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Hi everyone,

I've owned an M9 for a while. Most of the film I've shot was either xpan, tri-x, portra or superia - so I am not at all versed in what kodachrome looks like.

  1. Is the kodachrome look in an M9 derived more from the JPGs or DNGs or both??
  2. I would love to see some of your M9 photos which you feel display the kodachrome look and if you could indicate if it is a JPG or a DNG

Thank you

Olivier

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The thing with Kodachrome is that it had a dual personality - soft color with "normal" exposures, and intense, saturated color with a bit of underexposure. Plus of course it came in three flavor-generations over 70 years: Kodachrome (original), Kodachrome II/X, and Kodachrome 25/64/200.

For me the M9 matched the saturated category, such as the work of Ernst Haas and Pete Turner.

http://ernst-haas.com/classic-color-motion/

http://www.peteturner.com/Americana/index.html

When one notices that some Kodachromes have cyan/green-tinted shadows - and some have a magenta/purple cast - and some, as Archiver says, have bluish shadow tints, a "Kodachrome look" is very much in the eye of the beholder - and the particular picture beheld.

Edited by adan
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For Kodachrome 25 is the unique one, with a grey, anthracite ‘color‘ cast so to speak, in fact it is utterly neutral. Kodachrome 200 has a nice saturation which makes landscape photography very special, but not as unique as the 25; it has a very nice grain/noise. I never liked the 64. When I compare the M9 to Kodachrome, I’m talking about the 25. 

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35 minutes ago, otto.f said:

For Kodachrome 25 is the unique one, with a grey, anthracite ‘color‘ cast so to speak, in fact it is utterly neutral. Kodachrome 200 has a nice saturation which makes landscape photography very special, but not as unique as the 25; it has a very nice grain/noise. I never liked the 64. When I compare the M9 to Kodachrome, I’m talking about the 25. 

Get over with it. Move on.

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40 minutes ago, adan said:

The thing with Kodachrome is that it had a dual personality - soft color with "normal" exposures, and intense, saturated color with a bit of underexposure. Plus of course it came in three flavor-generations over 70 years: Kodachrome (original), Kodachrome II/X, and Kodachrome 25/64/200.

For me the M9 matched the saturated category, such as the work of Ernst Haas and Pete Turner.

http://ernst-haas.com/classic-color-motion/

http://www.peteturner.com/Americana/index.html

When one notices that some Kodachromes have cyan/green-tinted shadows - and some have a magenta/purple cast - and some, as Archiver says, have bluish shadow tints, a "Kodachrome look" is very much in the eye of the beholder - and the particular picture beheld.

This is so interesting. I've always wondered how on earth McCurry and others got such saturated colours from this film, when most that I've seen have more the soft color. Haas & Turner's work is amazing. Thank you Adan - really giving me a different perspective here.

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38 minutes ago, otto.f said:

For Kodachrome 25 is the unique one, with a grey, anthracite ‘color‘ cast so to speak, in fact it is utterly neutral. Kodachrome 200 has a nice saturation which makes landscape photography very special, but not as unique as the 25; it has a very nice grain/noise. I never liked the 64. When I compare the M9 to Kodachrome, I’m talking about the 25. 

It seems like the one I am quite interested in is the 64 I think. Specifically the high contrast ones with the saturated response to reds and blues. This is not by the 25, no?

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56 minutes ago, Einst_Stein said:

Why?

Enjoy your M9. Let M9 be M9, not a Kodachrome or Velvia imitator. 

Period.

Because learning whether from books, research or the experience of others is something that interests me. Odd that you seem to think I am not enjoying my M9. I'd ask you the same question, "Why spend time providing contextually irrelevant answers. Why?", but I'm not interested in that answer to be honest.

10 minutes ago, Einst_Stein said:

Get over with it. Move on.

I personally appreciate the responses from Archiver, Adan and Otto. If you don't then perhaps this thread is not for you and you should follow your own advice.

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Even with a couple of answers I still don't know what this thread is about. What has the M9 to do with Kodachrome? Does the M9 have a Kodachrome colour setting in the menu? When I had it, I never saw that. Confused....

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Remembering back to the days of Kodachrome, photographers suffered at ASA 25 with Kodachrome II to get the fine grain and beautiful images.  Kodachrome X was  not far behind.   When updated the news was the pros were stock piling the old film in freezers by the hundreds of rolls. And the amateurs among us were led down the path of suffering with those horrible inconsistent magenta or green casts. Velvia became the new holy grail and we suffered no more. 
 

To the op you might find this helpful:

https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2015/02/the-great-debate-ccd-vs-cmos-part-1/

And to add one more variable to the mix, my limited comparisons of Zeiss glass vs Nikon or  Leica glass showed it to be more saturated, colorful.  I could see more difference in lens color than sensor color. 

Edited by darylgo
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25 minutes ago, tom.w.bn said:

Even with a couple of answers I still don't know what this thread is about. What has the M9 to do with Kodachrome? Does the M9 have a Kodachrome colour setting in the menu? When I had it, I never saw that. Confused....

When it came out, people were saying that the sensor and software were developed with the colour palette of Kodachrome in mind. I never saw it myself (what I have in mind as Kodachrome).

 

1 hour ago, Einst_Stein said:

Why?

Enjoy your M9. Let M9 be M9, not a Kodachrome or Velvia imitator. 

Period.

People often say it's not important what gear was used etc but the final image is what's important so if Oliviersm wants to pursue that look, why shouldn't he? Ernst Haas and Saul Leiter pursued a certain look, as did/does Salgado, Ralph Gibson etc. In fact I suppose we all do either consciously or not, whether it's grainy high contrast black and white or low contrast colour with the palette of Portra or Fuji Pro 400H etc.

Pete

Edited by Stealth3kpl
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23 minutes ago, tom.w.bn said:

Even with a couple of answers I still don't know what this thread is about. What has the M9 to do with Kodachrome? Does the M9 have a Kodachrome colour setting in the menu? When I had it, I never saw that. Confused....

Guess, I'm not the best at expressing myself. :) I've been using the M9 for about 4 years - I've spent most of that time shooting than reading too much about it. However one statement which I have come across however is that the M9 has a film quality to it and that the sensor was developed based on kodachrome. I've never shot kodachrome, so I am interested in understanding the relationship between the film and the m9 and under which circumstances the M9 begins to mimic the film kodachrome. It's personal curiosity really. If I want to get that film look or that portra-800 look, then I shoot film or portra-800. 

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23 minutes ago, darylgo said:

Velvia became the new holy grail and we suffered no more. 
 

To the op you might find this helpful:

https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2015/02/the-great-debate-ccd-vs-cmos-part-1/

And to add one more variable to the mix, my limited comparisons of Zeiss glass vs Nikon or  Leica glass showed it to be more saturated, colorful.  I could see more difference in lens color than sensor color. 

Thank you for that. My thoughts on velvia - wow that was a difficult film for me to shoot. I saw all these fantastically saturated colours and I was just nuking one roll at a time. It took a while for me to get consistent exposures - and whilst I am not able to get those incredibly saturated colours I've seen others get, I am getting some exposures, which I enjoy.

I've also noticed different colour responses between my Leica and my Zeiss glass. Especially recently as I've been learning more about the colour circle and I guess paying more attention to that, but far from actually able to express an opinion on that, which I can stand by.

Edited by oliviersm
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vor 19 Minuten schrieb oliviersm:

Guess, I'm not the best at expressing myself. :) I've been using the M9 for about 4 years - I've spent most of that time shooting than reading too much about it. However one statement which I have come across however is that the M9 has a film quality to it and that the sensor was developed based on kodachrome. I've never shot kodachrome, so I am interested in understanding the relationship between the film and the m9 and under which circumstances the M9 begins to mimic the film kodachrome. It's personal curiosity really. If I want to get that film look or that portra-800 look, then I shoot film or portra-800. 

Ok. Maybe that fueled the CCD vs. CMOS debate?  I mainly ignore these debates because I personally think that the raw converter has such a big influence on the output. When I open M9 files with Lightroom, Capture One or DXO I get Adobe colours or Phase One colours or DXO colours. They all have their own interpretation of colours and look different for the same file.

Maybe a jpg out of camera shows the intention of the camera maker in colours best? That is definitely true for Fuji who really invest a lot in their jpg engine while it seems that Leica gives the development of jpg output to a junior developer... "we need to have jpg output. Don't waste to much time on the development of that feature".

Edited by tom.w.bn
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12 minutes ago, tom.w.bn said:

Ok. Maybe that fueled the CCD vs. CMOS debate?  I mainly ignore these debates because I personally think that the raw converter has such a big influence on the output. When I open M9 files with Lightroom, Capture One or DXO I get Adobe colours or Phase One colours or DXO colours. They all have their own interpretation of colours and look different for the same file.

Maybe a jpg out of camera shows the intention of the camera maker in colours best? That is definitely true for Fuji who really invest a lot in their jpg engine while it seems that Leica gives the development of jpg output to a junior developer... "we need to have jpg output. Don't waste to much time on the development of that feature".

Yes this is true. The way I see it is, the camera manufacturers make some choices to determine colour response on their sensors, and then the raw converters make additional choices in how to interpret the choices made by the camera manufacturers. Sen Tucker did a video comparing a canon and a sony with the same lens on a similar topic. What was immediately clear to me when I first started shooting the M9 (more than on any other digital camera I've owned) was that there were some very distinct choices made by Leica with the M9. It was immediately noticeable for me around magenta (and how it changed the colour of lips in portraits I've shot).

Edited by oliviersm
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Hello Olivier,

as decades old Kodachrome user, (as Adan wrote, so many "Kodachrome looks") that my intention to "imitate the look", thing that I intended for years,

is no more valid.

Even when I'm pleased to have (even now) some slide projections on Pradovit, I'm (almost) upset when I have those Kodachrome II/X/25/64/200 "scanned at best"

on computer screen.

May it be the "flat look" or "less/more contrast" or "color cast", or what else ?

 

That said, I'm happy that I used those Kodachrome for long, and now I scan them with pleasure but those "Kodachrome looks" can't be duplicate anymore with any means.

some opinions, here ...

...

lastly this post

 

In my way, the "situation" can be good/bad/no more/etc.

 

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😉

Arnaud

Edited by a.noctilux
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as side note, with some years of M9-old-kodachrome-user, I did some "Kodachrome imitation" in my post-processing,

like here a tricky picture (difficult to use real K25 of good old days) in rainy day Ireland

 

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Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

 

M9, Summilux 35mm, 160 ISO, 2012

seen here, Torc Killarney

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Thank you @a.noctilux for those posts. The photos you've made with kodachrome are beautiful. I am now slowly understanding the sense of the link between M9 and kodachrome, although it will always only be an inspired by or a based on. Trying to reproduce what you see on your pradovit in scanning must be exceptionally difficult. I remember the slideshows my grand father used to compile. They were never the same as the printed photos, I can only imagine the scanners and screens of today add (or subtract) even more character/information. 

PS: Green is probably my least favourite colour :) but this photo: WOW!! It looks like Sri Lanka...

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