The 1957 Kodachrome

During a recent phone conversation with my mom, she mentioned that my grandmother had given me a gift while I was gone. An antique 620 film camera. On my recent trip home over Thanksgiving, we looked at old 1957 Kodachromes that were taken with that camera. The two boxes of slides contained images of a visit home to Massachussetts where my grandmother was born, as well as images taken around their town of Pasadena, California.

One box of slides was badly faded around the edges. Amazingly, the other box was pristine, if not a little dusty. That was like winning the lottery as far as slide film goes. The slides were some of the most beautiful slides I’d ever seen. They were well saturated, wide range of detail, and sharp. I’d love to be able to try a roll of old Kodachrome for myself and compare it with the modern day Fuji films. Anyway, I was thrilled get a glimpse into our family history. My mom was two, my aunt was three, and my grandparents were 30.



Some of the images perfectly captured the ambience of the era. I had chills at seeing how much of an eye my grandfather had for photography. It’s too bad he didn’t shoot more! Who knows what might have come of it.

After reviewing the boxes, I decided to bring the ones I could salvage back up north with me. The Monday following Thanksgiving, I spent a solid chunk of my day in the digital photography lab at the Academy of Art, scanning the chromes with a Nikon Coolscan 9000 using a glass plate. The session revealed that the slides had a great deal of oil and other blemishes on them. Needless to say, my anti-static brush did little to improve the condition of the chromes.

My main concern had been whether or not the slides would scan properly. I’ve heard that Kodachrome comes out freaky when scanned. (notice the special setting for Kodachrome?) The scans came out on the dark side. Keep in mind this is 1957 Kodachrome.

This being several days later, I have finally gotten a chance to work on a few of the scans in Photoshop. What I’ve found is that they take a great deal of retouching (big surprise there) and they come out overly magenta once the Levels are adjusted. I had to add 5 pts. of green to the midtones to this image and several others to restore the color back to what the slide had. The images pick up a lot of contrast as well after adjustment. That’s the biggest drawback I’ve encountered so far. To counteract this, I had to adjust shadow detail with Curves. Not perfect but acceptable quality.

My conclusion: The Kodachromes have stood the test of time fairly well. They are worth my time to preserve digitally. They take more work than modern film scans, but then again Velvia isn’t exactly cakewalk either. Dig out those old slides someday yourself or ask your parents to see them before it’s too late. You might miss out on a treasure. It’s not about film v.s. digital. It’s film and digital.