A Highly Unlikely Kodachromic Experiment

If you have ever perused the entries of  this blog, it is readily apparent that I have a huge reverence for Kodachrome film.  And this reverence is particularly strong for the first stable emulsion that was produced between 1938 and 1962.  The colors rendered by this "Red Border Kodachrome" tend to really favor the often nostalgic settings they are used to portray.

At times, I have gone through various efforts to replicate this look, either through attempts of digital manipulation or through carefully selecting my subject matter to try to exclude as many tell-tale modern anachronisms as I can.  The results have shown hints of promise, but were largely lacking to me, and as a result, I tended to shelve the efforts.

My conclusions of my first attempts were that the best starting point to replicate this nostalgic look was a film image taken on a vintage film camera.  However, my attempts on the few other transparency films left did not render a palette close to the Kodachrome hues that I'd seen.  In fact, I'd only seen one current film that gave me a hint of a Kodachrome look.

A little while back, I tested a new camera which, despite its operational quirks, did deliver a very retro looking vignetting in its results, while still giving off a sharp central image.  I was at least impressed with this aspect of the camera, and wondered where else I might use this to my advantage.

Which leads me to this - another completely blind stab at replicating the look of Kodachrome using the following as my ingredients:

• A film not made by Eastman Kodak
• A film that is not even a transparency film
• A camera using a format for which Kodachrome was never made.
• A significant amount of foolhardy faith. 
• A limited amount of digital intervention in case the above doesn't pan out.

My film for this experiment is Fuji Pro 400H, the last color negative film made by Fuji in the 120 format, and one pretty well known for its rendering of nice green tones.  In my usual oddball way, I'm not even using it in the 120 format.  Rather, I am cutting this film down to 127 format instead.  The traditionalist in me would have cut this down to 828 instead since it was technically the first format for which the early Kodachrome was made.  However, since this is a 400 speed film instead of a 10-12 speed film like the original Kodachrome, I need to use a camera with adequate enough of a top shutter speed to accomodate such a fast film.

And just which camera might that be?  Why the Foth Derby of course, somewhat appropriate for the course since it was in production when Kodachrome was first released in the late 1930's.  The 1/500 top speed will allow this fast speed film to be used in full sun with the camera stopped down to f/16, something that would not have been possible on a Bantam. Besides, since the Foth is a half-frame 127 camera, it has a 30x40mm image size nearly identical to the 28x40mm image size of the Bantam 828 format.

A couple of lovely days over the Fathers Day Weekend in 2016 delivered some picture perfect weather, so I brought out this classic camera with its unusual film choice to see if I could get results that resembled the Kodachrome of decades past.  Here are some of the better results:

May the Foth be with you: The Derby Camera

In the digital photography era, a photographer who still collects and shoots film cameras can often feel like a kid in a candy store.  It is this feeling that tends to lead to an air of irresponsibility, particularly in the digital marketplace of online auctions.

The ease of finding interesting film cameras combined with a cheap outlay cost for acquisistion often results in the film camera collector finding themselves an owner of cameras which they may not have known about just an hour previously, leaving them the task to figure out a use, if any, for their newly found goods.

While I had heard about, and even read a bit about the Foth Derby, it was never a camera that struck me as a "must-have."  Yet, in my recently discovered interest in the 127 format, as well as my desire to shoot 127 film and come away with more shots per roll than the Agfa Billy 0 would provide, I'd given it enough consideration to place what I considered a lowball bid upon a reasonably decent example of this camera model.  When the last of the sands of the auction's hourglass had fallen down, I was the new owner of a Foth Derby, and no particular plan for it.

A camera design that has its share of genius and not-so-smart.