June 1942. Lockheed Vega aircraft plant at Burbank, California. “Hollywood missed a good bet when they overlooked this attractive aircraft worker, who is shown checking electrical sub-assemblies.” 4×5 Kodachrome transparency by David Bransby for the Office of War Information.
From a friend's email I received tonight:
"This is a rare and fabulous series of pictures shot on Kodachrome sheet film (4x5 inches) and is of exceptional quality shot in 1942. It also captures a slice of life we will never see again...when an entire country was behind a war effort.
I also had no idea that Kodachrome was ever available in any size other than 35mm film due to the complex processing process it required. It makes this series all the more significant. Note that all the images are still-lifes where no motion was taking place due to the very slow speed of the film at that time. What made K-chrome so good was that the film itself had no color dyes embedded in it; the dyes (yellow, magenta & cyan) were added during film processing making for an exceptional fine grain film.
I never knew that Kodachrome was once available in 4" x 5" format, but Wikipedia did confirm this. WONDERFUL photos! These were scanned from 4x5 Kodachrome."
See the photos here.
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Kodachrome was available in 120 (I can recall when it was stocked in camera stores) and even 8x10. I've seen 8x10 Kodachromes shot by Edward Weston. I would give my right arm for some 4x5 Kodachrome (and available processing) to use in my Chamonix 45-N2.
ReplyDeleteForgot to mention ... I've seen prints of these Kodachromes exhibited in Buffalo. Spectacular.
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