Long Term Color Stability of Kodachrome

Abstract

A Miracle happens ...

In June 1989 a bag with a lot of exposed, but not yet processed Kodachrome films had been stolen out of my car in Canada. In August 2008 this bag was found. The bag had been lying for 17 years in the canadian rain forest, just a few meters besides the road. Then this part of the forest was cut clear and the bag was buried 20 cm under the earth (probably by means of heavy logging equipment) and just a little bit of the handle was visible. There it lie for another 2 years before it was found by people looking for fire wood. Five of those 15 to 20 film rolls were still sealed within their plastic boxes, the other boxes were open or destroyed and the film rolls were rusty and beyond any usage. The finders took the five good film rolls and were able to contact me (there was a paper with my address in each plastic box).

On a long but X-ray safe detour (Canada - England - Germany - USA) the films finally reached the last lab in the world which is able to process Kodachrome (Dwaynes Photoworld in Kansas/USA). There they were processed (probably manually). Two of the film rolls looked brand new, the other tree rolls had traces of rust. The plastic boxes were difficult to open because the plasticiser had got lost over the long time. Accordingly to the outer appearance of the film rolls was the look of the processed slides:

• One roll had a minor greenish color cast which is easy to fix using white balance while scanning the slides. An example picture is shown below.
• One roll had the same greenish color cast but suffered from flat contrast as well. Still this can be fixed easily using white balance and setting the black point while scanning the slides.
• One roll is totally red, but you can convert the scans into black and white pictures.
• One roll is also totally red and suffers from totally clear parts where some moisture had creeped into the dye.
• One roll ist partly red, partly black and white, partly with colors and suffers from many tiny speckels.

Picture of the best preserved film roll (no white balance)

Picture of the best preserved film roll (white balance applied)