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Originally Posted by benman94
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Does anyone know what Kodachrome chemistry was in use circa 1951?, when the Life magazine slides were shot? It's much too early for K-14. Maybe K-12?
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From what I can find, the process was K10 at that time, with K11 arriving in 1955, K12 in 1961, and K14 in 1974.
All the Kodachrome that I have personally handled did not fade this way, even stuff shot by my father in the early 50's. So, I'm thinking that while some earlier Kodachrome may have faded, any used in 1951 probably did not. I would love to see some dated examples from 1951 that prove or disprove this.
The later versions of Kodachrome for sure had excellent dark stability, but actually poorer light stability than Ektachrome. We had to make duplicate test slides for the Zenith lab because using them daily in a slide projector / vidicon telecine for TV test material would produce noticeable fading (and mostly neutral, not towards pink) within a week. Fresh duplicates would be used for critical one-time/final video tests. Slides could be used in a flying spot scanner for long periods without fading, but the only use of a FSS was in the video disk lab, not for TV development. Plus, I don't believe the FSS had an automatic slide changer.