Minor Project Research blog : Kodachrome and other Colour reversal films

Kodachrome vs other types of Colour reversal film.

Ektachrome is a standard style colour reversal film that would be developed in a E6 chemicals. Kodachrome is also a colour reversal film, but it uses a K-14 chemical process which is older. The emulsion layers and structure is also different. Fujichrome also uses the E6 process, but Fuji’s Velvia introduced in the early nineties has much thinner emulsion layers which means that light scatter within the layers is reduced and sharpness is increased; despite Fuji’s Velvia having more layers than older Fujichrome (17 to the older 15) it is actually thinner by 15%.(1) Kodachrome is quite famous for having more muted colours than E6 films however, but is not produced anymore. Many used to prefer Kodachrome however.

I would say, judging purely by pictures I have seen on Google images, that overall I prefer ordinary reversal film over Kodachrome, but I also think that comparing the two is a little like comparing two completely different things to each other. I think if Kodachrome still existed I can understand that it would have, and probably did have, completely different artistic applications. This is similar in many ways to the way in which Black and White photography has completely different applications creatively than colour film. Black and white photography can give uniformity to colours in an image, which may be useful for situations when there may be clashing colours in the frame in situations where you have less control over what is photographed, as in street photography. I think Kodachrome, due to it muted nature may also produce this effect, but to a lesser extent. This means that I can imagine lots of circumstances in which Kodachrome would be more effective than the more brightly coloured E6 reversal films. It is a shame that it is no longer available.

The following is a selection of Kodachrome images taken from google images: