Kodachrome 64, a film stock that is more interesting to me than most film stocks,
and that is because replicating the kodachrome 64 was, without any doubt, my most difficult and biggest challenge of replicating any film stock
Rather than going for the fujifilm kodachrome simulation, which, for me, did not seems to look anything like the original kodachrome, so I decided to go on a different route
Disclaimer Compared to digital, Film is an organic medium, which means that results vary even if the image has been shot same place with same film stock. It has many more factors that influence the final rendition of the color. (light, heat, method of handling, processing and storing) So if you develop your pictures in 2 places they might come out totally differently, and that's exactly what we love about film, the unexpected. With my film simulation recipes, I am trying to bring back a little bit of that unexpected and infuse digital medium with a feeling of novelty and discovery. These film simulations are just an rejuvenation attempt of film and will not be 100% accurate. That being said, I might start a Blog to showcase each film simulation individually and hope you will enjoy this short article, let's get started.
This film stock is just so complex and volatile, it’s really hard to find 2 pictures that look alike on the internet
and the fact it’s not being produced anymore it’s not making it any easier
The creation of this picture profile alone, took me about 2 months and at one point I almost gave up because of the complexity of the project.
Funny thing is I accidentally created the kodak ultramax400 in the process of creating the kodachrome film simulation
*maybe I pushed it too much towards magenta in this one- check the skies in the left corner*
so for 2 months I kept searching and gathering sample photos of kodachrome 64, in hopes of putting them all together and finding the characteristic of the film, the so called pattern or what makes this film so unique
and it was almost impossible to find the same characteristics in 2 photos, they all looked like being shot on totally different film stocks
Asked people on forums about characteristics of the old Kodachrome 64 and everybody seems to have a different memory of how it looked in terms of contrast and color,
the only thing in common, was that kodachrome was the best film ever made, and they all loved it!
And finally, after comparing hundreds of pictures, the only 2 characteristics that I could see appearing in each photo, was the blueish magenta tones and the accurate, desaturated greens, so I went for that
Look at that lovely skin tone falloff and almost blueish green hues - Used a Diffusion Filter for this shot
The whole process was very frustrating, continuously going back and forth, at one point I think I had 5 ore 6 different kodachrome recipe Variations on my notepad, shooting and testing them all in the same time to see which one is the best!
It was a complete madness.
That was the point where I almost gave up,
but also, that was the moment god was like ‘ i’m going to give this dude a break' , so he did.
So that evening, while I was searching some more kodachrome shots, I found a forum post with 2 images taken in the same place, same lighting conditions, one on kodachrome and the other on digital.
Wow, now, not only I can finally see an accurate depiction of kodachrome64 with almost the whole spectrum of colors, but I can also compare it to digital and see how the film interpreted colors, more exactly how are the colors shifted.
here is the link to the post, I am so grateful to the photographer for sharing his photos with us!
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4213836
Look at the strong magenta shifting, slight greens in the brightest parts of the clouds, and the overall the color shifting is pretty crazy
I have brought this Film Simulation the closest I could to the original Kodachrome 64 using only the picture profiles, but I wanted to push the image further, so I also created the Neo Chrome LUT,
to bring it closer to the Original Film Look.
Kodachrome Film Sim - Out of Camera JPEGs
I recommend checking his post at https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4213836 for better zoom in features.
Great work 👏