[Leica] re; the Kodak Colorama in Grand "Central

[lrzeitlin at aol.com (lrzeitlin at aol.com)]

I walked by the Kodak Colorama in New York's Grand Central Station 
every workday for 30 years on my commute from upstate NY to Gotham. 
After struggling with my own 16 x 20s I was more than a little 
impressed so I investigated the technology behind the Colorama.

The actual size of the image was 60 feet by 18 feet and was composed of 
41 strips of 19 inch by 20 foot Ektachorme display film. The strips 
were fastened together with transparent tape to make the full display. 
Originally the image was photographed with view cameras, usually 
specially constructed Deardorfs. But as films got better, original 
images were made with Linhof medium format cameras. Eventually a 35 mm 
camera was used primarily to show that it could be done. Making a 
Colorama image from a 35 mm Kodachrome slide requires a 480 times 
linear enlargement. Making a 16"x24" print requires only a 16 times 
linear enlargement.

Fortunately for Kodak, the closest one could get to the Colorama was 
about 60 feet. From this distance the smallest details of the image 
needed to be only .4" in size to appear perfectly sharp. Minox once 
used the same strategy in photo shows when displaying images taken with 
the tiny camera. Big prints enlarged from the 8x11 mm negatives, when 
viewed from four feet, looked perfectly sharp.

In the context of today's digital cameras if each element of the image 
were considered a pixel, the Colorama image would require about one 
megabyte. Even halving the pixel size for better quality, the Colorama 
image would require only 8 megabytes.

Just think of how big an image a modern Leica digital or the latest 
Canon DSLR could produce if held to the same Colorama standards.

Larry Z