Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/01/14

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Film types
From: Nick Hunter <nhunter1@mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 23:57:21 -0500 (EST)

From Simon's post:

>I have read with interest the recent thread about Kodachrome. The colour
>rendition of Kodachrome is amongst the best(?) I have seen - but compare it
>to Velvia and it looks flat,

Some time ago there was an interesting test report in Pop Photo. They're
sometimes a good source of technical background. Anyway, although I don't
have the article in front of me, it said that the sensitivity of the dye
layers in color film could be either narrow, with resect to the color
spectrum, or broader.

The narrower sensitivity resulted in less overlap between layers and
produced brighter color. This would be the Velvia look. A broader
sensitivity of each color layer to a wider range of color frequencies
resulted in more muted color, but also allowed greater discrimination of
fine hue differences. Kodachrome would be in this category.

I haven't seen anything written on this since, but it would be interesting
to know if technology has changed anything or if it's simply an either/or
thing.

Nick Hunter