35mm slides

[andys93integra]

I sent DaveH a message concerning the 35mm slides i have, but i thought i would also post here. I have old slides from my Great Uncle who was the Photographer from the 50s-80s. These particular slides were taken when he was shooting the movie "The Hallelujah Trail." I have about 50 slides for this movie and they are all pinkish/reddish in color.

My question is, are they supposed to be red/pinkish? Or do you think they were damaged in some way, by light, chemicals, or maybe just the way they were processed?

Here is one of the slides, there are more at my website under "Slides from movies."

andysphotos.zenfolio.com/p1067635057/e2737df94

Andy

P.S. does the link work?

[Doug T.]

Hi Andy!
Your link works fine.
Are those photos actual slides, or are they mounted movie film frames? I know that slide and movie films would change color somewhat with age, I think I read somewhere that Kodachrome would turn red. I don't really know a lot about what vintage color films do with age.
My guess would be a chemical shift, but don't take my word for it. I know more about what wood does.
Neat pics though, no matter what color they are

Doug

[daveh]

Andy,

Were they Kodachrome? If so they would have had to be processed by Kodak and the likelihood of processing error would be much less.

I can't say that I have had a slide film with that uniform tone of red. If not Kodachrome then I suppose it's possible that the colour developer was depleted.

Another possibility is that he might have been trying to get a sepia like tone to go with the era the film was about.

(A brief note about reversal film processing:
Kodachrome (if I remember correctly) has the colour couplers in the developer, rather than in the film as other types do. Its processing could only be done by a Kodak Lab.
The other films were suitable for home processing. Basically there was a first developer which produced a B&W image. This had to be fogged to produce a positive image. In some processes the fogging was done by exposure to light: others used chemical means. The film then went through a colour developer to produce the positive colour image - assuming it was colour reversal stock as there was also B&W reversal film. The last stage was the fixer. I've left out several stages - wash, stop, conditioner, bleach.
Older processes tended to be light-reversal and done at 68 or 70 degrees F. It took ages to process a film. Later chemicals tended to be used at more like 100 F.)

See what others think and say.

Dave.

[andys93integra]

(I think that is Lee Remick on the right in the slide i posted earlier)

Here is a pic of one of the slides, i think it is Billy Wilder who was the director for the movie (this slide is also on my site). It says Eastman color transparency on all the slides from this movie that i have. I have slide from other movies and none are like this, meaning none are colored like this.

Again, i have a few more pics in the slides from movies gallery on my site.

Andy

[PeterW]

Andy,

I'm doing my usual trick of half-informed guessing here, but I would suspect that a clue is on the card mount of the slide you posted where it says Eastman Color.

Eastman Color was a colour-negative film developed by Kodak to give a negative which could be printed on to standard Technicolor movie film to give a positive.

This had two big advantages over the original Technicolor which required a bulky beam-splitter behind the camera lens to produce first two and then three images through colour gels. These were then combined in the lab to produce a coloured positive, but the film had to be sent to the Technicolor labs for processing.

The advantages were that Eastman Color could be shot in a standard camera without beam splitters, and the development and printing on to Technicolor film could be done by Kodak technicians in an on-location darkroom trailer van to produce "rushes" of the day's shooting for the director to see. It was also, after editing and cutting, much easier and cheaper to print positives for distribution than with the older Technicolor film. Really just a chemical variation on the old method of making black and white movies.

I think by the mid 1960s when The Halleluja Trail was made Technicolor was owned by Kodak.

It may be that your uncle was using Eastman Color negative movie stock in his camera which was developed and printed by the unit's darkroom as a favour with, just perhaps, not quite the same care about washing of the positives that was given to the movie film. The red cast may be from residual chemicals left in the emulsion.

You can see a trailer of The Halleluja Trail on U-tube, just ask Google for "Halleluja Trail". You'll notice that the colour is not so saturated as Kodachrome, which I doubt could have been processed easily on location, and not so easily or economically duplicated for cinema release.

I took the liberty of copying the first pic you posted and fiddling with the colour balance in Photoshop. It's a lovely pic, shot against the light (which made guessing at the original colour a little more difficult). I also cropped it to get rid of what looked like a green chemical stain on the right hand side.

It's far from perfect and I've no doubt that someone with more experience could do better, but for a quick job it isn't all that far removed from the colour in the trailer.



All the above is just guessing, but it's a possible explanation. Others may think differently.

PeterW

[andys93integra]

The line on the right side wasn't a stain it was something in the projector as seen in the pic here. (don't mind the mud on the walls i am currently in the process of redoing my room)

This is what it looks like with no slide in the projector.

Andy

[Doug T.]

Peter,
Is that Eastman Color the same film that places like Seattle Film Works sold ?
They would advertise that you could get prints & slides from the same negative. I think it was called Eastman 5647 or something like that, and one could only get it processed through them.
I remember it being advertised as the same film used in movies.

Doug

[daveh]

What I should have added was that I took a Ektachrome film in to a local chemists for developing eight years or so ago. It was sent to a processing lab and they mistakenly developed it as a colour negative film. It came out similar to the old unmasked film. Printed out, as a straight print, it gave a yellowish-green cast.

That leads me to another thought: did Eastman Color start as an unmasked film and then become masked? The original masking was a much lighter colour that it has finished up. Perhaps they started masking some stock without photographers being properly aware what that meant.

By the time I started using colour negative film it was masked. I don't think that I have any unmasked negative negatives.

Lee Remick: A lovely actress, who died of cancer. I just had a brief look on Wiki and I am amazed to see she died in 1991.

[PeterW]

Doug,

Is that Eastman Color the same film that places like Seattle Film Works sold ?
They would advertise that you could get prints & slides from the same negative. I think it was called Eastman 5647 or something like that, and one could only get it processed through them.
I remember it being advertised as the same film used in movies.

Sorry, no idea, Doug. I haven't come acros Eastman 5647.

PeterW

[Doug T.]

Peter,
I probably got the number wrong, it's been a long time since I used it. I did find, however, that it was an Eastman Color film, the process was ECN-2, and that it had a coating that had to be stripped off before it went through the developer.
It was left over movie film that was cut and loaded into 35mm casettes for re-sale.
Has anyone else out there ever used it?

Doug

[Randy]

I've got some Ecktachromes that turned reddish.

[olroy2044]

Doug, I think the number you remember was 5247. I used to shoot a lot of it. Dale Labs in Florida, and Seattle Film Works both sold it. Processing was not expensive, and they sent out fresh film on a 1 to 1 basis free of charge when you sent film in for processing. I used to get slides and prints back, with the negatives uncut. The negatives looked just like the slides Andy showed us. A little inconvenient, but the results were quite good.

I found a couple of unprocessed rolls a while back. I think the only difference between the speeds was the processing.



I found a lab that would process them for me, if I wanted to spend $35.00 (!!!!!) per roll, with a 10-12 month turn around time! I think they will remain shelf queens! Roy

[mickeyobe]

Aug 28, 2010 10:31:27 GMT -5 Doug T. said:

.
Has anyone else out there ever used it?

Doug

I did use it once. I didn't much care for it. I was a confirmed Fujichrome addict and could get 24 hour processing.

Mickey

[Deleted]

Don't mean to jump the topic but Bill Gulick, who wrote the books the movie is based on, is a friend of mine. He lives in Walla Walla, Washington and is in his 90s. He also wrote the book the movie "Bend in the River, starring Jimmy Stewart, is based on. Bill wrote several books books on the American frontier for the publisher where I worked. I was his editor for 14 years.

W

[Doug T.]

:)Wayne,
I never read the books, but just knowing someone who has had a book published, AND they were made into movies.......
It's a really neat thing, to be sure

Doug