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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.
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
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.
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.