Craig Sander , Nov 13, 2007; 01:36 p.m.
I didn't know this until recently, but much of the work that I did for the city
I worked for back in the 1980's was shot on Ektachrome 64. At the time, I
didn't choose, or even care what film we had in our supply cabinets. I just
loaded it in the camera and shot what I had to for our presentations.
But I went back to my old office and started looking at some of the slides we
had from that time, and the mounts clearly have "Ektachrome" in blue right on
the front. And after speaking with the woman who was the secretary for us at
the time, she confirmed with me that she purchased all the film and most of it
was Ektachrome 64.
The funny thing is, all those slides from 20 plus years ago, look just fine. I
didn't notice any fading or discoloration when I looked through them.
I wish I had paid more attention at the time. That film served us well and its
sad now that its being discontinued.
JDM von Weinberg 
, Nov 13, 2007; 01:55 p.m.
In my personal experience, Ektachrome from 32 to 64 was pretty good on archival qualities. According to then information, it was actually more resistant to fading from projection than was Kodachrome. Although K and KII had top rate dark keeping qualities, we often made Ektachrome copy slides for projection in classroom settings.
I found, however, that Ektachrome processed by others than Kodak tended to fade badly. I've often wondered if
1) Kodak didn't tell them quite everything needed, or
2) They were cheap, sloppy, and careless.
However, I opt for (2) since my general rule, law even, is
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.
This has served me well, but I have an historian friend who subscribes to exactly the opposite, but then he did grow up in the Middle East;)
Ellis Vener 
, Nov 13, 2007; 02:04 p.m.
If the lab didn't use Kodak chemistry than of course all bets are off as far as archival quality,
so I agree with Weinberg's second proposition.
John Kelly 
, Nov 13, 2007; 03:21 p.m.
In San Francisco, in E4 era, there were a dozen labs that ran E4 and only a few did work that looked as good as the best E6.
One was Kodak's Redwood City plant, one of the best in the world (with Kodak in Dallas, with Pathe in Paris, and with National Geographic). Another was the lab I managed, Media Generalists. Our E4 and Kodak's look unchanged after three decades.
Most of our clients were AV producers..we did a tremendous amount of finest quality slide duplication, glass mounting, 46mm etc. Nitrogen burst, Nikkor reels, replenishment, test strips.
E4 had a reputation for looking "green" at the time, due entirely to bad processing (one-shot chemistry)...I could name the highest profile labs that did rotten work, but won't.
I was proud to manage that lab. Wonder what happened to Gregor Greig, the owner? Born again, I heard. We were oil and water, but I admired his genius.
Lee Shively , Nov 13, 2007; 03:44 p.m.
All my Ektachromes and Kodachromes from as far back as the early 1970s still look fine. The Fujichromes and Agfachromes now look wretched.
I used Ektachrome 64 exclusively when I had my first 4x5 camera. By research and trial and error, I determined the filtration necessary for extended exposures. I had Tiffen make up on a special order glass filters in the proper magenta strengths to simplify working with the film. I also remember it was an absolute necessity to use a warming filter when shooting in open shade unless you liked the look of "the Ektachrome blues". Despite all the corrective filtration needed, the colors always looked realistic and vivid. I never really got used to the Velvia look that became so popular.
Ron Andrews 
, Nov 13, 2007; 04:47 p.m.
According to Wilhelm, the older E-6 films are rated for 105 years of dark storage while the newer varieties are good for 220 years. This corresponds to a change in the yellow coupler in the films.
John Shriver 
, Nov 13, 2007; 06:06 p.m.
Nothing wrong with the stability of E-6 films, so long as you keep them out of the attic. Even the early ones, with dyes not designed for scanning, scan quite nicely. I'm even surprised by my old High Speed Ektachromes (E-4), even the pushed ones are holding up nicely.
On the other hand, E-3 Ektachromes from 1956 that a friend sadly left for a few summers in an attic are atrocious pink. (But ASF's ROC really can fix them quite well.)
I've also seen Kodachromes gone bad -- but NEVER ones in a Kodak mount. Third-party processing, like Technicolor and Berkey.
Even the much-maligned Anscochrome can hold up pretty well. Yeah, they were always rather low on color saturation, and had pretty shallow shadows (low Dmax). But they can be easily repaired in scanning, as none of the dyes go "missing in action". Just increase contrast a lot on the blue channel, presumably due to the yellow dye having faded the most.
JDM von Weinberg , Nov 14, 2007; 12:05 a.m.
Response to Farewell to Ektachrome 64 and other old friends
A lot of my older shots taken in low light were on Ansco/GAF high-speed slide films. They always were fairly in the brown and magenta spectrum, but we accepted that and their graininess as part of the price of getting those nighttime shots at all. I haven't had much problem with fading, but I always had them processed by Ansco themselves.
I am always amazed at how well Photoshop will do on old faded slides and prints. Sometimes it's enough just to hit autocontrast and autocolor and voila! sometimes the result is better than the original.
