[Leica] Further adventures of a lens abuser

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

>Hard to compare as Kodachrome 25 is gone but I 
>have not used a chrome that I liked
>as well as K-25, sharpness and color. Henning may weigh in on this one.
>Dennis
>
>Daniel Ridings wrote:
>
>>  They have been losing out. In part because the modern ASA 100 films are
>>  finer grained and sharper. They weren't really super fine grain. Just
>>  finer than the other films of that day.
>>
>  > Daniel
>

Well, there was Kodachrome (the original), KII, 
K25, KX, K64 and K200 plus the 3400? variations. 
I think that's it for the mainstream emulsions. 
The original, at ASA 10, was the best thing there 
was. At the time. There was nothing else that 
lasted longer than 2 hours out in the open after 
processing, it was sharp and the colours were 
quite good.

KII was better 'cuz faster. K25 was better 'cuz 
not as contrasty and better colours. KX at 64 was 
harsh but fast, K64 was better than KX, but 
otherwise more like K original, ie, too harsh. In 
most shots if they are exposed correctly for the 
highlights a lot of the darker areas are pure 
black, and Kodachrome has incredible Dmax. K200 
quite nice but grainy. K25 is definitely the best 
of the bunch, but awfully slow in today's terms. 
Still, the acutance of all Kodachromes made 
Ilfochrome prints sing. A print from current E-6 
films may show less grain, but stand back just a 
little bit and the K25 prints look a lot crisper; 
closer to MF. Like Doug says, it also has a 
wonderful colour palette that may have been the 
height of saturation when it came out, but now 
looks very natural.

ASA 10 was useable, but imposed a lot of 
limitations. I had a 35/3.5, a 50/2 and /3.5, a 
90/4, 135/4.5 and the aforementioned 200/4.5 at 
the end of it. Only the 50/2 gave much 
versatility; the others gave you few exposure 
options handheld.

At times I've played around with various copy 
films and developers to make them into continuous 
tone, IR films with dense filters and others 
which were even slower than Kodachrome I, but the 
slowest one, I think, was Kodalith. I bought a 
couple of hundred feet, spooled some into Leica 
cassettes and took some shots at about ASA 0.2, 
if I recall correctly. Not to be tried handheld. 
And this is important: don't use it with a red 
filter, or your exposure wouldn't be finished if 
you started in 1970.

Now my preferred fine-grain B&W film is Delta 100 
shot at EI 160-200, developed in Xtol 1:3, or for 
colour Ektachrome 100G and I certainly don't 
regret the passing, long ago, of Kodachrome I.

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
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