Large format Kodachrome - WWII Images

Not sure if anyone has posted this link before, but it is a great set of photos from a bygone era! Notes from the E-Mail I received from a buddy:

WWII Kodachrome Pictures



Back in the mid '70s when I was working at Hellers Camera in Bethesda Md. I had a reference book with a color photo of the battleship Pennsylvania in an advanced base sectional dock, somewhere in the Pacific in about 1944. The quality of the photo made it clear that it was shot with a large format camera, which puzzled me since I did not think Kodachrome (the only modern color film of the time in the US) was available in sheet films. A guy I worked with was an old Kodak hand (and WWII vet, a radioman in Europe) and told me that they did have sheet Kodachrome, and that there was only one machine to process the film, located in Rochester. The exposed film was sent there for processing.

And note the almost complete lack of basic safety equipment. I saw only one pair of safety glasses, and only a few of the workers were wearing gloves. Working without gloves around sheet metal is an injury waiting to happen.

Notice most of the woman had lip stick and nail polish on. WWII could not have been won without the woman of America stepping into men's shoes to build the equipment needed to defeat the axis powers.


Fascinating! Some of these these images are 70 years old and look as fresh as ever. If someone had told any of the subjects in these photos that we'd have such a clear look at them in the year 2012... boggles my mind.

http://pavel-kosenko.livejournal.co​m/303194.html?thread=2​2669914

Wow, thanks for sharing these! Great to see something like this preserved and enjoyed.

wow, great shots. thanks!

There is something special with Kodachrome images. The colors are just so pure. Great pics.

Stunning!!!!

Thanks for posting!

Thomas

Loved these. Thank you for sharng.

My grandmother was one of the women making the planes back then (not in the pictures). She was a supervisor at the Curtis-Wright plant in Buffalo making P-47 aircraft . . .

Wonderful! Many of those North American shots were shot just a couple miles from where I lived as a youngster. Years after the war was over, those factories still had camouflage netting over them.

Would love a BTS shot to see how many lighting instruments they had to throw at these scenes.

golfecho wrote in post #14131500
Not sure if anyone has posted this link before, but it is a great set of photos from a bygone era! Notes from the E-Mail I received from a buddy:

WWII Kodachrome Pictures



Back in the mid '70s when I was working at Hellers Camera in Bethesda Md. I had a reference book with a color photo of the battleship Pennsylvania in an advanced base sectional dock, somewhere in the Pacific in about 1944. The quality of the photo made it clear that it was shot with a large format camera, which puzzled me since I did not think Kodachrome (the only modern color film of the time in the US) was available in sheet films. A guy I worked with was an old Kodak hand (and WWII vet, a radioman in Europe) and told me that they did have sheet Kodachrome, and that there was only one machine to process the film, located in Rochester. The exposed film was sent there for processing.

And note the almost complete lack of basic safety equipment. I saw only one pair of safety glasses, and only a few of the workers were wearing gloves. Working without gloves around sheet metal is an injury waiting to happen.

Notice most of the woman had lip stick and nail polish on. WWII could not have been won without the woman of America stepping into men's shoes to build the equipment needed to defeat the axis powers.


Fascinating! Some of these these images are 70 years old and look as fresh as ever. If someone had told any of the subjects in these photos that we'd have such a clear look at them in the year 2012... boggles my mind.

http://pavel-kosenko.livejournal.co​m/303194.html?thread=2​2669914

Yep, there was nothing like the original (ASA 6, IIRC) Kodachrome. Add in f/64 and . . .

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #14133231
Would love a BTS shot to see how many lighting instruments they had to throw at these scenes.

That. But I'll bet they had the Rosies pull out their (rationed) makeup for the shoots.

Impressive results. Extremely well done. Thx for sharing.

Kodachrome was the only transparency process that met archival standards.

Those large 4X5 transparencies are just beautiful. Not widely known but Weston shot some large format Kodachrome.

I have some 2 1/4 X 2 1/4 Kodachrome 64 transparencies as well and thousands of Kodachrome 25 135 format transparencies and some were taken 30 years ago and look as good as the day I got them back from Kodak.

Jon wrote in post #14135607
That. But I'll bet they had the Rosies pull out their (rationed) makeup for the shoots.

I've read it on more than one occasion that it was part of the dress code...

Thanks for sharing, very interesting pictures

More: http://www.shorpy.com/​Large_Format_Kodachrom​es