Re: [Leica] RGB... DOA or MIA?

["Mike Durling" <durling@widomaker.com>]

I look after a library of old films at work.  I find an amazing variability
in how well various 16mm prints hold up.  As far as I can tell it seems to
correlate to which lab did the prints.  Maybe some labs took shortcuts on
their processing.  I can't rule out the possibility that a particular
generation of print stock is the culprit.  The bad ones roughly come from
the '70s, with those from the '60s and '80s holding up just fine.  Of course
those subjects where we are lucky to have Kodachrome prints haven't faded at
all!

Mike Durling

- ----- Original Message -----
From: <ShadCat11@aol.com>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 12:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Leica] RGB... DOA or MIA?


>
> In a message dated 04/26/2001 2:07:44 PM, you wrote:
>
> <<Does anyone know if RGB is still available anywhere? It is 35 mm movie
> film stock cut up and cassette-loaded, and  used to be sold and
> processed by Seattle Film Works, and longer ago RGB and an outfit in
> Texas. There was an option of negs & slides, plus prints if requested,
> and later really dreadful scans to disk which they insisted on cropping,
> thus destroying my 'full frame' intentions.>>
>
> Years ago when I lived in Los Angeles I used movie film short ends
reloaded
> into 35mm cassettes and sold as above described by RGB, a company that
> processed film for the movie industry.  It was the best (IMHO) negative
film
> then available, and the slides were printed on the same color release film
> used for projection.  It was my main color film for years.
>
> I now regret having used the stuff.  The positive film, designed for
> projection, fades fast in storage.  Within 7 years, they looked like 30
year
> old E3.  Awful.  Only the relatively few Kodachromes I took during a 13
year
> period are still good.
> Modern color neg is much better, and almost anything will outperform that
> kind of transparency.  Run!  Save yourself!  Too late for me :-(
>
> Allen Zak
>
>