• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Kodachrome -- let's do the time warp again

Joined
Dec 4, 2003
Messages
3,411
I've always been astounded by Kodachrome, but I had to pay some tribute tonight. This was a film stock that was unparalleled for its accuracy and archival quality. This evening I was looking through Kodachrome pictures on Google, and here are some examples that I found.

UGbhqVD.jpg

June 1943, New York, source.

AEAQOOt.jpg

1956, Minnesota, source. The depth of the early morning sunshine streaming in is just incredible.

mDYMe0Q.jpg

January 1959, Los Angeles, source.

IYV5avK.jpg

January 1963, source.

mOjQdXF.jpg

August 29, 1980, source. Looking at the glint on the eyeglasses frame it looks like a flash was used here.

I really enjoy going through old pictures like those because it's like a window into the past. The scenes are incredibly immersive because of the accuracy and depth of the colors when the film has been properly stored. By comparison, my family's slides from the 1960s and 1970s weren't on Kodachrome and the blue dyes have faded, leaving a lot of them in hues of orange and yellow. This is one of the best surviving examples I can find in our family's slide collection... unfortunately I don't know if it's on Kodachrome or not.

bzBs1Gi.jpg

1967, New Orleans, my mom on the left, my aunt on the right

I had to adjust the white balance on it, and it actually is not too bad. However the contrast is a bit too high and it's rather grainy, which kind of suggests a high ISO film (200s/400s) which would not be Kodachrome. My dad's camera was not very expensive so I'm guessing the glass quality in this shot didn't help either.

If you find these types of photos interesting, I definitely recommend going over to the Shorpy photo blog and putting in "Kodachrome" in the search box. They do have a lot of other good photography on their site. I'm admittedly not very interested in B&W, but they do have some 100-year old pictures that used high-resolution film stock, as well as experimental color, and those are worth checking out.

And finally... do any chasers here have any 1980s Kodachrome storm shots? It would be interesting to see how they have held up against the DSLRs used in the field nowadays. I know a big problem is that it was a slow-speed film that would have been difficult to use under a storm base. The ISO 200 formulation came out in 1986 which probably helped a bit.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
For what it's worth I tried adjusting the white balance on the kitchen photo above and got this:

9KM8K5Z.jpg


I'm not sure if this makes it more lifelike, or makes the incandescent lighting too bluish. It does give me the impression of a magazine photo that doesn't have very good color registration, so maybe balancing it is the wrong thing to do.
 
Nice finds, Tim! Thanks for posting, and the links.

It's kind of hard to resist pulling the tungsten out of that family photo (looks like Kevin Spacey back there too)—

FamilyPhotoV3.jpg
 
Going OT here... sorry... Have any of you seen a 4K (Ultra HD) television yet?

I was in a Best Buy a couple weeks ago with a friend who was looking for something else, and we walked past a 4K TV that was showing a (demo) video of just some nighttime city lights from up on some hill. I've seen a couple articles about 4K, but never read them, thinking "That's stupid; there's no need for anything beyond HDTV". Well, the 4K is AMAZING.
 
Back
Top