I think that famous National Geographic photo of the Afghanastani girl was
compelling mainly because of the choice of film. (Not sure which one, but most
films preferred greens and blues)

~~~
sjburt
That was very famously Kodachrome, so much so that the photographer, Steve
McCurry was given the last roll ever produced.

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psychomugs
I think the value that film gives us lies more in the journey than in the
final result. With vintage lenses and enough digital processing you
approximate 90% of the aesthetic qualities of most old film stocks. Nothing
can replace the romanticism of shooting with limited exposures, having to
develop and scan and print, and embracing all the imperfections that come with
the process.

I've been a "dedicated amateur" street / event photographer and
photojournalist for a few years, and the decisions that have helped me improve
the most have been 1) shooting with a wide prime (28-35mm) and 2) learning to
shoot and develop film.

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hprotagonist
They give us these nice green colors...

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
That song is in constant rotation on Rochester radio. The annoying part is how
he decries "all the crap he learned in high school" while lauding a technology
that very much depends on people being educated enough to conceive of and
produce it.

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dehrmann
About a decade ago, I bought a slide scanner and scanned a bunch of old family
slides. Some of it's the era, some the Kodachrome, but the colors look exactly
like those photos. Here's a few:
[https://imgur.com/a/PkJiGGx](https://imgur.com/a/PkJiGGx)

As for it being "archival," no, it's not. Some had pretty bad color shifts and
started looking blue.

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mikl
Bad article. Confuses technology to take pictures with technology to share
pictures with strangers online.

If anything, Kodachrome was the phone camera of its time, but even that is
comparing a horse-drawn carriage to a Mack truck.

~~~
foobar1962
... technology to share pictures. Online wasn't a thing then. Sharing pictures
with strangers wasn't a thing then either. You'd be sharing the pictures with
family and friends.

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agumonkey
web2.0 jaded me would say 'instagram is a pale copy of <past tech that was
inspiring and joyful>'

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m0zg
Not just of its time: Kodachrome works remarkably well for archival. Or
"worked", since it's not made anymore and you can't develop it.

~~~
stan_rogers
...and it was horrible for projection, fading quickly even as late as K14. You
were generally good with slide viewers (Kodachrome can be found in most scenic
Viewmaster discs), but light bright enough for projection would kill
Kodachromes in no time at all, so you'd generally dupe to an Ektachrome or to
a cine print film using an internegative.

~~~
m0zg
Not very good for "traditional", dry scanning either. IR-based scratch/dust
removal stuff in Nikon scanners didn't work on it. But at least if you don't
project too often, the colors would last for a very long time.

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ChrisArchitect
not new article, from ~3 months ago, mostly glorified ad for a photography
book.

A few other kodachrome articles and discussion back from maybe when it was
more newsworthy - when it was being retired
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=669585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=669585)
or an unseen archive of 1960s East London pics
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363283)

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projektfu
Any surprise that its original icon seemed to be a hybrid of the Instamatic
Brownie and the Polaroid logo?

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th0ma5
Can we effectively synthesize it with digital methods?

~~~
Laforet
Yes, however one needs to take into account the difference in viewing devices
(screens are self illuminated and film/paper subtract colours from a light
source) as well as the limited colour depth on modern monitors. After all,
10-bit colour wasn't available on mainstream GPUs until the last couple of
years.

