Photos and the Days: 200906

Friday, June 26, 2009

Kodachrome

Kodak announced that they discontinue the Kodachrome color film, concluding its 74-year service. It's not surprise that a 1930s technology is stopped. Especially Kodak itself has some improved film products as replacement. Just photography is so special that a technically improvement doesn't necessary better to photographer. Some may seek for the special taste cased by the technology defects. Just like human, we always asking for improvement to ourselves or to others. But when you miss someone, it's the imperfections that give you the aftertaste. To me, the special taste of Kodachrome reminds me photos of National Geographic in the 80s.

I usually don’t talk about my photos. I suppose it will explain itself, but I found out it usually won’t. Most of the time I just want to bring audience to the scene and it’s not necessary something special happening in there. I don’t think it’s a photographer’s job to stir someone’s emotion. It’s the audience to make a photograph different, not the photographer.

These two photos are shooting in the same day, one in the way to work and the other one on the way back. To reproduce the old taste of Kodachrome, I did a few tricks. I use 50mm prime, the lens is new but the optical design is 100years old. I use HDR technique to reproduce the richness of shadow color and the dynamic range of films. Then I copy the response curve from the Kokachrome datasheet and apply to the photos. The result...you judge.

Many friends asked me one question. Digital of film, which is better? One simple answer, depends on you equipment. To explain more:

Resolution: digital better.
Noise/Grain: digital better.
Color balance: digital better.
Dynamic range: film better.
Color richness: maybe film better, especially slides. But digital is improving.

Just most of the times you still need to digitize the films and this will degrade the picture a bit. So overall, I think digital already outperform film. But what we miss is still the taste. Perhaps, at the time when we are old, there will be Photoshop filters that simulate defect of early digital cameras. To remind us - today.