Re: [Rollei] [OT] stability of Kodachrome

[bigler@ens2m.fr]

 From PM, Aaron Reece 
> ...that Kodachrome holds up far better *when stored 
> > under archival conditions, and not projected.*  Ektachrome-type 
> > emulsions last longer when being projected regularly.  

 From Bob Shell :
> That's what Kodak says.

This has been confirmed by independant tests performed in France in
the 1970s-1980s by the French Laboratoire National d'Essais (LNA), a
government lab performing safety tests and comparative tests on many
products offered to the French market.

The "camera and film" division of this LNA lab was located at Institut
d'Optique near Paris where I was a student. The fact that Kodachrome
is better for long term storage in darkness but not as good in
projection vs. "E6" films was clearly confirmed and stated to me
without doubt by one of the engineers in charge of those comparative
tests. I tried to put the hand on a copy of a report about that but
could not find anything, the camera-film test lab at LNA apparently no
longer exists...

However I recently re-opened the first yellow boxes of my father's
Kodachrome slides, 1963, contaflex & tessar. The slides, if not
perfect, are still perfectly acceptable and could be projected without
showing too much colour degradation. Amazing. For this reason I
continue to use Kodachrome film (K-64 now, but I still have a few
rolls of KM-25 in my deep-freezer !!) in my 35mm cameras for
documenting the family album.

- -- 
Emmanuel BIGLER         
<bigler  

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