It's often asked if Kodachrome can still be developed. The answer is no. Dwayne's was the last commercial lab to develop it way back in 2011. But there are rolls of unused Kodachrome still about and its a shame that it can never be processed again. However, you can process Kodachrome 64 in black and white as people on the internet are so fond of mentioning. But I've never seen any actual proof. So I acquired half a dozen rolls of K64, expired in 2009, in 2020 and put it to the test.
My mission had two purposes:
Not knowing the effective speed, I metered for box speed of 64. It was a bright but overcast day giving me an exposure of 1/60th at f11, so I exposed at f11, then f8, f5.6, f4 and f2.8 equating to ISO 64, 32, 16, 8 and 4 respectively. Taken with a Nikkormat FTn with 50mm f2 lens.
With no processing information available, I did what I always advise users to do with an unknown film: Process it in your favourite developer for between 8 and 12 minutes, over developing will increase the contrast, but you'll always get something. I processed mine for 12 minutes along with a roll of Lucky SHD100 and got useable negatives. I used Rodinal at 1+50, my usual dilution. My advice is that whatever brew you use, use it and develop as if it were Lucky SHD100. Of course feel free to experiment and increase the ISO.
My mission had two purposes:
- To see if it could be developed in black and white
- To see what the effective ISO rating would be.
Not knowing the effective speed, I metered for box speed of 64. It was a bright but overcast day giving me an exposure of 1/60th at f11, so I exposed at f11, then f8, f5.6, f4 and f2.8 equating to ISO 64, 32, 16, 8 and 4 respectively. Taken with a Nikkormat FTn with 50mm f2 lens.
With no processing information available, I did what I always advise users to do with an unknown film: Process it in your favourite developer for between 8 and 12 minutes, over developing will increase the contrast, but you'll always get something. I processed mine for 12 minutes along with a roll of Lucky SHD100 and got useable negatives. I used Rodinal at 1+50, my usual dilution. My advice is that whatever brew you use, use it and develop as if it were Lucky SHD100. Of course feel free to experiment and increase the ISO.
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The first thing that you notice is that the negative is very yellow, but it was a simple matter of inverting the negs, desaturating and adjusting the levels or converting to black and white and adjusting the cyan into the negative numbers. In photoshop, a simple action can be created that does it to each neg.
This image is the best balanced neg, below it is the inverted version. Putting the negatives side by side, it became obvious which was the best. It has an effective ISO of between 4 and 8 to my eye. I don't doubt that a longer development time would effectively increase the ISO. Here are the scans (I must point out that the darker bottom on the neg is an effect of vignetting during 'scanning' with my Sony A7). The resulting negative is very grainy as you can see from the image of the wooden bench. 
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Conclusion:
It can be done but the results are crappy. I have no idea if K12 process film can be done this way or how old, exposed film will react. But I expect you could get an image.
Processing times for Lucky SHD100 in your favourite developer can be found on the Massive Development Chart at digitaltruth.com
It can be done but the results are crappy. I have no idea if K12 process film can be done this way or how old, exposed film will react. But I expect you could get an image.
Processing times for Lucky SHD100 in your favourite developer can be found on the Massive Development Chart at digitaltruth.com
