KodakKodachrome 200

Kodak Kodachrome 200 was the fast member of the Kodachrome family: an ISO 200 color slide film for daylight, processed only in Kodak’s K-14 process and sold in 35 mm as the consumer KL and the Professional PKL [1] [2]. Kodak rated its grain at RMS 16, against 10 for the Kodachrome 64 [1]. It has been discontinued; its look survives in old slides and in imitations such as the Grain Archive style.

Look and color

Kodachrome 200 is thinly documented, and most written accounts concern Kodachrome 25 and 64. What follows separates Kodak’s claims from photographers’ reports.

• Kodak’s description. “Natural colors” and “extremely high sharpness and fine grain”, for sports, editorial, stage and outdoor use [1].
• Same color as the family? filmscanner.info states that the colors are “all the same for all kinds of film”, so that a green meadow looks the same on the 25 as on the 64 [7]. Kodak wrote that the 200 has natural colors, without a comparison [1]. We found no measurement that settles the point.
• A quality trade-off. A reader of Casual Photophile recalls that the 200 “followed, but I don’t think it was nearly as good, and was grainy”. This is a reader comment under an article about the 25 and 64, not the article itself [4].
• Expired rolls drift. Users of the Flickr Kodachrome group report a magenta or pinkish cast on expired 200 rolls, and that the last batches “deteriorate very quickly” [6]. Michael Raso found an expired test frame “a bit muddy” and had to add contrast in Photoshop [5]. These describe aged film, not fresh film.
• Push processing. Pushed to EI 500 or 800, the color balance moves toward magenta-red. Kodak presents this as a benefit, since it offsets some of the greenish artificial light in stadiums [1].

We found no page that describes the greens, the skin or the skies of the 200 in detail. The Grain Archive style therefore rests mainly on the datasheet and on the Kodachrome 64 accounts, and says so on its page [10].

Tonality

• Curve. On the datasheet’s characteristic curves, D-min is near 0.2 and D-max reaches about 3.5 (red), 3.3 (green) and 3.2 (blue). The three curves lie closer together than on the Kodachrome 64 [1]. Our reading of the graph: a midtone slope of the order of 1.2, against about 1.7 for the 64, so a gentler curve. This is a visual estimate without numerical measurement.
• Contrast in words. No source we found describes the 200’s contrast in words.
• Push. Kodak recommended push processing for this film only, to EI 500 and EI 800 [1].
• Long exposures. No correction from 1/10,000 to 1/100 s; +1/2 stop and a CC10Y filter at 1/10 s; 1 s and longer not recommended [1].
• Tungsten and photolamps. EI 50 under 3200 K tungsten with an 80A filter, EI 64 under 3400 K photolamps with an 80B filter [1].

Grain and sharpness

• Kodak calls the 200 “fine grain” and the 25 and 64 “extremely fine grain” [1]. On paper, the 200 is the coarsest of the table, including Fujifilm’s ISO 400 slide film.
• The conditions are close but not identical: Kodak reads at gross diffuse visual density 1.0, Fujifilm at 1.0 above D-min [1] [9]. The figures also come from different decades.
• Sharpness: Kodak writes “extremely high sharpness” and publishes a modulation transfer curve, but no resolving power figure [1].

Spectral sensitivity

The datasheet page for the 200 carries its own curves, different from the 64’s [1]. The blue-sensitive layer peaks near 440 nm, the green-sensitive layer near 555 nm and the red-sensitive layer near 660 nm, and the blue and green layers fall steeply on their long-wavelength side. Neighboring layers cross near 492 nm (blue and green) and 586 nm (green and red). The Grain Archive style is tuned from written accounts, not computed from these curves [10].

Names, status and history

• 1974: K-14. Wikipedia dates the final version of the Kodachrome process, K-14, to 1974 [3].
• 1986: Kodachrome 200. Wikipedia’s product table lists the Professional 35 mm film from 1986 and the consumer 35 mm film from 1988 [3].
• Codes. PKL is the Professional version and KL the consumer one [1] [2].
• Discontinuation: the dates disagree. Wikipedia’s text says the 200 was discontinued in November 2006, and its table ends the Professional film in 2004 and the consumer film in 2007 [3]. Kodak’s June 2009 datasheets carry a notice that “KODACHROME Film has been discontinued”, for the whole family [1] [2]. We could not verify the exact date.
• 2009: end of the line. Kodak announced on June 22, 2009 that it would stop making Kodachrome [3]. The datasheet names no exact replacement, and suggests Ektar 100 and Ektachrome E100G [1].
• End of processing. The last K-14 processing machine was taken out of service on December 30, 2010 at Dwayne’s Photo in Kansas [3]. Kodachrome can no longer be developed in color.

Also sold as

• Kodachrome 200 Professional Film (code PKL) (confirmed) [1]
• Kodachrome 200 Film (consumer version, code KL) (confirmed) [2]