Salvaging Faded Ektachrome Slides

1957 Ektachrome booklet (courtesy of Mr. Maurice Fisher at Photographic Memorabilia)

Eastman Kodak introduced Ektachrome transparency film in sheet film format in 1946. The big advantage of Ektachrome over the famous Kodachrome was the former could be developed at local laboratories or even at home. In Ektachrome, the color couplers were included in the emulsion and processing required only one color developer. Kodachrome required a major laboratory operation for developing, and this meant a turnaround time of several days for most users. 

The film that my dad used in 1959 would have been the version that required the E-2 Process or the Improved E-2 Process. The film speed was probably 32 ASA. His slide mounts have the same blue pattern as the example on the cover of the Kodak booklet. The text on the slide mount is in English, but I do not know where he had them processed. Were there color photo labs in Rangoon at the time?

The big failing of early Ektachrome was that colors faded. Most 1950s and 1960s Ektachrome slides are now a red mess. Image data is there, but much of the color information has been lost. In the days before Photoshop or other sophisticated software packages, there was not much you could do with one of these faded slides. I threw out hundreds of family slides decades ago when my wife and I sorted my dad's archives. 

Let us look at one example from Rangoon, Burma, from 1958 or 1959. I scanned the slide on a Plustek 7600i film scanner using Silverfast software via a Mac mini computer with the BigSur 11.7.4 operating system. The original slide shows the characteristic red color shift. You see the same with Anscochrome slides from the 1960s. 

Standing on a furniture box that came from Hong King

This is the scan on "Auto" mode as a 48-bit TIFF file (16 bits for each color). There does not appear to be much useful color data left. (I have resized for this article but not changed color).

This is the "Portrait" mode in Silverfast. I am amazed how well it did with no more intervention on my part. The software is doing some clever work in the background.

This is a 16 bit monochrome scan. This does not look too bad and demonstrates that there is still image data on this media. In another 64 years, will there be retrievable image data on our digital storage media or on our accounts in the "cloud"? Sorry I keep asking this, but you readers know the answer.

Photoshop's automatic color correction tool did not work well on a slide this badly shifted. The grey dropper also did not work. On the Photrio forum, experienced Photoshop users said the best way to correct a faded slide was to use the curves tool manually. I moved the curve to the extents of the color data and adjusted the amplitude. The example above is or the blue channel. I am far from a sophisticated Photoshop user but did the best I could in CS5. The result is slightly different than the Silverfast "Portrait" scan, neither better or worse. 

Summary:  There is some recoverable color data in old faded Ektachrome slides. And a conversion to monochrome can look surprisingly good. Maybe future software will be more sophisticated, but I have not seen many (or any?) new scanners in the last decade. But we can always hope for software development.

Burmese Days 21: NaPyar, the Odoriferous Fish Village

While driving from Rangoon eastwards towards the Golden Rock, our driver took us along a short stretch of the Yangon-Mandalay Highway, then turned right on the Maylamyaing Highway (NH8).

Historical note: the Yangon-Mandalay highway was originally surveyed and laid out by an American engineering company, Louis Berger & Associates, in 1961, under the sponsorship of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Moorhus and Grathwol, 1992). Initially, conditions seemed to be in place for construction bids to be let, but planning and economic assistance for the project ended in 1963, a victim of deteriorating domestic politics in Burma and worsening relations between the United States and Burmese government. The expressway was finally built by the Burmese between 2005 and 2010, with some funds generated by exporting natural gas to Thailand.

At Waw Village, we stopped for a rail crossing. The train trundles along at a leisure pace because of the rough condition of the track bed. We could see the cars swaying back and forth, I suppose likely to generate cases of mal de mer (or mal de chemin de fer?).

A short distance east of Waw, our driver stopped at NaPyar Village. This is low terrain, crisscrossed by canals and rivers. It reminded me of southern Louisiana. On the barge just off the bank, piles of fish were drying in the sun.

The aromatic dry fish are neatly piled on tables at roadside stands. In the photograph above, the leaves are used to wrap betel nut (chewed by ladies and gents alike).

The lady even uses a pole with hook to neatly organize the fish curls on hooks.

I was impressed by the amount of business these stands attracted. Maybe the Vicksburg farmers' market needs a dried fish stand.

This sturdy gent was mashing up fish remnants in a giant pestle. Afterwards, the mush was poured into a clay pot, sealed, and left to ferment for an unknown amount of time. The resulting fish sauce (juice) was sold in gallon-size glass jugs at the roadside stands. Think of this the next time you buy oriental fish sauce at the supermarket.

Photographs taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera.

References

Moorhus, D.M. and Grathwol, R.P. 1992. Bricks, Sand, and Marble: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction in the Mediterranean and Middle East, 1947-1991. Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 660 p. (available online, http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/bricks_sand_and_marble/CMH_45-2-1.pdf)

Blogger note:

I am trying to overcome the problem with photographs not uploading into the blog. Based on suggestions from other bloggers around the world, I removed all the EXIF data from the photographs. For now, the photographs are all appearing, but there is still some issue with the Google servers because for five years, all jpeg files uploaded successfully.

Burmese Days 19: Rangoon's Pegu Club in Tri-X film

Back during the British colonial era, Rangoon's Pegu Club was the rambling teak clubhouse where soldiers, petty and major bureaucrats, writers, journalists, and soldiers of fortune gathered, gossiped, plotted, acted snooty, despised the locals, and drank (mostly the latter). At its peak, the Pegu was one of the most famous gentlemen's clubs in Asia. This went along with Burma, in its peak, being one of the Empire's richest colonies, with immense resources of oil, timber, minerals, and agricultural products. Rudyard Kipling stayed at the Pegu, listened to the tall tales, and wrote his famous poem Mandalay here. George Orwell and drank and wrote here. In world War II, Japanese officers whored here.

From the Myanmar Times, 

"As Rudyard Kipling recalled after his one visit to Rangoon in 1889 as a young newspaperman, the club was “full of men on their way up or down”. He had time for only two stops in the city: that “beautiful winking wonder” the Shwedagon Pagoda, and the Pegu Club. Both astounded him. “‘Try the mutton,’” he was told. “‘I assure you the Club is the only place in Rangoon where you get mutton.’” But what stood out most was the morbid chatter about “battle, murder, and sudden death”. Its casual nature (“‘that jungle-fighting is the deuce and all. More ice please’”) gave him his first glimpse of the wars colonialism waged beyond its walls."

I wrote about the Pegu Club before (please click the link), but I recently scanned some more Tri-X negatives from my 2014 trip and thought the film views were more appropriate for this crumbling clubhouse. The view above is the grand entry hall (I think). A "Boy" (one of those despised brown natives, of course) would have welcomed a visitor with a cool drink. The stairs were collapsing and I did not risk climbing to the second floor.

There were so many rooms, I really can't tell how some were used decades ago. This room was in the rear of the building. (This is a digital image taken with a Panasonic G3 camera.)

This handsome room on the second floor had a large space without pillars. Was it a smaller ballroom or dining hall?

This room had remnants of dark panelling. Was this a library or smoking room for the men? It certainly would not have been a smoking room for the women.

An inner courtyard must have once been a formal garden. Mildew was attacking the windows, but I was surprised that most were intact. There is much less graffiti or destruction than you would expect. But will the Yangon Heritage Trust ever be able to raise the funds to restore the building and grounds? And how would it be used? A 2014 article in the New York Times outlines some of the challenges in preserving Rangoon's fabulous architectural treasures.

We encountered a young lady from Hong Kong wandering around by herself. She had a film camera and asked how long I had been into film.

I took Photographs 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 with a Leica M2 camera with a 35mm ƒ/2.0 Summicron lens. This is the 7-element type 4 Summicron from the late 1990s. I braced the camera on ledges or windowsills because of the long exposures. I used Kodak Tri-X 400 film, developed in Kodak HC110 developer, dilution B at 68° F, and then scanned the negatives with a Plustek 7600i film scanner. The negatives had some lint and spots, which I cleaned with Pixelmator software.

December 2016 update: A corespondent in Europe wrote that a friend had tried to visit the Pegu Club, but it was closed and a guard was posted. I'm glad my wife and I visited in 2014, when it was open.

Burmese Days 13: Selfie at the Shwedagon

The great Shwedagon Pagoda (or the Shwedagon Zedi Daw ([ʃwèdəɡòʊɴ zèdìdɔ̀]) or Great Dagon Pagoda) dominates the skyline of Rangoon. It glows gold in the sunlight and can be seen from miles around. According to legend, it may be 2,600 years old, but archaeologists believe it was built by the Mon people between the 6th and 10th centuries AD. It is one of the most profound Buddhist sites in Burma because it is believed to contain relics of the four previous Buddhas and eight strands of hair from the head of Gautama. As such, it attracts the devout from throughout Myanmar and other Buddhist countries. The site attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, and the organization that runs it has modernized and runs a web page.

The Shewadon is built on a broad platform on Singuttara Hill. The hill is north of downtown Rangoon but easy to reach. There are four main approach entrances, with long stairs leading up to the temples. In the old days, you removed your shoes at the base of the stairs and climbed up barefoot.

This is a photograph from 13 May 1945 showing British soldiers at one of the entrances (public domain photograph SE 4108 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums, taken by No. 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Wackett, Frederick (Sergeant)). Note back then they left their boots but they took their rifles. Times have changed! Today, the south entrance has a modern lift, and you have to go through an X-ray machine and have your bags scanned, similar to an airport. No rifles this time.

The Great Dagon is immense. It is hard to appreciate the scale until you walk around. My father took these Kodachromes in 1957 with his Leica IIIC rangefinder camera with a 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar lens. Most of the palm trees blew over when Cyclone Nargis crossed the Irrawaddy delta on May 2, 2008. This was one the most devastating weather disaster to ever strike the country, and at least 146,000 people are believed to have been killed. Today there is only one palm tree left on the summit plateau.

As of November 2014, the Shewadagon was being re-gilded. Craftsmen, who come from Mandalay, set up bamboo scaffolding. Then they coat the stone and brick with natural lacquer from the Thit-si tree. The lacquer may be mixed with ashes. It waterproofs the stone, resists insects, and forms a base for the gold leaf. The bamboo is better then steel because it is light, flexible, grown locally, and quick to erect and take down. They use nylon rope or ties at the bamboo junctions. The pagoda needs to be re-gilded about every 5 years.

One of the tasks that the devout perform is washing Buddha every evening, as well as washing the slippery marble paving.

The expanse of marble is slippery and hard on the feet for us soft Westerners.

Now for the topic of this essay: everyone, but everyone, takes selfies or portraits today. "Hi folks, look, here I am in front of Buddha, in front of the Shwedagon, next to a dragon."

Despite the crowds, you can find a quiet spot and take a nap. Well, maybe you need to be a monk. Regardless, this is one of the most profoundly sacred sites for Buddhists in Burma and is a premier tourist site as well. Go at dusk and watch the changing of the light.

My father took the 1957 photographs on Kodachrome film with his Leica IIIC camera. The 2014 photographs are digital from Panasonic G3 or Fuji X-E1 cameras, with RAW files processed in PhotoNinja software. I drew the map with ESRI™ ArcMap software.

Burmese Days 12: Sensory Overload at Thiri Mingalar Market

If you like wholesale produce markets, they do not get much bigger than the Thiri Mingalar market in west Rangon, near the Hlaing River and west of Inya Lake and Yangon University. This is another place off the normal tourist route, but more and more foreigners are gradually showing up, and the local merchants seem delighted to have curious visitors. The market is huge and consists of three rows of parallel steel sheds (the aerial photograph is from ESRI® maps and data).

I never quite figured out the geography, but the first area my friends and I explored was the fruit area. Wow, nice produce, fresh from the farms.

Watermelons go flying. Strong guys to do this all day.

Bananas and plantains - more than I have ever seen in one place before.

Now for the good smelly stuff: the dried fish and shrimp. The shrimp are used as a flavoring agent in Burmese cuisine.

These tubs contain fermenting fish mash in the process of becoming fish sauce. Yum. Think of this when you buy a bottle of fish sauce in one of our sterile US supermarkets.

These carrots might be pretty good, as well.

If you are hungry, there is a big cafeteria on site. We were a bit dubious about the dish-washing facilities.

Betel nut chewing is a big business in Burma. The young ladies wrap betel leaf, areca nut, and slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) into a little package, which may also contain tobacco, cardamon, or other spice. Rural people and workers in certain industries, especially truck and bus drivers, chew the betel as a stimulant. It stains their teeth and lips red. When we lived in Rangoon in the 1950s, walls were stained red with spit-out betel juice up to a height of about 6 ft. Chewing betel has serious health effects, especially malignant tumors in the mouth area.

These are the delivery boys, who pedal amazingly heavy loads in bicycle sidecars. Selfie photos are the big thing now.

Some families tend small stores.

I cannot recall what these shredded white roots are, but they sell tons of it every day. And the guys check their phones whenever possible. 

The Thiri Mingalar market is an amazing tableau of colors, shapes, smells, and people for a photographer. It seems safe, and there are other foreign visitors present. Highly recommended! Next time, I will take a film camera and try black and white. Wear boots or high shoes because there is a lot of squishy stuff underfoot.

These are digital images from a Panasonic G3 camera with Olympus 9-18mm lens or a Fujifilm X-E1 camera, with most RAW files processed with PhotoNinja software.