Kodachrome 64
How this look was derived, and why every control does what it does. The settings themselves are in the pack.
Datasheet-derived original. Primary source: Kodak E-55, June 2009 minor revision (© Eastman Kodak 2005), covering Kodachrome 25, 64 and 200 Professional Films. Archived locally at
X-T5/_reference-sources/datasheets/kodak-still/kodachrome-25-64-200_e55.pdf, 6 pages, read in full. Settings in the notes.
What the datasheet actually says
| Property | Kodachrome 25 (PKM) | Kodachrome 64 (PKR) | Kodachrome 200 (PKL) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diffuse RMS granularity | 9 | 10 | 16 |
| Grain description | "Extremely fine grain" | "Extremely fine grain" | "fine grain" |
| Sharpness | "Extremely sharp" | "Extremely sharp" | "Extremely high sharpness" |
| Colour | "Reproduces subtle color naturally" | "Reproduces subtle color naturally" | "Natural colors" |
| Archival | "the most archival transparency films" | same | same |
| Daylight / flash EI | 25 | 64 | 200 |
| Photolamp (3400 K) | EI 8 (80B filter) | EI 20 (80B) | EI 64 |
| Tungsten (3200 K) | EI 6 (80A filter) | EI 16 (80A) | EI 50 |
| Push processing | "We do not recommend" | "We do not recommend" | to EI 500 and 800 |
| Reciprocity, 1/10 s | +½ stop, no filter | +⅓ stop, CC05R | +½ stop, CC10Y |
| Reciprocity, 1 s and beyond | "Not recommended" | "Not recommended" | "Not recommended" |
| Stated applications | outdoor, travel, nature, advertising, medical, museum/art | advertising, medical, editorial, outdoor, travel, nature | sports, editorial, stage-performance, outdoor/nature |
| Process | K-14 | K-14 | K-14 |
Kodak's daylight exposure table for Kodachrome 64:
| Lighting | Shutter | Aperture |
|---|---|---|
| Bright/hazy sun on sand or snow | 1/125 | f/16 |
| Bright/hazy sun, distinct shadows | 1/125 | f/11 (f/5.6 for backlit close-ups) |
| Weak, hazy sun, soft shadows | 1/125 | f/8 |
| Cloudy bright, no shadows | 1/125 | f/5.6 |
| Heavy overcast or open shade | 1/125 | f/4 |
Worth noticing: 1/125 at f/11 for ISO 64 is roughly half a stop more generous than sunny-16. Kodak was not telling people to underexpose Kodachrome by default, whatever slide-film folklore says. The recipe's −1/3 EC is reversal highlight discipline, not a wholesale pull.
Viewing condition: "Use these films to produce color transparencies for projection or viewing with 5000 K illumination."
Discontinuation notice, printed in the sheet itself: "KODACHROME Film has been discontinued... Although there is no exact replacement, KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTAR 100 and KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTACHROME E100G Films are suggested alternatives."
The finding that should change how Kodachrome recipes are built
Kodak's own four-bullet description of Kodachrome 64 reads, in full:
• Excellent for advertising, medical, editorial, and outdoor, travel, and nature applications • Extremely sharp • Extremely fine grain • Reproduces subtle color naturally • Archival
"Subtle." "Naturally." From the manufacturer, about the film with the loudest reputation in the history of colour photography.
The gap between that copy and the popular memory has two explanations, and both are about the viewing, not the emulsion:
- Kodachrome was made to be projected. The datasheet says so. Transparencies "for projection or viewing with 5000 K illumination." A backlit transparency has a dynamic range and an apparent saturation that no reflective print can approach. What people remember as Kodachrome's colour is substantially the experience of a bright lamp behind a dense dye image in a dark room.
- Its reds are genuinely exceptional, and one spectacular colour colours the memory of the rest. The K-14 process laid dyes down during development rather than carrying couplers in the emulsion, which is a large part of both the archival stability and the red rendering.
The practical consequence for this recipe: hold Color at —, not —, and take richness from Color Chrome Effect —, a gradation tool that adds density inside already-saturated colour. Rather than from a saturation slider that inflates everything. A recipe that cranks Color to model Kodachrome is modelling a slide projector.
The three hard constraints, and why they belong in a digital recipe
Most Kodachrome recipes ignore these because a digital camera has no such limits. But a recipe claiming fidelity is claiming to model a film, and these are the film's boundaries.
1. It cannot be pushed
"We do not recommend push processing of KODACHROME 25 or 64 Professional Films."
Only the 200 pushes, and only to EI 500/800 under stadium light. So the ISO ceiling on a faithful K64 recipe is structural. This build stops at 800 (— floors it at 250), and the high-ISO variants that other Kodachrome recipes offer are, strictly, not Kodachrome.
2. It is a daylight film, absolutely
Under tungsten, Kodachrome 64 rates EI 16, with an 80A filter already applied. That is two full stops of loss on top of a filter. There is no honest indoor-tungsten Kodachrome, which is why this recipe offers a redirect rather than a variant.
3. It fails at long exposure
The reciprocity table gives +⅓ stop and a CC05R filter at 1/10 second, and then simply says "Not recommended" for 1 second and beyond. Kodachrome had no long-exposure mode. Combined with (2), night photography is closed off entirely.
Together these three explain the film's actual working life better than any aesthetic description does. Kodachrome was a bright daylight, hand-held, fixed-speed film. Everything about its look, the contrast, the deep blacks, the discipline its users developed. Follows from having no way out.
The base problem, stated honestly
Every Kodachrome recipe in existence sits on Classic Chrome, and every one of them is an approximation by character rather than a derivation.
Fujifilm's own development story is explicit: Classic Chrome is based on no analog film at all. They describe it as "an imaginary film" modelling the look of 20th-century printed magazine pages. (See official design notes.) So there is no emulsion-to-emulsion correspondence here to verify, only a resemblance to argue for.
The resemblance is real, and it is fourfold:
- Lowest saturation baseline of any simulation. The best available match for "reproduces subtle color naturally" Provia is more neutral-vivid, Velvia is a different universe.
- Documented hard shadow end. Second-hardest tonality of any Fujifilm simulation. On a transparency emulation this is an asset, not the liability it is elsewhere in this bank.
- Printed-page contrast. Fujifilm tuned it to "look like a print when viewed on an LCD screen." Kodachrome was tuned to look right projected. Different destinations, similar contrast philosophy.
- Fujifilm's official shooting advice for the base is "underexpose the shadows while preserving the highlights", which is reversal-film technique, verbatim. The base and the film want the same discipline from the photographer, which is a genuinely lucky convergence rather than a designed one.
And one place it genuinely fights the film. Classic Chrome "controls the saturation and hue of reds and greens" by design, the olive lean in foliage and the brick/terracotta lean in reds are deliberate. Kodachrome's most famous signature is deep, rich red. That is a real conflict, and CCE Strong is the entire counter-measure. If field-testing shows reds still landing brick, that is Fujifilm's design decision winning, and per their own line, "no matter what you do in Velvia mode, it will never turn into Fortia", the honest answer is a different simulation, not more Color.
Fujifilm also removed the magenta component from Classic Chrome's sky blues, where conventional colour design adds it. That is why skies on this base render pale and airy. CCFXB Weak recovers tonal range in blues (it is not a saturation control) without attacking the base's intent; the reference recipe's Off is equally defensible and this is the recipe's most arguable single value.
Recipe-vs-datasheet audit: this build against the other two
| Setting | Reference K64 | AP's Kodachrome | This (faithful) | What E-55 supports |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grain | Weak, Small | Weak, Small | Weak, Small | RMS 10, "extremely fine grain" ✅ all three agree |
| Highlight | 0 | 0 | +1 | Transparency shoulder clips abruptly; Classic Chrome's highlight end is already soft |
| Shadow | +0.5 | −1 | +1 | Slide blacks close fast and hold. AP's −1 is a skin interpretation, correctly flagged as such there |
| Color | +2 | +2 | +2 | "Reproduces subtle color naturally" ✅ all three agree — and all three are right |
| CCE | Strong | Strong | Strong | Restores red against the base's suppressed magenta ✅ |
| CCFXB | Off | Weak | Weak | Judgement call; Off is defensible. Flagged as the most arguable value here |
| WB | Daylight, —/— | Daylight, —/— | Daylight, —/— | Kodachrome's warmth is red/earth, not yellow. — is a heavy yellow push the sheet doesn't ask for |
| Sharpness | +1 | +1 | +2 | "Extremely sharp" stated for every Kodachrome — top tier is earned |
| Clarity | +3 | 0 | 0 | No micro-contrast or edge-contrast language anywhere in E-55. Fujifilm also advises Classic Chrome needs less Clarity, not more |
| ISO ceiling | 6400 | 6400 | 800 | "We do not recommend push processing" — a structural limit, not a preference |
| EC | 0 to +2/3 | 0 to +1/3 | −1/3 to 0 | Reversal discipline: expose for the highlights |
The two deviations that matter most
Clarity —→ 0. Both the reference Kodachrome 64 and Kodachrome 25 recipes carry it. E-55 makes a sharpness claim, and this bank consistently distinguishes Sharpness (optical acutance, what the datasheet claims) from Clarity (mid-tone local contrast, a different property). The same distinction produced Sharpness —/— for XP2 Super and Sharpness —/Clarity —for Pan F Plus 50, whose sheet does use edge-contrast language. E-55 does not. So Sharpness goes to —, the top tier, because "extremely sharp" is stated for every film in the family, and —. Fujifilm's own guidance reinforces it: Classic Chrome "needs less Clarity and Sharpness than you'd expect" because the base has already done print-contrast work, so stacking micro-contrast double-processes it.
ISO ceiling 6400 → 800. Not a stylistic choice. Kodak declines to recommend pushing this emulsion at all.
The tone-curve decision: the reason this recipe exists separately
Highlight —/ Shadow —is the most contentious pair of values here, and it is the deliberate opposite of what AP's Kodachrome does. The reasoning:
A colour transparency is not a colour negative. A negative has a long straight-line region and a gentle shoulder, that is what "latitude" means, and it is why Portra forgives you. A transparency has a steep shoulder that clips abruptly, and nothing above it is recoverable at any stage, because the transparency is the final image. There is no printing step to rescue it.
Classic Chrome's highlight end is documented as already soft. Pulling it further down (Highlight —or —, as several slide recipes in this bank do) makes it more negative-like, not more reversal-like. So the faithful move is up: firm the top end so it clips the way a slide clips. Shadow —does the matching job at the bottom. Reversal blacks close quickly and stay closed, and this base's documented hard shadow end is the right tool.
The result is the least forgiving colour recipe in the bank, and that is the correct answer to the question this recipe asks. It is also precisely why AP's Kodachrome exists: darker skin sits lower on the tone curve (per the complexion-density data in the Portra and UltraMax sheets), so this curve buries it. Two recipes, two questions, two answers. Neither wrong.
The Kodachrome family, and what the variants actually model
E-55 covers three films that are usually treated as one. They are not.
| RMS | EI | Pushes? | Character | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kodachrome 25 | 9 | 25 | No | The sharpest, finest-grained colour film Kodak ever made. A full stop slower than the 64 in Kodak's own tables (f/8 vs f/11 in bright sun) — a strong-sunlight-only film. The stock Raghubir Singh used across India |
| Kodachrome 64 | 10 | 64 | No | The practical documentary standard. McCurry's India. The one this recipe targets |
| Kodachrome 200 | 16 | 200 | Yes, to EI 500/800 | A genuinely different, grainier film for sports, stage and editorial. Kodak notes pushing shifts colour balance magenta-red, compensating for greenish stadium light — hence the — in that variant |
The gap between RMS 10 and RMS 16 is large. Treating "Kodachrome" as one look flattens a real three-film range, which is why the variants in the notes change grain and ISO rather than just nudging colour.
What evidence exists, and what it is worth
No real Kodachrome 64 scan. The bank does hold a dated 1980 Kodachrome 25 frame, analysed under the kodachrome-25 reference recipe, showing micro-detail, no visible grain, and restrained earth tones. That corroborates the family character, particularly the "reproduces subtle color naturally" reading, since a real dated frame shows restraint rather than the remembered blast of colour, but it is the 25, not the 64, and one frame.
The structural ceiling on validation, stated plainly: because Classic Chrome models no film at all, a scan can confirm resemblance but never derivation. This recipe can reach "datasheet + characteristic + scan" but not the emulsion-correspondence confidence that Gold 200 or Acros 100 enjoy, where the simulation and the target share ancestry. That is not a flaw in the recipe; it is a fact about the base, and it should be stated every time rather than quietly omitted.
Kodak's own second opinion is available and worth using. The discontinuation notice names Ektar 100 and Ektachrome E100G as the suggested alternatives, and both exist here as datasheet-derived originals (Ektar 100, Ektachrome E100), each with real scan evidence this recipe lacks. Shooting the same scene on all three is the closest thing to hearing Kodak explain what it thought Kodachrome was for.
Validation status
Datasheet-validated + Characteristic, no scan. Every setting traces to E-55 or to Fujifilm's published Classic Chrome design data. The two deviations from the popular recipes (Clarity, ISO ceiling) are argued against specific datasheet language above.
Highest-value evidence to add, in order: (1) a real Kodachrome 64 scan with a deep red subject, the reds are both the film's signature and the base's weakest point, so one frame settles the recipe's biggest open question; (2) a high-contrast sunny K64 frame, to test whether Highlight —/ Shadow —eads as slide film or merely as harsh. Drop either into references/.
Derived: 2026-07-25
Get Kodachrome 64
Every value, the movie-mode translation, and the datasheet evidence behind the grade.