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Kodak Kills Kodachrome
eldavojohn writes "Another sign that digital cameras are slowly phasing out analog comes with Kodak's announcement to discontinue Kodachrome film. This should come as no surprise as Polaroid film was phased out long ago. At least the analog photography industry knows how to change with the times."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujhdf9_IO4w
But Mama don't take my Velvia away!
I don't care why you're posting AC
I think what will be the big irony of the digital revolution is that we haven't tackled the technological problems yet like getting people to back things up and store them for long periods of time. One might think that with the advent of digital that in 100 years we'll have pictures of virtually everything from this era, but because of the problems people face, we will probably yet again have a gapping hole in time filled with lost pictures.
If I was a high-school kid trying to get into photography, a decent SLR was about $500 and if you knew enough, you could make great photos with it. Now, a full-size dSLR is at least $2k.
"At least the analog photography industry knows how to change with the times."
The analogue photo industry was FORCED to change with the times. They did not control the distribution of Digital Cameras and printing paper. If they had, we might never have seen the advance in CCD technology that we now have....
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Paul Simon is probably mourning with the rest of us, as we wonder where we left our film cameras....
My dad got me into photography, I used to develop my own film with him when I was a kid (but that was black & white). Kodak may be ending Kodachrome, but there's still plenty of applications where digital still doesn't fit the bill. They're dwindling, but there is still a need for film.
Kodachrome was like smoking pot.
Fuji is like doing acid.
Agfa is like a rainy day...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The Better Business Bureau has a few things to say about Kodak.
Notice that, in order to lose accreditation with the BBB, you basically have to perform remarkably poorly after you've been informed that your customers are pissed off and you're under review.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
There are some very good used dSLRs in the $200 range, and some decent new ones in the $600 range. I've been wanting one and was surprised how much new ones have come down, and how well really old but well regarded dSLRs retain their value. I was hoping to get a 6mp Nikon body only for about $100. They're not that cheap yet.
My Kodachromes from 20 years ago still look as good as they day they were processed. Kodachrome was the film of choice for many years, you could even push it.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
Another sign that digital cameras are slowly phasing out analog
this is not a sign of anything. the article is being used by the submitter in an attempt to prove a point that he wants to make. in fact, if you read the entire article the assertion of the summary is clearly not supported. this film is hard to develop and there is only one lab in the US that does so. it also is among the worst-selling film that Kodak makes:
Kodachrome accounted for less than 1 percent of the company's total sales of still-picture films
so the story here is that Kodak got rid of the bottom selling film of their line. companies do that all the time, and this has nothing to do with digital cameras. film is still sold pervasively and easy developed at dozens of establishments in most towns.
"At least the analog photography industry knows how to change with the times."
Oh yes Kodak have really coped well in the digital age.
Its not like Kodak concluded a four-year, $3.4 billion restructuring in December 2007 that eliminated 28,000 jobs, about half its workforce. Or that its "share price sank to the lowest price in at least 35 years".
What is the digital equivalent of the Pentax K1000? For those who don't know, the K1000 was *the* student SLR for the last 25 years of the film era. Everybody had one.
So what do introductory-level photography students use nowadays?
I see replies about the death of film, when this was less than 1% of Kodaks film sales per year. Kodachrome is difficult to process, expensive to maintain the equipment for, and has been slowly being phased out for over 50 years, ever since the killing of it in the large format. What the people here do tend to ignore is that for the death of 1 stock, Kodak has introduced new stocks, such as the Ektar 1 and E100D, that truely are visual marvels, cheaper to process and maintain, and most of all, can be upgraded to newer speeds/processes far cheaper than the now almost 80 year old Kodachrome technology. I do think Kodak has made a lot of mis-steps for Film, and I will miss Kodachrome, but I do not call this a mistake in the least.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
One of my all-time favorite songs. I can't listen to it and not smile.
Intel phases out Pentium II for Pentium III ! This is the death of processors!
I hope Kodak and Fuji take care of their core film lines, even if it is no longer a significant profit center. I know they are a business, maybe they can keep some film production going as a charitable contribution when no longer profitable on it's own. I am not an photographer myself but do appreciate their work.
From the song "KODACHROME"
Paul Simon
Transcribed by Randy Goldberg
(original URL)
The Digital Sorceress
While we're lamenting the death of a tiny segment of Kodak's business, I have a far more urgent crisis. Can anyone recommend a digital point and shoot with RAW support for about $200-300? My GF's birthday is this weekend and I need to scramble. Thank you!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It's true, too - lovely, vivid colors. My Kodachrome slides still look as vivid now as they did when they were first taken.
(From the article)
"Eastman Kodak Co said it will retire Kodachrome color film this year, ending its 74-year run after a dramatic decline in sales."
The problem with Kodachrome (when compared to E6-process slide film) is that the developing process (the "K14" process) is quite elaborate and complex -- it involves seven different chemicals, exposure to light during different stages of processing, and a ton of monitoring. There are only a few companies that still have working K14 processing machines and the chemistry and expertise necessary to run them (Dwayne's Photo Service in Kansas). From what I've heard you can still process it with black-and-white chemistry, though obviously without the colour.
As a point of comparison, E-6 is a far simpler process -- half a dozen steps in the "pure" E6 process, or three (or four, depending on manufacturer) for the "simplified" E6 kits sold by e.g. Fuji-Hunt Chemicals and Tetenal. As long as you can keep the chemical bath temperatures within spec, it's possible to do E6 (and C41, the normal colour negative process) at home. Getting the chemistry isn't easy, and the chemical heaters are getting thin on the ground (but you can always use a sink filled with warm water and a couple of mixing jugs/flasks).
For what it's worth, Fujifilm are still making Velvia. E6 process, and about the same tonal response as Kodachrome. Admittedly it isn't exactly the same, but it's close enough that for most people it really doesn't matter (and there are far more E6 labs and pro-labs than there are K14 labs)...
Polaroid is trying to bring back the instant photo, in the form of a small digital camera/printer that can instantly print your digital photo. Sounds pretty cool actually! Polaroid Pogo
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Using any digital process you'd like, make a slide that doesn't stand out as "fake" in a set of either Kodachrome-25 or Kodachrome-64 slides.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"digital cameras are slowly phasing out analog"
I would argue that the transition from analog to digital was actually remarkably quick. The last analog camera I bought was in 2000, I think. Also, cell phones and small point and shoots effectively replaced disposable cameras years ago.
My guess is the only people who used film after 2005 are *some* professionals and artists.
Indeed. Kodachrome for many years has been a fringe old-style color slide film that's been mostly replaced with E-6 process film for many years now (the E-6 process dates from 1977). Kodak's certainly not discontinuing their Ektachrome E-6 process films.
Are you adequate?
You're probably not going to get RAW mode in any compact in that price range... Not with stock firmware, anyway. The first compact that comes to mind with RAW mode is the Canon G10 and its predecessor, the G9.
Alternatively most of the PowerShot and Ixus range can run CHDK, which adds RAW mode, a live histogram, and a few other really neat toys to the Canon firmware.
URL for the latter is: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
Not "analog," but optical. Film is storing the actual picture, not an electromagnetic representation on magnetic tape. It should be noted that all that is not digital is not necessarily "analog."
yes, the workers bought the last Polariod one-step film plant in Holland, days before the machinery was to be junked, and are trying to reinvent the material.
seems Polaroid used up all the critical chemicals before dumping the product, the process is basically lost.
that won't happen for Kodachrome. initially only Kodak processed the film, nobody else, they had at one time 28 labs nationwide. then they outsourced the processing lab at Kansas city to Duane's, and closed the rest.
bet the last film batch was made a couple years ago, and when that's out, that's it.
hint: like the faces of image orthicons, film kept in a freezer does not deteriorate if left in the dehydrated factory package. you could conceivably freeze up all the K-chrome you can find.
but it's a 38 step process requiring, again, specialized chemicals made for the purpose and precise machinery to process K-chrome, so when Duane's folds its lab in 2010, all you have is filmsicles. they'd just be ornaments.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Run over to Digital Photography Review and peer around the reviews. I think your price point is a tad low for a RAW format camera, but I could well be wrong....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
was not just that the colours were great, but also that the grain was tiny. I saw an 8-foot high poster in a photo exhibition, where the grain was not visible until you walked up to it, and asked the photographer how he'd done it. "Enlarged from a single 35-mm Kodachrome" was the reply. I walked away with a new respect for Kodachrome, the film against which all others are measured and found wanting.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
... huh?
The problem at $500 isn't the image quality, indeed. The problems are (a) awful tiny viewfinders, (b) awful interface (one control dial does everything, so you must hold down all sorts of tiny indistinct buttons while turning it), (c) often you don't have the option but to buy without the kit zoom lens.
Are you adequate?
You can get Sigma SD9 used for about 100 Euros, though. SD10 costs not much more.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You could get one of the Canon compact range then load up this alternative firmware: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Downloads
Let's you do things you cannot do with the standard OS/Firmware, and to boot it is perfectly safe as it only loads from your SD card into ram. Remove card and camera is back to default factory settings.
Note, for most [ultra] compacts saving in RAW format doesn't really gain you much.
Canons have good low light level response, but I like the lenses on the Panasonic compacts TZ5+ (I have one of each :) )
Kodachrome is the only colour film that doesn't fade after decades of storage. While certain flavours of Velvia may technically capture more details, it doesn't stand up to time. In fact, 10-15 year old Velvia slides have washed away it's 'accurate' colours while my dad's kodachrome from the 40s and 50s looks like it was shot yesterday. Without Kodachrome, generations of colour photographs would not exist. Obviously, the famous photos would still survive (eg anything from National Geographic), but snapshots and other amateur photos would now be lost had they been shot on any other film.
Apart from it's longevity, Kodachrome also has beautiful colour rendition. Both of those reasons is why it is the only film I reach for when I want colour. Anything worth recording isn't worth losing to an unstable film.
Yeah. Nearly anything by Canon, and aftermarket firmware.
Check out the CHDK wiki. You can download firmware which unlocks RAW mode and a whole slew of other neat features. Something that makes it particularly neat is that you don't actually put the firmware on the camera--only the memory card, and it's optionally loaded on power-up time. If it causes problems, turn the camera off and then back on but without loading the 'firmware.'
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I don't know what they're retailing for where you live, but the Nikon D40 is a great entry-level DSLR. It's small and lightweight, which might appeal to your girlfriend, it comes with a decent 18-50 mm kit lens and shoots RAW, although I generally set mine to shoot Fine quality jpeg.
I would also suggest checking out Ken Rockwell's site. He has great reviews and how-to articles that may be helpful before and after your purchase. I'm not connected to his site in any way, but consult it frequently.
I don't care why you're posting AC
RAW support?
Probably not out of the box.
CHDK + one of the PowerShot A series is probably your best bet.
RAW without manual controls is not the most ideal combination, so except for the SD990 + CHDK, the Elphs are out. The SD990 is above your budget range.
Unless you go used, maybe a G9?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Sorry, I read your comment too quickly and didn't notice you were actually interested in a point & shoot, not a DSLR. Still, you might want to look at it if she's really interested in photography, especially if shooting in RAW is important to you.
I don't care why you're posting AC
Kodachrome (as other knowledgeable posters have stated already) has not been the main line for Kodak in many years. Professionals who wanted the ultimate in resolution and fine grain shot Kodachrome 25, and that was killed in 2002. Once that was gone, the rest (the 200, which was "okay", and the 64, which was "punchy") were on the downward slope. Ektachrome, which long dominated due to easier process and more natural tonal rendition is still being made (and has now been elevated to the "Pro" line). How long it will be sold is anyone's guess, but I would guess for quite a while.
While it is nice from time to time to go on a trip down memory lane and reminisce and wring one's hands, the truth is digital has far surpassed analog for most applications, and even for old farts like me the computerized postprocessing, while less romantic than darkroom filled with chemicals, is infinitely more powerful, precise, and satisfying.
What we really should regret is how hard a time Kodak has had with the transition to this brave new world, despite their early advances when it seemed they were well poised to dominate the market, just as they did in film. Something snapped, like with so many more of US companies, and early rise did not translate into a long-term power. They certainly have excellent products and own certain niches, yet one cannot help feel that result fell short of expectations.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
That's like saying that the buggy whip industry knew how to change with the times.
What they know is that Kodachrome isn't selling as well as it used to, therefore it's not worthwhile for them to manufacture it any more. It's not due to any extreme cleverness or long term strategic planning on their part.
This is basically the same way that Intel got out of the DRAM business. If you read Grove's book Only the Paranoid Survive, he describes how Intel avoided losing their shirts in the DRAM wars not by being extremely clever in forseeing that the DRAM market was going to become brutally competitive, but by their standard business planning based on costs of wafer starts and profits of various kinds of products. When DRAM became less profitable, fewer wafer starts were allocated to DRAM and more allocated to other products, eventually to the point that they were making almost no DRAM. They realized what had happened AFTER the fact.
Polaroid film was "phased out long ago"? They were making the stuff until June 2008 for christ's sake! I suppose next someone will say the Cleveland Indians haven't won the Series since the Late Jurassic! Oh wait... I think that's actually true.
Read this and weep: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm
Only a poor workman blames his tools.
Kodachrome was killed by Fuji's Velvia and Kodak's own Ektachrome E100-series professional films years ago. They're both much easier to process (cheaper and more environmentally friendly), as archival, and provide a variety of color palettes to choose from. K64 was around for nostalgia, and nostalgia kept people buying it and Dwayne's processing it for many years beyond what made economic sense.
Polaroid "died" within the past year, moron, not long ago, and there's a group trying to resuscitate it. Polaroid sheet film is not equalled by anything in the digi-toy world, especially type 55.
If you want to know how long Kodak will keep a product going, they discontinued their last dry plate film in 2002. That's an emulsion on a glass plate, a technology that Kodak introduced in 1879 (replacing the wet plate technology, look it up). A flexible transparent base for film was introduced in 1899, meaning they kept the "outdated" glass plate technology going for 103 years after its replacement came along.
Just because a medium isn't digital does NOT mean that it is analog. Thanks for an idiotic summary, timothy!!
Well apparently Paul Simon think it's better in black in white ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcR_LvorN_0&feature=related
(2:02 mark)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome_(song) ...
But still, Kodachrome gives us those nice bright colors
It gives us the green of summers
Make you think all the world's a sunny, oh yeah!
Both Canon and Nikon still make 35mm film SLRs. Canon only makes an autofocus film body for about $900, but Nikon sells a student manual focus camera, the FM10. Amazon's selling it (through a third party vendor) for $290 with a kit zoom lens (35-70mm, f/3.5-4.8, not very good for a film student). They even still sell a decent selection of manual focus lenses for it (and you can still use the Nikon non-G autofocus lenses on those cameras, so the selection is even wider).
Still, you'd be silly to buy this kind of camera new. There's a big glut of comparable used manual focus bodies out there that will make perfectly good cameras. I can wholly recommend Minolta SRT (which I've used), and the other systems (Olympus, Canon FD, Pentax K, etc.) are also good.
Are you adequate?
This may not be of immediate help, but there was a hacked firmware for certain Canon P&S cameras that allowed you to save the raw image.
Here's the first article I found about it:
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Supercharge_Your_Camera_with_Open-Source_CHDK_Firmware#How_To_Use_It
Note: I have not used this and cannot vouch for it.
Good luck!
AFAIK the cheapest P&S with RAW from the factory are the Powershot G10 which will run you ~$450 new from a reputable dealer. Of course for much less you can get a D40 with the 18-55 kit lens ($375 at Adorama.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
perfect color, contrast and detail. the look was rich, the colors fat. slow yes but the best 35mm film i ever shot. my slides from the seventies still look gorgeous. i will miss this film, the clack of the projector loading a new image and the smoke drifting through the light.
There is nothing just like Kodachrome. It has virtually no grain and last almost forever. Certainly longer than Ektachrome.
For anyone who worked with film it is a sad day.
By the way if you want archival quality photos by far the best is black and white film developed and printed. If it is properly
washed and stored, short of burning, it will last forever.
There's not much point in RAW mode for majority of point and shoots. You should instead simply try to get the model with the best sensor possible, because that's what really differentiates various brands/models in this price segment.
Personally, I prefer Fuji Finepix F-series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_FinePix_F-series (mostly because if I use flash it's for correcting the light; not for making the photograph possible at all, as most people do...with quite "sterile" results)
One that hath name thou can not otter
This has to be one of the most ignorant postings I've seen on Slashdot, ever. Good job, eldavojohn. 1. Kodachrome being discontinue is not related to "the death of film." Kodachrome was long supplanted by Fujichrome Velvia as the professional colour-positive film back in the 1990s. 2. Polaroid was not phased out "a long time ago." The company only announced it was getting ending production in February 2008.
There is still a little Kodachrome film out there. I just ordered two rolls to burn on nothing but summer fun. Kodachrome is about fun, and colors, and about wasting film on silly things. I think the significance of this film is years of smiles and of silly pictures that mean the world the people that snapped them. This film reminds us of memories locked in our brains, and when we see one of these pictures the brain unlocks those memories from years past. The colors and the feeling this film captures will never be completely reproduced and could never be replaced. Just like our memories. My advice, buy a roll or two and go have fun with it. Take pictures of friends and family on a trip or whatever. You won't regret it.
No, not at all. A really basic 35mm SLR kit back in the day of the Pentax K1000 would have had a 50mm f/2 lens or better, which completely trounces the lens on a Powershot, period.
You have to understand that over the history of photography, most of the advances haven't been about image quality; they've been about size, speed and convenience. Even changes that at first glance seem to be about image quality (e.g., aspherical lens elements, special types of glass) were actually about improving the optical performance of small format cameras to get acceptable pictures out of them. So that 50mm f/2 film SLR kit lens actually gave way to crappy slow kit zoom lenses, because, well, zooms are convenient. Same applies to the Powershot vs. old 35mm SLR. The Powershot doesn't have the optical quality, but the users don't care, period, because (a) they can see their photos right away, (b) they can carry less stuff, (c) they can email the photos easily. Same sorts of advantages apply to DSLRs, plus (d) you get comparatively less noise at higher ISO speeds, and (e) you don't have to muck around with color correction filters to get the correct white balance.
Are you adequate?
Most slashdot readers are probably not aware of what Kodachrome is, which is necessary to understand in order to see why Kodak is discontinuing it.
Kodachrome uses chemical technology that is essentially unchanged from the 1930s. Instead of embedded dye in the film emulsion, as is done in all other color films in use today, the film is essentially black and white, with filter layers, and the dyes are added during processing. Further complicating processing is a requirement for exposure to light of particular colors and intensities between chemical baths. Because of the complicated processing and the tight coupling between the nature of the film and the details of the processing steps, there has been no change to the Kodachrome technology since the introduction of the rarely-used higher speed Kodachrome in the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, competing slide films (Velvia, metioned upthread, also Kodak's older Ektachrome and more recent Lumiere and E100VS series films) continued to improve at least through the late 1990s. In addition to processing easy enough that it can be done in a home lab, these films are higher speed, higher resolution, less grainy, and offer more saturated colors. Continued production of Kodachrome (or, more likely, continued release of emulsions that have been in climate controlled storage for many years) has mainly served a tiny niche of photographers who have built a personal style around the film, plus a few curious newcomers.
Aside from the aforementioned "personal photographic style" considerations, Kodachrome has been practically obsolete for around 30 years, because starting around 1975 or so the last of the serious problems with E-6 process films (Ektachrome etc) -- stability during lengthy archival storage and shadow detail -- were solved.
The presence of good alternatives in other transparency films makes this a non-event. Should we see the day when transparency film is categorically unavailable, that will be an occasion for much greater wailing and gnashing of teeth.
"Kodachrome was once the film of choice for many baby boomers' family slide shows"
I believe the choice for slideshows was Ektachrome. Kodachrome was a color reversal film (it made negatives).
But I always preferred the ones made by Fuji. The colors looked better.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Kodak bustes it's own @$$ long ago with the invention of the digital photo, it's business model didn't change as fast as the industry and that's why they have to close portions of their products, out of the bankrupcy.
Make no mistake, this is no "we are changing with the times", this is "we ran out of business and we are shrinking".
You know, how Vinyl is supposed do be higher quality because it is lower in quality but sounds softer because of that?
Just wait for the same thing happening for film. ^^
I wonder, though, if we should really completely kill film off.
Why not keep it for its artistic value. Think of the effects you can create in a darkroom. And it also can make more sense than to print a digital photo onto a plastic film.
This would be the "scratching culture" of photography, so to speak.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I never really thought I'd be so saddened by the loss of any film stock, but I reconnected with Kodachrome through a massive effort to scan over a thousand slides from my family's life in 2008 - 75% of which were Kodachrome.
The two most beautiful pictures of myself and my sister were made on 35mm Kodachrome using my father's Pentax K1000.
30-something years later I made a picture of my Mum and the image felt dreamy and at the same time the level of detail was unflinching. I wish I had used the whole roll making pictures of my family.
Perhaps I'll use those last three rolls in my fridge for pictures of people I love. A fitting end to this way of interpreting the world.
The Kodachrome look now firmly passes into the realm of nostalgia.
You could buy a used Fuji Finepix E900 for around US$80,-. It has great value, still. Use it with Sanyo Eneloop Rechargables and off you go for hours and hours of nonstop shooting: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/FujiFilm/fuji_finepixe900z.asp. It is a great small package and very convenient to use and carry. At the moment it anihilates our need (more lust, though) for a DSLR and videocam completely, as it is much more convenient to lugg around - to save the moments only parents ... you know what I mean ...
Plus I can fit 5,000 pictures in my pocket on a thumb drive without having to carry 500 lbs. of photo albums over to someone's house to look at them. Digital photos also do not degrade with the passage of time.
Except that you'll never go through 5,000 pictures in the future.
I like digital photos as much as the next person (have Nikon D40, Sigma 30mm f/1.4), but with film (I started with a Praktica BX20) at least you considered the photographs you took a bit more because there was more of a concrete cost to them. Instead of blindly snapping away and then throwing 500 pictures into iPhoto / Picassa never to look at them again, you'd think about the picture, take it, and then have it in a more concrete way.
It's also just as easy to digitize film: I worked in a photolab in the early '00s just as digital was coming up, and we offered a service where we'd cut you a CD in addition to printing things on paper (for a nominal charge of course).
Of course it's just as easy to get a paper print from a JPEG as well, it's just not a priority for most people.
No, Kodachrome is a slide film, one of the first, and by far the most popular until Velvia came along. Ektachrome in the 60/70/80 s a very crappy second-rate alternative.
I beleive you are talking about Kodacolor - the original name for the Kodak color print film.
Until about mid-90's, just about every professional color photo you ever saw was taken on Kodachrome, Nat. Geographic being a notable user. It's still superior to most of the alternatives as far as raw image quality goes. the other posters have it right - the processing was so obscure and arcane that the turn around time to get it processed has been about 2 weeks, basically forever, compared to every other slide film (Process E6, Ektachrome, Velvia, etc..) which can be done overnight, and to Kodacolor and other print film (that can be done in an hour). Slide film is still a primary medium, print film was strictly for casual point-and-shoot but has been replaced by digital almost entirely.
Brett
What like film? that hates dust, water, moisture, and heat? or do you mean like clicking the little button that say "Print"? Hell... if I am feeling real sporty I send them to Kodak via Aperture to do some "good" prints.
There's also a worry about losing information about the process of manufacturing the film itself, which is of interest for historical reasons but also possibly for future technological purposes:
What if someone needs to recreate Kodachrome for an accurate historical reproduction of a photograph?
What if society ever has to rebuild from a serious collapse? If all our extant documentation is how to make digital cameras, it will take longer to get photography going again.
What if we need to take pictures during/after a nuclear war, when EMPs have knocked out most electronic technology?
My hope/wish is that companies that mothball old technologies in favor of newer ones would release into the public domain all documentation on the design and process of those technologies. If Kodak isn't making money off it anymore, that's fine, but it would be nice to have the blueprints and chemistry publicly documented for posterity.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
My canon point+shoot digitla is great and I still carry it, but it's rare that I take the time to get a good photo, they are mostly snapshots. I now have a cheap 6x6 TLR that shoots on roll film. There's something about the 6x6 film format, with all its impracticality, that helps me enjoy the moment of shooting the picture and enjoy the resulting photo more. Even if I still am a lousy photographer.
Nullius in verba
BTW, in the Central Park concerts, Simon sang "everything looks BETTER in black and white."
I think B&W film will be the last to die, and hopefully it won't be in our lifetime. There is still a lot of film gear out there that works great. My Ricoh 35mm SLR worked perfectly the second I pulled it out of the box it was in for 15 years. Try that with digital. It's fully mechanical, except for the light meter, which is juiced by a solar-powered capacitor.
Black and white film is much simpler to make and quite easy and inexpensive to develop at home. The only special chemicals you need are developer and fixer, and you can do it at room temperature. It costs maybe $1 a roll for the chems, and all the initial equipment totalled maybe $30.
Working with B&W film also contains plenty of the nostalgia of the dying film era. Nearly all of the pullitzer-prize-winning photos of the 60's and 70's were shot on Tri-X (the film mentioned in the OP "department" line).
My family's house did burn down while I was in high school, with two younger siblings. Many photos were lost. Some, forever. Most are back, however, including photos of my childhood and that of my parents. Over the years, we had exchanged photos with our family. After we were settled and life had returned to normal, everyone returned pictures. We even got some new ones I'd never seen before.
Digitize your photos, if you like. Don't forget to grab all your thumb drives as you're evacuating, or have them stored remotely and/or online, if you like. Whatever you choose.
My only purpose in commenting was to share the experience I had of witnessing how my family's cultural/social interaction had provided for off-site data recovery. I don't know if anyone was trading pictures for a reason, but it worked out nicely. The lesson is applicable to digital photos as well: off-site backup! The medium isn't nearly as important as the practice.
as many have already pointed out Kodachrome has been replaced by better film ... thats the real story here it has nothing to do with dropping film for digital... kodak has just released Ektar and the take up has been big. Fuji just re-released Velvia in ISO50 ...
If film is nolonger cost effective why have Kodak spend so much R&D money on Ektar ?
There is a film revival happeing at the moment as professionals and serious amateurs return to film, for many reasons.
I remember when Kodachrome 200 came out. Just around the time me, a kid of 21, had finally saved up enough to buy that top of the line Nikon F3 HP. I scarcely had anything else in that camera for 25 years. I always liked that warm golden color palette that Kodachrome gave you. Ektachrome just didn't do what Kodachrome did.
Kodachrome we knew thee well. Moved on to better technology digital with the times. But you'll always hold that special place in our hearts. How many fond memories you have left us.
Film will never go away. It will fade to the point of only one or two manufacturers making a small handful of types then the wake-up call will sound: Dying Medium Here! There may be no more!
Then there will develop (no pun intended) a small but determined movement dedicated to using and preserving the "old way" of traditional photography at any cost. And "at any cost" will allow those one or two manufacturers to keep making that small handful of types for what has essentially become a novelty market.
...argument about being taking good shots with "crappy" cameras, if you know what you are doing? The article proved it's point, you have to latch onto some other irrelevant tidbit to yell about. Oh, and using the word "fail" as a noun/adjective is so cyber-l33t-sheeplike. You might as well have thrown in w00t, or pr0n.
You might as well change ur /.ID to NOTHING ORIGINAL.
I'm sure this had to do with the fact that Kodachrome is process E-4, not E-6 like other slide films -- it's a custom job, even in Los Angeles I generally mailed them to Colorado to be developed. As the film market itself dwindles, the smallest niches (such as E-4 process labs) are going to dry up first. Kodak considered this TEN YEARS AGO -- I'm surprised it took them this long.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Sure can.
I've been using the Panasonic FZ line for a long time. The FZ50 is the best of the line -- very durable, with a super 12x zoom lens. Makes beautiful prints. They don't make them any more, but you can pick a used one up for $325 from keh.com. I bought mine used from them and it was in perfect condition -- they're a respectable outfit.
The FZ18 and FZ28 are good too (both have RAW), but don't perform quite as well in low light. They're smaller, though -- the FZ50 is a fairly bulky thing (but did I mention how good the images were)?
Actually, I don't think most of those are an example of a real problem:
Are you adequate?
You wrote, "Digital photos also do not degrade with the passage of time."
That's untrue. Just like hard-copy photos, the rate of degradation depends upon the media on which they're stored, and the condtions in which that media is kept.
Heat or Open Flame: enemy of paper, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives, magnetic tape media... etc.
Flood: enemy of paper, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives, magnetic tape media... etc.
Molten Lava: enemy of paper, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives, magnetic tape media... etc.
Ash Fallout from volcano eruption: enemy of CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives, magnetic tape media... etc.; paper survives this.
Various Airport Security Machines: enemy of CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives, magnetic tape media... etc.; paper survives this.
Freezing Temperatures: enemy of CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives, magnetic tape media... etc.; paper survives this.
I have some daguerreotypes taken of my relatives from the late 1800s. They're still quite readable (viewable).
Do YOU have any 200-year-old computer media, AND the hardware and software needed to read that media?
Are you saying that Adorama is not a reputable dealer?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
As someone who shoots digital and slide film I enjoy loading and shooting Kodachrome 64 in my old Yashica Electro. Sure, the slides require more effort (loading, unloading then sending off to Dwayne's, then waiting). And of course they don't all turn out great. But the ones that do are just beautiful. Full rich heavily saturated colors. The digital shots always seem to look somewhat "sterile". I suppose due to the high quality and all. Oh well....... end of an era to be sure. Thanks Kodak for keeping it alive as long as you did.
I don't think they know how to change with the times, because they did initially fight digital photography, however they did lean from their mistakes much faster than other industries *cough* MPAA, RIAA *cough*
This is pretty sad news, however. Although it does make sense... But I'm still sad to see it go.
Film still beats digital in low-light, high-ISO situations. If you just snap pix with your phone, you won't care. If you make a living with your camers, you will.
Yes, the very best digital cameras are very good, but their film equivalents are significantly cheaper.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I miss my K1000. There's a simple camera you couldn't destroy if you tried.
Oh, how do I hate that. Let me count the reasons:
Actually, what I'm thinking of isn't the split prisms (which as you should notice, don't help at all with the close focus situation); it's just the plain old ground glass + fast lens, where it was possible to judge focus decently even without the split prism. I don't know what they do today (I think it has something to do with the AF beamsplitter), but judging focus from the screen without an aid on a modern small format camera is too hard. Hard enough that in the end, at the sub-$1,000 price point, I find that the EVF on the Panasonic G1 and GH1 shows the way forward.
Are you adequate?
No, I'm saying that the G10 (a p&s with raw capabilities) goes for $450 on up from a reputable dealer and that you can get an alternate product in a different category (entry dSLR) from Adorama which is certainly a reputable dealer for less. Did you miss some punctuation or something?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Two things. First, I for unknown reasons missed that the D40 is a dSLR and not a P&S. Second, your wording is a little unwieldy, seemingly making a comparison, but changing multiple variables. Whatever. Makes sense. I was just curious, as I haven't really heard anything but good about Adorama.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
If nothing else, it's worth noting this was announced in the month of Sol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
I always used to love my Velveeta and shells. Photography and food, what a combo ^^
FTFY.
Sadly Kodachrome 64 was the last really archival slide file with the finest grain suitable for stereo photography. Ektachrome color fades. Fugichome has a cold garish feel. Digital might take hi-res images but there still is no real efficient compacted viewing device like a hand held viewer looking at 2 slides with a light. Successful 3-D photography is all about the crispness of details. Grain tends to take you out of the experience.
Steve
Kodachrome uses a process somewhat similar to 3 strip Technicolor. Without a doubt, no other slide film renders colors in such lovely saturation and balance. Like Technicolor, Kodachrome is better than real life. No other still film renders such vibrant reds, something at which the Ektachrome stock fails miserably. Instead of the vibrant reds, deep blues, and fine grain of Kodachrome, the Ektachrome film only provides greenish hued, grainy, pastel colors in comparison.
And in archival terms, no other widely available still film color stock is as stable and long lasting. Long after the last Ektachrome has faded into flamingo shades of pink pastel, Kodachrome colors will remain almost as vibrant as the day it first left the processing lab.
Film is dead! Give it up people and move on. Do you also stay up late worrying about the buggy whip manufactures that went out of business when cars started selling?
If Kodachrome film looks good enough surely someone will create a photoshop effect or something to replicate it, wouldn't they?
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
Facebook there's enough pics for any future historian.
And here, children, is our exhibit on the Great Collapse, also sometimes called the Second Dark Ages. The details of how it happened are sketchy, but we have abundant archaeological evidence from what is known as the Facebook Archive that 21st century humans were utterly incapable of forming coherent sentences or spelling words in their entirety, and were bizarrely obsessed with inane abbreviations like "brb," "lol," and "ur." Without any effective means of communication, commerce broke down completely, and the people apparently resorted to a system of "mafia wars," wherein they formed marauding bands to steal items like the "Ace of Clubs" from one another.
We don't know how this society of babbling idiots survived, but they managed to eke out some kind of meaningless existence until the Armed Grammarian Uprising of 2057, when order was restored.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
My prediction is that "digital archeology" will be a very popular hobby in the coming decades and centuries.
There will be more historical data available than humans can realistically ever investigate, but I'm pretty sure exploring it will be a lot of fun for the coming generations.
And who knows, maybe it will all end up in Google eventually.
I mean can't it be made profitable? I mean just lower the production amounts and raise the price so it's profitable. If it is, you have a source of profit. It may not be huge, but it's something. The equipment already has been paid for.
I've got a Nikon camera, I love to take photographs, so please don't take my Kodachrome away! Oh wait-that was 1972 and this is 2009...Never mind!
I always used to think that Fuji's Velvia 50 and Ilford's Pan F+ to be too slow to shoot outdoors on a dark afternoon. A recent journey to Whitby in May taught me that both of those films look absolutely luscious on a dark, moody afternoon.
I used a tripod once or twice, but for the most part I shot handheld with a Pentax 645 and a Hexar AF and a shutter speed of 1/125 or 1/60. Don't be afraid of using slower films - and if you're in a pinch, just prop the camera on a rock/branch/bit of wood/etc! If you don't use a support of some kind, you'll have to shoot wide-open, but there's a certain beauty in that look, too.
I am in the process of scanning a few thousand negatives that I have found at my parents house. I am scanning them at 3000dpi and storing them in Aperture after doing some corrections on them. Any photos I find that correspond to these negatives gets tossed. The negatives then get stored in the negative sheets and put away for safekeeping. The scanned images get backed up to Amazon S3. My wife thinks I'm crazy but this is history. I want my children to know their grandparents and great-grandparents.
Some of the negatives I have go back to the 1940's when my mom was around 6 or 7 years old. The film quality was bad, but with the help of VueScan and Aperture, these B&W's are coming out great. You can see these here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffself/
The final days of Nikon film SLRs were/are interesting.
The F100 had lots of F5 owners wishing they had waited just a while longer and not been stuck with a giant brick of a camera. Not me, though. I love my F5 and still use it. But the F5 is long gone and the F100 endures.
That the FM10 still endures surprises me. Yes, it's a Cosina, but Nikon was so reluctant to bring out a stereotypical "student" camera for so long that when they finally relented and re-badged the Cosina, I figured their heart wasn't in it and the product would be dropped as soon as the winds changed. Boy, was I wrong. It's still around and still a perfectly usable camera. Wasn't that same chassis badged and sold as a Vivitar, too? I preferred the Vivitar's angular styling.
I was surprised that Nikon killed the F6 so quickly. With the advent of digital, I figured a boutique-sensibility, high-end film camera would find a "wealthy poser" niche, just like so many Leicas and field-appointed Linhofs in the past that found their way into the hands of dentists on African photo safaris and then into those dentists closets, never to be used again. Again, I was wrong. The rich-boy toy turned out to be the high-end digital SLR of the moment, not some film-swallowing throwback, no matter how wonderful that throwback was.
It seems I get nothing right when I conjecture about camera marketing. I guess I should just stick to having fun with them. I'm thinking about having my F overhauled (the flash sync went to hell years ago) or buying an F2 body and getting back to my roots; that should be fun enough in the twilight of my years.
I was thinking about that song recently, and my take is that he wasn't singing about the film. He was singing about the film -cannister-. You see, back in the day, the most common storage container for pot was a 35mm film cannister. He didn't give a shit about momma taking away his -film-, it was what he kept -in- the Kodachrome cannister that gave the "nice bright colors"....
I like the old cameras and film as much as anyone else who got familiar with them when film was all there was. They work well, have a nice gamut, great resolution, and the exposure speed and refresh rate still beats the hell out of most of the consumer-grade digital stuff. But it's fairly obvious as digital can only get better that film's days are numbered already.
Yes digital is easy enough and convienient for the lazy. But that's only a small part of it. What really broke the back of film photography is cost. That's the reason why I don't do much of it anymore. You spend money to buy a few rolls of film, but then you have to pay to get the negative developed, and anytime you want prints made - that costs too. Let alone the cost of having special size prints made or using unique film that requires special processing. Then you need ways to store and organize the physical media. What exacerbates this is if you shoot a lot. With film, every wasted shot ads up. And then you have to pay to develop those bad shots so that you can see that they're bad. Digital gives you freedom from paying for those screw ups. If the shot's bad, just preview and delete. Because the risk of running out of film (storage) during a session is essentially gone and the cost is nill, there is freedom to take shots that would have never happened with film. Digital is quite liberating to be able to experiment, knowing that you can pick the photos that work and all the others don't cost a dime. Before digital, you had to have a lot more money to take on photography in a creative manner. With digital, you can go wild with it without a care and share all the neat and cool images with the world.
Then there's post-work. All the darkroom stuff is a lot easier on digital and doesn't require creation of a special controlled environment or equipment. Just load it into PhotoShop or Gimp and push pixels, none of that fun toxic headache causing fumes and itchy skin if the gloves leaked chemical stuff.
In regards to the old film going away, perhaps they could release the chemistry and manufacturing process bit to public domain for people who insist on doing it the old school way as a hobby. Let them be able to make their own film, since it's no longer profitable to sell it anyways.
I tried PanF+ a few years ago when I was still a film noob. I used it entirely indoors with a flash. I got a few usable photos, but most were too dark. I've read since that it's rather contrasty and unlike most B&W films, doesn't handle overexposure well. I might give it another try some time, but not before the cheaper Adox/Efke or maybe Lucky.
You can't just charge whatever you want for your product - customers have to be willing to pay. And apparently, they're not even willing to pay for it now - the market for Kodachrome has apparently withered to 1% of Kodak's sales.
It is exceptionally contrasty and doesn't really like overexposure - but that's why shooting it on an overcast day with even lighting really brings out the otherworldly quality of this emulsion.
Now I really should give Efke a try ...
Good luck!
The issue in your example is just the difference in look between two different photo mediums. Do the same thing with a Velvia 50 slide and it will stand out from the Kodachomes at least as much as the digitally produced slide will.
Ultimately all films and digital photo captures are visually "fake" because they do not accurately match the color, sharpness, or dynamic range that your eye sees. Whatever you are most used to will look "real" but it's just that you're used to it. Kodachrome was a leading slide film for so long that to a certain generation it is the "real" look of photography. But it's just a matter of habit.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.