Name/Title
Kodak Kodachrome-X Color Slide Film — KX 135-20 — ASA 64Entry/Object ID
566Tags
IconicDescription
This is one of the rarest and most historically significant film canisters in the TRP Camera Obscura Collection.
Kodachrome-X was a specific variant of the legendary Kodachrome line — faster than the standard Kodachrome II at ASA 64 versus Kodachrome II's ASA 25, designed for photographers who needed more speed without sacrificing Kodachrome's legendary color rendering. The KX designation on the label identifies this specifically as Kodachrome-X. It was discontinued in 1974 when Kodachrome 64 replaced it — making this canister over 50 years old.
The label details tell the full story of its era:
ASA 64 / 19 DIN — the dual ASA/DIN rating system was standard before ISO unified the two scales in 1974. The presence of both ratings dates this canister to pre-1974
20 Exposures / 24 x 36mm — the standard 35mm frame size notation
Daylight or Blue Flash — not electronic flash, not regular flashbulbs, specifically Blue Flash bulbs. The blue-coated flashbulbs corrected the color temperature of chemical flash to match daylight-balanced film. This notation places the canister firmly in the chemical flashbulb era before electronic strobes became standard
KX 135-20 — the complete product code
Color Slide Film — Kodachrome-X was a transparency film, producing positive slides rather than negatives
The white metal caps on this canister are characteristic of the earliest Kodachrome packaging generations — later canisters used black caps. This detail further confirms the early-to-mid 1960s production date.
Kodachrome-X sits at a remarkable intersection of photographic history. It was the film of the Space Age — NASA used Kodachrome extensively for the Mercury, Gemini, and early Apollo missions. It was the film of the civil rights movement, of the Vietnam War, of the counterculture. ASA 64 gave photographers enough speed to work in challenging light while maintaining the color saturation and sharpness that made Kodachrome the world's standard for color slide photography.
Like all Kodachrome variants, Kodachrome-X required the proprietary K-14 processing chemistry — a complex external dye injection process that could only be performed at licensed Kodak processing facilities. The last K-14 lab on earth — Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas — processed its final roll of Kodachrome on December 30, 2010. Any film remaining in this canister cannot be properly developed ever again.
This canister is a complete artifact of a lost world.