WWII Kodachrome Images

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I don't recall seeing color images from WW II, so I find these interesting. I do have some color print film taken in the 1940's or early 1950's by my parents, but the color is virtually faded away, along with the rest of the image.

http://www.cnn.com/style/article/iwm-ww2-color-photography/index.html

 

[Maximilian]

Thanks for sharing, Mt Spokane.

 

[traveller]

Thanks for the link. It's always interesting to see colour photos from the period, as Kodachrome film stock was quite rare in the UK before the late 1950s and obviously Agfachrome wasn't available during WW2!

 

[Click]

Thank you for sharing.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I tended to use Kodachrome during the 1960s, and into the 1970's because I liked slides. I also used color print film, and even developed my own monochrome film. At that time, I never realized that the color print film would fade away, and color Polaroid prints would also vaporize, leaving my Kodachrome Afgachrome, and monochrome film and Polaroid in good shape. I never liked the Afga film, it was usually ASA 10 or even 5 and good exposures eluded me. Virtually all of my slides were ASA 25 Kodachrome.

 

[stevelee]

I don't recall seeing color images from WW II, so I find these interesting. I do have some color print film taken in the 1940's or early 1950's by my parents, but the color is virtually faded away, along with the rest of the image.

http://www.cnn.com/style/article/iwm-ww2-color-photography/index.html

Thanks.

A friend several years back sent me a picture made of him in his high school football uniform. It had faded to red and yellowish white. He wanted to use the picture in a booklet he and siblings were preparing for their dad’s birthday. A black and white result would have been OK.

I scanned it in using Vuescan, probably using the RAW file, but I’m not sure by now. I was surprised at how much detail and color were retrievable by ACR. The result was quite usable in color. It still looked somewhat like an old print, and would have likely looked over-corrected if I had aimed for anything else. I’ve had decent luck with some old Polaroids and even a daguerreotype.

I’ve not tried scanning in any color negatives that old (early sixties). I have had good luck with ones around twenty years old. I’d try negatives before prints if I had both. Vuescan seems to do well with orangy masks from different brands. I wonder if one had a faded negative and its faded print, whether stacking the scans could recover information from both. I’ll likely never have occasion to find out.

I shot some Kodachromes back in my slide period (1966-2000), but mostly Ektachrome, Agfachrome, and Anscochrome, none of which have as much longevity. I do hope to get around to scanning in slides from my 2000 trip in Eastern Europe before they fade any more.

 

[Jopa]

Thank you for sharing - great pictures! They are probably recovered / retouched though.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Thank you for sharing - great pictures! They are probably recovered / retouched though.

Why do you think this. Supposedly there is a 20% loss of the color dye after 185 years.

 

[Jopa]

Thank you for sharing - great pictures! They are probably recovered / retouched though.

Why do you think this. Supposedly there is a 20% loss of the color dye after 185 years.

I could be wrong! They just look too perfect to me. Maybe it's actually possible if they were kept in a certain environment that prevents any kind of degradation?

 

[ethanz]

It says in the article that they were not retouched or colored. Must have been hidden in a basement, sealed away.

They look so good, must have been shot with a Sony.

Seriously though, those are amazing for being 70 years old. Hard to believe the film would last so long. The clarity is great. That film is almost three times my age.

 

[Jopa]

They look so good, must have been shot with a Sony.

That was exactly my thought! It must be an A9, 20fps at minimum You can't take such great images with anything less than that.

 

[mnclayshooter]

It is very cool to see them. Thanks for sharing.


Interesting on the perceptual level for me; the vast majority of photos I've seen of WWII were monochromatic. There's a certain drama and overarching dire gloom to the old grainy B&W because of the lack of color that influences the mental perception of the war and the difficulty of war. I found it really interesting the immediate change of emotion I felt when I saw color photos of the scenes, the woman with the binoculars for example, seems much more human, much more real... as does the street celebration scene.


The other somewhat comical emotion I felt was that the hospital beds outside felt like a bit out of Faulty Towers or even Monty Python.

 

[ethanz]

It is very cool to see them. Thanks for sharing.


Interesting on the perceptual level for me; the vast majority of photos I've seen of WWII were monochromatic. There's a certain drama and overarching dire gloom to the old grainy B&W because of the lack of color that influences the mental perception of the war and the difficulty of war. I found it really interesting the immediate change of emotion I felt when I saw color photos of the scenes, the woman with the binoculars for example, seems much more human, much more real... as does the street celebration scene.


The other somewhat comical emotion I felt was that the hospital beds outside felt like a bit out of Faulty Towers or even Monty Python.

Those were my thoughts too. Made the people seem more real and able to relate to them better.

 

[stevelee]

The Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome is worth reading. Almost halfway down the page is a section called "Archival stability" that suggests why Kodachrome slides taken after 1938 have such a long life during storage in the dark.

The next section suggests that a 35mm Kodachrome slide has about 140 megapixels of resolution and reasons that scanning the slides presents difficulties.

 

[Talys]

Very cool photos! Color on some of them is amazing, considering the time.

 

[mb66energy]

I tended to use Kodachrome during the 1960s, and into the 1970's because I liked slides. I also used color print film, and even developed my own monochrome film. At that time, I never realized that the color print film would fade away, and color Polaroid prints would also vaporize, leaving my Kodachrome Afgachrome, and monochrome film and Polaroid in good shape. I never liked the Afga film, it was usually ASA 10 or even 5 and good exposures eluded me. Virtually all of my slides were ASA 25 Kodachrome.

Kodachrome 25 (less so 64 and 200 variants) was the film I liked most too. At Bonn, Germany I had access to a shop which was connected to the labs in Stuttgart by a professional service: 2..3 workdays for development was great compared to the 14 day standard service via mail.

About the images of WW2:
(1) Thanks for sharing - always interesting do gain new insights from these times.
(2) I always felt WW2 was B/W and wars in fictional movies are in color. But during my time in the (german) army I learned that war is in color. The images from your link show that war happened in color in reality and it let's me hope that the will see a future with less wars ...

 

[stevelee]

Agfachrome seemed to me to give cooler results, which I thought suited some subject matter. So I would use an occasional role as an "artistic" choice. I think I used Anscochrome in college because it was a little cheaper, and I liked the results. So in my head at least, it gave the most neutral results. I haven't looked at enough old slides recently to see how well different kinds of slide films have held up. My slides taken in Eastern Europe in 2000 were all on Ektachrome, which was all I could find at the time, both here and in Prague, and the choice was fine with me. The slides I've scanned in from that trip still look pretty good. So far, I just scanned some slides from Helsinki. http://www.stevelee.name/helsinki/index.html The slides look much better than the scans do. I may try redoing those some time, but I will finish the St. Petersburgh, Budapest, and Prague photos first. By that time, I may have more insight into how to get the best scans given my hardware and software.