GOOD OLD DAYS OF KODACHROME TRANSPARENCIES

It’s been since in the mid-1960’s when I got my first camera till the late 1980’s that I was simply fascinated with Kodachrome transparency film. Though I had to wait for nearly 2 weeks to receive the film made into slides, it definitely was worth the wait.

The enjoyment was two-fold. First, the fulfillment was in joy of viewing the transparencies on a battery-operated slide-viewer, and later, after sorting them out and arranging them in sequence, was the added benefit of viewing them with family and friends on weekends, using a projector. Still, later, if preferred, you had yet another choice of making prints from the slides of your choice.

Before acquiring a back-lit slide-viewer, I must have spent quite a number of hours holding up slides to the light through the window with a magnifying glass.
Although the days of shooting slides may have long gone past, the brilliant colours and details still remain if stored with care. After alternating between slide film and print film in the beginning, I did carry two cameras at times, one with each type of film.

Eventually, even though I gradually decided to phase out shooting slides by mid-1990’s, my interest in viewing old ones did not ebb. Since then, once in a while, I would retrieve them, sort out the good exposures from the bad, and make prints from the ones I liked the most.

Today I hold dear and reminisce about the sheer joy of transparencies of another era.