Kodachrome

"They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day..."

Immersed as we are in the raging digital age of photography, it seems almost as though film never existed. We hardly remember conserving pictures due to film's cost, we shoot hundreds of pictures nowadays with reckless abandon.

But there, sitting in the dark closets and attics of America, are millions upon millions of old negatives, slides, and reels of film. Forgotten, they slowly fade into oblivion. Perhaps we drag some of them out every ten years or so, looking for that one certain picture of grandma sitting on a horse. But largely they are unloved.

As I mentioned earlier, I decided to bring my father's vast collection of old slides into the modern age by doing high-resolution scans of them and I plan to give each family member a DVD of them at reunion this year.

The amazing thing I am discovering is that not all slide film is created equal. My father typically used Kodachrome film, and that is a good thing because the old K'Chrome slides look AMAZING! They seem to have retained every shade of their glorious rich color and razor sharpness. This longevity is well known for Kodachrome, and it is glaring when you compare these wonderful old slides with others where my father used a different film, such as Ektachrome. These tend to be very faded, or worse, color shifted; some so badly that they look completely red or blue.

Kodachrome is very complicated to develop, and with the advent of digital cameras, it is now all but extinct. There is one color lab in the world left that can develop it. But once it was the reigning glory of the film world. You don't name state parks and write songs about mediocre film, after all.

So, to the list of everything I am already thankful to my father for, add his use of the best film around for saving memories. Thanks, Dad!