50 years old Ektachrome Slides

[Edwin Ho]

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I am scanning some old Ektachrome slides for a deceased relative. However, the pictures turned out be in black and white. Shouldn't it be in colour? Has the colour faded?

[Rona!d]

vor 10 Minuten schrieb Edwin Ho:

I am scanning some old Ektachrome slides for a deceased relative. However, the pictures turned out be in black and white. Shouldn't it be in colour? Has the colour faded?

Maybe they had the camera set in b&w mode or used a Leica Monochrom?

😆

You could cross-process them as b&w, which went into a kind of dark brown instead of black.

OR you had the scanner software set up in b&w mode? Check the slides in daylight with your own eyes, not the scanner to be sure.

[spydrxx]

Are you sure you have the scanning device properly set up, including the software?

[Edwin Ho]

3 minutes ago, Rona!d said:

Maybe they had the camera set in b&w mode or used a Leica Monochrom?

😆

You could cross-process them as b&w, which went into a kind of dark brown instead of black.

OR you had the scanner software set up in b&w mode? Check the slides in daylight with your own eyes, not the scanner to be sure.

My scanner is not set in B&W.  I am using Vuescan and had no problem scanning Kodakchrome. He's not around for me to ask though.

It's alright, this will do and thank you for the prompt response, The pix are for archive for his next generations.

[Edwin Ho]

25 minutes ago, spydrxx said:

Are you sure you have the scanning device properly set up, including the software?

I am quite sure it is set up properly. I have been scanning colour and B&W films of my own. It is a Canoscan 8800F with Vuescan.

FYI, there is an orange tinge on the slides; could it be B&W slide. Not sure if Ektachrome had black and white slides 50 years ago.

[Stuart Richardson]

Slides are positive film...that is you look at them and the scan should look the same as the film itself. Can you see colors on the slide in your hand? If so, then they are color. Black and white slides are very rare, and it is highly unlikely that they are black and white slides, at least as far as I am aware, the only ones I know of are Agfa Scala and Tmax Reversal, as well as DR5, but none of those are fifty years old, I believe. Ektachrome is a slide film...but it could have faded to the extent that the saturation is low, but it should not be anything close to black and white. Can you just take an iphone photo of the actual film? That should make it clear what is going on. An orange tinge suggests that it is a color negative film, not a slide film...are you sure it is not Ektacolor? Not Ektachrome? Ektacolor is a color negative film, in which case you need to scan it as one to see proper colors. 

Edited September 7, 2022 by Stuart Richardson

[Edwin Ho]

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6 minutes ago, Stuart Richardson said:

Not Ektachrome?

It is definitely Ektachrome as the slide sleeve says so.  My software was set for Kodak - Ektachrome - E6.

The slide is definitely a "positive" image. Strange, but I shall explore further in the next few days.

I've also scanned E6 slides in the past and had no problem as it turned out be in colour.

 

[Rona!d]

Faded Ektachromes can be pretty red, maybe the scanning software thinks a nearly mono-color cast in red is b&w.

CHECK the slides with your eyes. WHAT do you see with your EYES?

If you can see a non faded color slide with many colors the software is set up wrong.

If there is a strong color cast the presets you use might not help enough to get the old colors back.

There´s not always the same film material inside the slideframes what is printed onto them if somebody used Ektachrome frames for a b&w positive film.

Many options possible.

[adan]

If the slides are really 50 years old (processed prior to 1976) they will have been processed in the old E-4 chemistry. And yes, older Ektachrome is not as "permanent" as Kodachrome - the dyes will fade with long-term exposure to the environment (chemical air pollutants, humidity, heat).

Photography is a visual medium, so as Stuart said, making at least a snapshot of them backlit by a window, and posting it here, will show us how the originals look, and help with diagnosing the problem and suggesting possible solutions.

Some scanner software has a setting for "color restoration" - basically increasing saturation overall in the digital capture to dig out as much of the remaining dye tints as possible. I can't remember if Vuescan has that feature (it's been so long since I scanned old color slides regularly).

[Edwin Ho]

10 hours ago, Rona!d said:

Faded Ektachromes can be pretty red, maybe the scanning software thinks a nearly mono-color cast in red is b&w.

CHECK the slides with your eyes. WHAT do you see with your EYES?

If you can see a non faded color slide with many colors the software is set up wrong.

If there is a strong color cast the presets you use might not help enough to get the old colors back.

There´s not always the same film material inside the slideframes what is printed onto them if somebody used Ektachrome frames for a b&w positive film.

Many options possible.

Yes, it is orange tinged towards red. It does not look like a non-faded colour slide with colours.

[Edwin Ho]

9 hours ago, adan said:

If the slides are really 50 years old (processed prior to 1976) they will have been processed in the old E-4 chemistry. And yes, older Ektachrome is not as "permanent" as Kodachrome - the dyes will fade with long-term exposure to the environment (chemical air pollutants, humidity, heat).

Photography is a visual medium, so as Stuart said, making at least a snapshot of them backlit by a window, and posting it here, will show us how the originals look, and help with diagnosing the problem and suggesting possible solutions.

Some scanner software has a setting for "color restoration" - basically increasing saturation overall in the digital capture to dig out as much of the remaining dye tints as possible. I can't remember if Vuescan has that feature (it's been so long since I scanned old color slides regularly).

It is very likely the slide was processed prior to 1976. Vuescan has colour restoration feature which I used. Here is the slide.

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[adan]

Excellent! Thank you.

So indeed, the cyan dye has faded - unevenly - which allows more red light to pass through. Especially in the shadows.

Below is a gross overall "balancing" to give each primary color (R/G/B) equal tonal range from black to white.

NOT a good correction, obviously; more of a lab experiment to see what is there once the green and blue are roughly balanced to the red overall. The less-faded areas (bottom-center, right side) are now too cyan, but show some cyan dye still exists there.

An experienced retoucher could do a lot better with time, "painting out" excess cyan/green or magenta, adding some pale orange to the faces, and so on, in specific places. And, of course, the Vuescan color restoration may help a bit, compared to our "window scanner" .

You'll have to make a command decision as to the time involved, how much the other pictures are affected, and whether to work on them in detail, or simply scan to B&W for history's sake.

(Not sure what the white squiggles are - perhaps places where fungus threads "ate" the dyes. Or perhaps just places the dyed emulsions were scratched off by a sand particle migrating over the decades).

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[250swb]

I've had a go with the slide as well and get exactly the same result as Andy by pressing 'Auto colour' in Photoshop, and I've tried a colour restoration programme and that gives the very same interpretation of the scene. You can get 'something' out of the image using Photoshops 'Neural Filter' set to colorize. This was done by first converting the image to B&W to get rid of the yellow and green staining and to set the contrast and then allowing the programme to colorize it. I guess with a bit of dodging and burning you could get even more out of the individual elements in the image at the B&W stage.

 

 

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Edited September 8, 2022 by 250swb

[250swb]

This brings a bit more detail out in the faces

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[Rona!d]

Have similar aged Ektachromes in our family archive - so far not scanned but that problem is known.

Nice to see the encouraging result of 250swb, thanks a lot!

[Edwin Ho]

So it was a very old faded slide. I shall leave it as black and white as there are many similar slides in the collection (too much time required to fix it). The photos were shot while the deceased was in Harvard University. Family members are more concerned with photos depicting family life; so we can let this lot go as B&W. I have no problem scanning all the Kodakchrome slides. 

Thank you all for your input. This aside, I do enjoy shooting film with my M2. 😁

[Chuck Albertson]

Looking at some slides my dad shot in the late 1940s, the Ektachromes (process E-2, maybe even E-1) have faded greatly, almost to clear film base in some cases. The Kodachromes still look like they just came back from the lab.

[adan]

3 hours ago, Chuck Albertson said:

Looking at some slides my dad shot in the late 1940s, the Ektachromes (process E-2, maybe even E-1) have faded greatly, almost to clear film base in some cases. The Kodachromes still look like they just came back from the lab.

Say the magic words - "incorporated color couplers."

Ektachrome-type slides (including Fuji's and others), and color negative films, trace their ancestry to the Neu Agfacolor process of 1935 (same year as Kodachrome went on sale).

The Neu Agfacolor process was simpler, because it incorporated color couplers into the film layers themselves, when the film was made. Which combined with exhausted developer by-products to form dyes in each layer. That process only required a single color developer to create yellow, cyan, and magenta dyes simultaneously.

Very convenient - only one color development step in the darkroom. We can do it today in our bathrooms, using three steps with Cinestill or other kits for C-41, or five-eight steps for "reversal" Ektachrome slides, depending on the kit used.

But the downside was that the choice of final dyes and their characteristics was very limited - only to dyes that all could be created simultaneously with only one developer formula. The result was dyes with imperfect permanence.

Kodachrome used a very complex process (up to 17 steps) that re-exposed and color-developed each color layer separately - each with its own developer formula - and the developers contained the dye couplers, not the film. Allowing Kodak a wider choice of dyes/dye-couplers, including ones with significantly better fade-resistance. (And better resolution - but that's another story. )

https://www.dagiebrundert.de/alle Bilder/Kodachromemagicbath.pdf

Downside - Kodachrome required much more elaborate (room-sized) machinery, more precision, and a lot of time, to do the six re-expose/re-develop steps in perfect balance. And until a 1980-ish lawsuit, only Kodak's labs could do it. Required mail-order processing, unless one was lucky enough to live near one of the few Kodak labs.

During and after WW2, Kodak began using incorporated couplers in Kodacolor negs for prints (1942) and "ready-in-two-hours" Ektachromes (1946).

Edited September 13, 2022 by adan