Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
Kodachrome was like smoking pot.
Fuji is like doing acid.
Agfa is like a rainy day...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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".
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
??????
Seriously, i am not sure what you are talking about...
Film has _some_ advantages, i will admit it. But low-light performance is NOT one of them.
In fact, it is telling that the area where you need best low light performance was the first to switch to CCDs (Astronomy).
Modern pro-DSRL can make pictures at ISO 12800 and higher, with reasonable noise levels (consumer DSRL can still do 800 or 1600 without looking too crappy).
Any film that would try to match that would look like a nice case of modern art, and not a photograph.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
A $200 digital point-and-shoot will typically produce more noise at ISO's of say, 800 and up than an equivalently priced film point-and-shoot.
The fact that the very best digitals are capable of extreme ISO settings is relevant only to the few who can afford them.
Beyond that, film vs. digital is a pointless discussion. On the one hand, some diehards refuse to see any value in digital, and, on the other, some folks always equate "digital" with "better". Both positions are wrong.
There remains a strong community of film users. Whether film is "better" is not the point. The point is they like film. People who are cellphone shooters and think everything about photography can be summed up in megapixels and resolution might not understand.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
By your definition, no physical medium is analogue. After all, they're all made up of molecules and atoms, and other sub-atomic particles. Electricity (and electric devices) couldn't be analogue, among other things, the electron count is discrete.