Kodachrome II

Kodachrome II was slide film produced by Kodak from 1961 to 1974. The price of the film included processing which could only be done by Kodak and a few specialised labs. In 1974 Kodachrome II and Kodachrome-X were replaced by Kodachrome 25 and Kodachrome 64 and the process was upgraded from K-12 to K-14. It is fairly complicated and was never meant for home development. The last roll of Kodachrome was processed by Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas in 2011.

Kodachrome is essentially three layers of black and white emulsion sensitive to different parts of the visible spectrum. There are no dyes in the film itself as they are added and formed inside each layer during an intricate development process.

This roll was processed in Barry Thornton's Two Bath developer with increased concentration of sodium tetraborate in bath B (20 g per litre) to increase contrast. Fixing time was increased to 15 minutes to guarantee complete fixing of all three sensitive layers of the emulsion. In hindsight, this developer is not well suited for Kodachrome. Even with inherently high contrast emulsion of the slide film and higher concentration of the accelerator the negatives were still too thin and lacked contrast.

Only two frames were exposed, which probably explains why the roll has not been developed. There is something unnerving in the first image and the second would not have been published had it preserved better.