# Why do colour pictures from the 1960s look so bright compared to modern colour pictures **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 26, 2023, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745 "2023-09-26T18:13:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![XOldiesJock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/ec9cab/32.png) [@XOldiesJock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XOldiesJock)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2023, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/21 "2023-09-26T21:09:08Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > _Kodachrome?_ Recently I’ve been digitizing 8mm and Super 8mm home movies from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The movies shot on Kodachrome, even the reels that are 70 years old, have retained their color, brilliant as they were when new. The movies shot on unidentified film have faded and, in some cases, so much that you can barely make out what they are. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2023, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/22 "2023-09-26T21:31:55Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > For 35mm press, I find it unlikely positive film was being used. I could be wrong. After researching a bit more about the times, I don’t know either way as to this. I see a lot of photographs of the event shot in BW, which is what I would expect most of the newspaper press to shoot at that time. 35mm color? I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought there’s enough light to support the ISOs available at that time, and the look of the image, but the hot lights may have been bright enough that they could have used Kodachrome stock with no or minimal pushing. So I don’t know for sure for the time period. Fifteen years later or so, and I would bet they’re all using C41 negative stock for color, unless they’re shooting for magazine or other non-daily newspaper reasons. (At their time, they would have been using C22 processing for color neg.) So it could very well be a transparency/slide/positive film. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2023, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/23 "2023-09-26T21:35:49Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > But I have noticed it in older color TV. The colors tended to be very saturated when it first came out. Like how the original _Star Trek_ is super colorful? Or _Bonanza_. I’ve heard that _Bonanza_, which was on NBC, was a major selling point for color TVs for its parent company RCA. My elderly aunt proudly showed off her new color TV in the late 1960s on a Sunday night when _Bonanza_ was on “In Living Color”, as demonstrated by the NBC peacock. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2023, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/24 "2023-09-26T21:36:59Z")
I got a Niiii-kon camera, I love to take a phooooooh-tagraph, so please don’t take my Kodachrome away. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/25 "2023-09-27T01:07:46Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > 35mm color? I don’t know. Ektachrome was available. It had an ASA of 160 and processing was simple enough that a daily newspaper could do the work on-site. Kodachrome-X was introduced in 1962 with an ASA of 64. I’ll leave it to those with more experience in film to decide if there was enough light in there for ASA 160 film. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/26 "2023-09-27T01:27:19Z")
As I recall, Kodachrome was three layers of film layered together, each sensitive to a different part of the spectrum. That’s why it retains its vivid colors even in old stock. But that makes it very hard to process, and it had to be shipped back to Kodak for development. The three layers may have made light gathering more difficult, resulting in lower ISO. But I’m not sure of that. ---
**Author:** ![XOldiesJock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/ec9cab/32.png) [@XOldiesJock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XOldiesJock)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/27 "2023-09-27T01:28:27Z")
> [@JohnGalt](#): > > _I’ve heard that Bonanza, which was on NBC, was a major selling point for color TVs for its parent company RCA._ That’s very true. We didn’t have color TV, but I knew people who did, and they always gushed about how beautiful “Bonanza” looked in living color. Since most of it was shot on a sound stage, I can’t see what difference it made. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/28 "2023-09-27T02:00:19Z")
The reason Kodachrome is resistant to fading is because it was a “dye substitution” process. Other films (like Ektachrome) had the dyes already present in the emulsion on each layer. Those dyes were coupled to the silver grains during development. This made processing simple (I used to hand-process Ekatchrome), but the emulsion layers were thicker and the film was not as sharp, colors not as rich. In Kodachrome, the dyes were added during development, which required a complicated development process. But, it meant that the dyes were much higher quality. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/29 "2023-09-27T02:06:26Z")
I agree that shooting print film seems more likely than slide film, but… looking at the picture posted by the OP my first impression was, “looks like Cibachrome.” For those not familiar, Cibachromes (and the earlier Gasparcolors) were prints made from transparencies using azo dyes, which were visually different and more stable than the dyes in ordinary prints. I’ve no evidence that the Kennedy image was a Cibachrome but, as said, the colors matched my memory. One of my first jobs was cutting negative strips in a large photo processing firm. (I think the company had the Kmart processing acct.) I always loved watching the Cibachromes emerge from the processing machines. At the time I didn’t know why they looked different from the ordinary snapshots, didn’t know they came from slides/transparencies. I only knew they looked wonderful. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/30 "2023-09-27T02:12:03Z")
I have a Kodachrome slide my dad took of my brother and I in front of El Capitan at Yosemite - from the late 50’s. Mind you, since then it’s probably sat in the slide box out of the light, but still when I scanned it a few years ago the colours were still amazing ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/31 "2023-09-27T05:04:57Z")
Yep. Cibachromes (later Ilfochrome) we’re gorgeous. ---
**Author:** ![Common\_Tater](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/common_tater/32/13846_2.png) [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/32 "2023-09-27T11:50:16Z")
One of the reasons Kodachrome was/is so beloved, is because it is practically archival. Very little fading is observed compared with other films, which sometimes fade into a pink nothing-ness. It tends to have somewhat of a blue-ish cast. It also generally required plenty of light for good imagery, it was a “slow” film. But Kodachrome slide film images are immediately recognizable due to their rich, vibrant colors. And the fact the they still exist, I suppose. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/33 "2023-09-27T14:01:42Z")
I think there’s an artistic style component to this, which has changed since the 1970s (or maybe the 60s). When I got seriously into photography in the late 70s, the magazines all praised color photographs for being saturated. “Saturation” is overloading a measurement so that it no longer records additional signal. In this case it means the colors are vivid, as close to pure spectral colors as possible. Which I never liked. There’s no accounting for taste. Today, the stylistic buzzword in photography seems to be bokeh, which is the way things are blurred when they are closer to or further from the camera than the distance it’s focused on. How the depth of field runs out, in other words. I think this is just kind of stupid; in an ideal lens without any aberrations, the blur simply represents points in the real world with images of the camera aperture in the photograph, whose sizes are a function of how far from the plane of sharp focus the points were. You can only mess with bokeh by introducing aberrations. Again, there’s no accounting for taste. I think typical '60s photos including the OP example look more saturated. Maybe more contrasty too. And it’s hard to say, anyway, because the steps of converting those photos to digital images and then displaying them on each of our screens just has to change these subtleties. ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/34 "2023-09-27T15:57:44Z")
This post baffles me because the original photo colors look dull to me. The lighting looks very artificial and harsh. There is large contrast so that everything is either dark or very bright. Modern photos look so much better. Take the recent oval office photo above. I am not convinced that there is any more light in the room, it is just that the camera/film is so much better at capturing the exiting light. They didn’t need a big bright lights for the cameras which throw off the look of the room. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/35 "2023-09-27T16:13:51Z")
> [@Hermitian](#): > > This post baffles me because the original photo colors look dull to me. The lighting looks very artificial and harsh. Yeah, to me it looks over-exposed, nearly washed out. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2023, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/36 "2023-09-27T19:05:08Z")
I concur with all your points. The old photo, as we see from the reflections and behind the scenes photo, is quite lit. The later Oval Office photo is likely just ambient light. Todays sensors would have no problem with dealing with that amount of light in the room. Slide film tends to be quite contrasty, so if it were taken with slide, that would explain that. But higher ISO negative film also tends to be much more contrasty. Plus the lighting is contrasty to begin with compared with the Trump office photo where the lighting is much flatter and digital sensors have the dynamic range to capture all the highlights and shadows. (Of course, one can process the file for more contrast and emulating a “film” look, if you’d like.) ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2023, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745/37 "2023-09-28T01:10:20Z")
And since in those days, colour photos were very very rare in daily papers, the majority of those photographers would have been using B&W. I suspect Kodachrome was usually reserved for the monthly magazines, since the processing was done by sending to Kodak and that might not be fast enough for a weekly magazine to publish it as current news. (I assume _Life_, _Look_ etc. were weekly). I’m therefore guessing weekly mags would have used colour negative film. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-colour-pictures-from-the-1960s-look-so-bright-compared-to-modern-colour-pictures/990745.md?page=1)