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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."
Kodachrome was like smoking pot.
Fuji is like doing acid.
Agfa is like a rainy day...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
"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".
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.
Not only that, but they have been discontinuing Kodachrome for years now. This was the last remaining speed they were making, ISO 64. They stopped making other speeds years ago.
Man, you really need that seminar!
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
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.
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.
Thats just nonsense. It's will be a *very long time* before the pixels on a digital camera approach the size of a silver halide molecule. Most high-quality photography is still done on large-format film stock (Fuji Velvia or similar, in 6x7 of 4x5) which is then scanned to get a digital file. I routinely use Velvia in 2 1/4", scan it, and turn my $75 Yashica-Mat into a 55 MP digital camera. Side by side with my Nikon D90, there's no comparison in the image quality for appropriate subjects.
Brett
The mere fact that the continuous range is caused by a chemical process and not an electrical process does not mean it isn't analog.
Are you sure that's why they said it? You're aware that individual grains within a photograph are either "exposed" or "unexposed", right?
Of course, the grain size and shape can vary continuously within certain ranges, as can the positioning. But it's not as (cough) black and white as you seem to think.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Are you sure you understand silver-halide exposure? You're aware that individual grains are NOT either "exposed" or "unexposed". Instead, a certain number of silver nuclei in each crystal (or grain) will be present depending on how many photons the grain was exposed to. Developing helps amplify the effect, causing more of the grain to be "exposed", but by no means is it "all" or "none". Read about the chemistry of film here. In short, though, it's pretty darn analog.
Old Velvia was 50ASA which was insanely slow, and hard to shoot with. Wonderful with tripod but handheld was hard. I actually found it a bit over saturated, though that's a matter of opinion.
Kodachrome's death wasn't so much caused by the continuing move to digital caused by the lowering of prices on Digital SLRs....that was certainly a factor, and continues to be so. Kodachrome was a unique film with a unique developing process and there was only one lab in the world still doing it. It was always a pain in the butt to use because of the process anyway: even in Toronto my film had to be shipped to a specific lab to get developed, or mailed to Kodak directly. I hated doing that...film gets lost in transition more than any other way, and the wait was long sometimes.
Fujichrome film could be processed in a standard E-6 process, and that was readily available in even small communities not so long ago. I switched to Provia a long time ago, and never looked back.
I'm going to go buy some tonight, actually, and it's going to cost a lot less than the $1,300 for the Canon 50D, plus it doesn't have that stupid crop factor that turns my ultra wide 20mm lens into an unimpressive relatively "normal" 32mm lens.
I'm waiting for an affordable full frame digital SLR before I move. Some will argue that the 5D is it, but I would certainly NOT argue that $3,000 is affordable. In the meantime, I scan slides.
We really need to solve the damn dust problem as well, though most people tell me it's overblown. Batteries can also be an issue for those of us who like to photograph off the grid.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll