Oh yeah, here’s the wife:
Those photos are amazing (and it’s a great story). Thanks for sharing.
j
Those old Kodachromes are really bright, but lousy detail
I initially read that as you saying you went there from Auburn, a city in California. But it now appears to me that the car is an Auburn, possibly an Auburn 8-Eighty-Eight Sedan.
@Seanette and I went over Tioga Pass several months ago, as part of our quest to get high. That was in our first Jeep, which, some months after that, sank. We have yet to go there in the second Jeep that we got as a successor to the first. I think the highest we’ve been in the second Jeep was at Donner Summit, at around seven thousand feet.
[Note to @Seanette — At some point, later in the year, when weather is more favorable for it, we really need to explore Old Donner Pass Road.]
We went from San Francisco to Nellis AFB in Las Vegas. Today it is just another highway, but from the summit you can still drive some of the old mining road that we took in the 50s.
Photography was still in a fairly primitive state, compared to more recent chemical-based photography, much les modern digital photography. I was wondering at the sensitivity of Kodachrome film of tat time, thinking it was probably around an ASA of 25. No, on looking it up, ASA 25 Kodachrome didn’t come out until the 1960s. Kodachrome in 1957 would have had an ASA of only 10.
Do you remember what kind of camera you were using in 1957? What film format? Was it 35mm, or a larger format? Medium format (such as 120 or 620) was much more common then, than later.
It was a Practika 1.9 35mm SLR. I bought in 1954 and used it for twenty years then gave it to my youngest son.
So, yes, in the 35mm format, 1950s Kodachrome wouldn’t have had a lot of resolution, compared to larger formats, or to finer-grained monochrome films of the era, or to more modern films. You’re getting close to the time when professional photojournalists started to take 35mm film seriously. The Nikon F, introduced in 1959, was the camera that won most them over to that format, away from the 4×5-inch sheet film press cameras that were dominant in that trade before then. Photojournalism didn’t really need that much resolution, compared to how the pictures wound it being halftoned and printed in the final newspapers and magazines. And that’s about the time that film resolutions started to really improve to the point that 35mm was adequate for most professional uses.
There was a lot of 35mm activity in the 50s. I believe the most popular 35mm before the SLRs was the Argus C3. The Practika was the lowest priced SLR at the time, but found it to be a very well made camera.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that you still have that car, or at least know what its final fate was.
Auburn was once a high-end luxury brand, but it went bankrupt in 1937, so by 1957, that car would have been at least twenty years old. If it still exists, either in roadworthy condition, or even in restorable condition, it would be very valuable today.
Some post-bankruptcy version of the company made bodies for the original Ford GPW/Willys MB (the original “Jeep”) in the 1940s, but other than that, 1937 was the end of their presence in the automotive industry.
I used the Auburn off an on until 1965 then put it in storage. Finally sold it in 1977 to a guy in Miami FL. He was going to have it restored, so it may be on display somewhere. I bought it for $100 and sold it (not running) for $2000.
I have one of the very early C3 cameras. Not very long into the life of that model, they added tag to the front with the “Argus” name. Mine is before that.
That’s a historically-interesting camera. It was a very simple rugged design, introduced in 1939, that became extremely popular, and continued to be very popular long after it ought to have been regarded as hopelessly obsolete. The story is that every so often, sales would start to lag, and Argus would announce that they planned to discontinue it, which would trigger a a buying frenzy among consumers that still didn’t have a C3, and wanted to get one while they still could. It continued that way until some time well into the 1960s.
It’s not uncommon to see them in movies, nearly always brandished by actors that have no clue whatever how to actually operate a C3.
So, then, there’s a fighting chance that it is still out there, somewhere, hopefully in roadworthy condition.
Yeah, they make you think all the world’s a sunny day
(oh, yeah).
mmm
The K14 process for developing Kodachrome was so complex that there were never more than a very few labs equipped to do it. [; The last of them stopped offering it at the end of 2010.
I gather there are a few labs that offer a less complete process, that will develop monochrome images from Kodachrome.
Let’s hold on that until, say, about April or May, OK?
I think ASA 10 Kodachrome actually had pretty good resolution,
The problem was the crummy optics of the day, and motion blur due to the long exposures.
They had some pretty good optics, going farther back than that; at least if you were willing to spend some money on better than bottom-of-the-line optics. But the films of that time had a long way to go to meet the resolution of mor modern films, which never got anywhere close to the resolution of a modern digital camera sensor.
What I am seeing in @Crane’s pictures are clearly limitations in the film, not in the optics.
The discussion got me wondering what details I might be able to coax out of @Crane’s entry with some of my newfangled digital photo editing and enhancement software and abilities.
Not a whole lot, it seems. The image is plenty sharp, but from damaged film, that never really had the resolution nor exposure latitude to record the image as well as more modern film, or a digital camera sensor, would have.
First is my enhanced version, and below that, the original posted by @Crane.
The small enhancements do improve the overall impression. The fuzz is removed from the pine needles and there is a slight change in contrast. Also took out some haze or dirt. Good job.