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Last Roll of Kodachrome Processed
Wired's Gadget Lab picked up a wistful story from the Wichita (Kansas) Eagle on the processing of the last roll of Kodachrome film that Kodak produced. "Freelance photojournalist Steve McCurry, whose work has graced the pages of National Geographic, laid 36 slides representing the last frames of Kodachrome film on the light board sitting on a counter in Dwayne's Photo Service in Parsons [Kansas]. ... National Geographic has closely documented the journey of the final roll of Kodachrome manufactured, down to its being processed. Dwayne's is the only photo lab left in the world to handle Kodachrome processing..." If you have any rolls of Kodachrome sitting around not yet exposed, better get them to Dwayne's before December 10, 2010.
As a photographer I process all B/W film myself (t-max/tri-x etc. - the few times I shoot with real film, that is), but there are still professional labs around my corner of the world for developing all negative and positive color ("slide") film, and I'm guessing there will be for a little while to come, but chemicals and paper is getting harder to come by, though.
Durability/Longevity. All the quality photographic film can survive longer in storage than CD's/DVD's can. Even HD's have a higher deterioration rate.
But overall, with film, it still is the king when it comes down to absolute quality(Both in resolution and colour representation). A top-quality 35mm film with superb emulsion can reach pretty damn good resolutions(equalling todays top-of-the line DSLR's). Then you move up mid-format and large-format cameras and you get even more insane results.
I was going to make a similar commet to yours; they need to mod you up. The GP was doubly wrong; not only was Kodachrome slide film, but I've had many slides printed as prints; no slide show or projector needed. Of course, the slides look better projected, but you could still get prints.
*sigh* I'm getting old, I had to change the tense of all the verbs in this comment, as there is no more Kodachrome.
Free Martian Whores!
Small batch Kodachrome processing is simply not possible. It's a 25 step process, generally overseen by an actual chemical engineer. The smallest it ever got was when they'd have lab set up in the back of a semi-trailer to do on-site processing at the World Series, Kentucky Derby, and similar events.
OTOH, the E-6 process used to develop Ektachrome/Fujichrome slide film can be carried out in a small home lab, and commercial processing is still widely available.
Kodachrome is by Paul Simon.
If anything, digital cameras can be faster because they don't have a film transport to deal with. Nikon's D3s shoots at 9 frames per second.
It was incredibly stable, the colors were very well-saturated but otherwise pretty accurate. The last version (kodachrome 64) was a little too contrasty for my tastes - I liked Kodachrome 25. You can't compare it to any digital until your pixels get smaller than a silver molecule, at least not any "35 mm" digital camera. Used to us it in 120 and just looking at them on a light table made you feel like a hero. "Kodachrome Red" was pretty famous, red always looked great. And it was perfectly well-suited for skin tones.
The film that effectively put it out of business, Fuji Velvia, is spectacular for landscapes where it pumps up the color saturation, and has all the colors like Kodachrome did red. It's very warm as far as color balance goes, and skin tones are almost cartoonishly shifted. It's essentially useless for portraits because of that. But it's far easier to process and you can still get it processed locally. Dwayne's Photo has been the only place processing it for years, and if you took it to a shop, that;s were it eventually ended up. Typically in recent years the turnaround time is on the order of two weeks. E6, you can still get overnight.
As far as I have seen, there's no real general-purpose replacement for Kodachrome. OR, rather, its digital - where the lack of image quality is offset by far superior color accuracy (much better on a general basis than ANY film) and easily manipulated and printed images.
But the handwriting is on the wall for just about all 35mm. It's always been marginally acceptable for sports and photojournalism because it was cheap and the little cameras were reasonably portable. The lack of overall image quality compared to 120 or larger (other than in the hands of masters) didn't really matter for magazines or newspapers. But everything 35mm could do is more-or-less easier or better with digital aside from the image quality, and the image quality of digital (since the mid 00's) has been sufficient to the point that it didn't matter.
When I go on photo trips, I now carry 4 cameras - a Canon point-and-shoot for quickies, a Nikon digital SLR for anything that moves, and two Yashica-Mats, one with Velvia 100 and one with Tri-X, for things that don't move. I will typically take the same shot with the Velvia 100 and the Nikon just in case, and meter the Yashica-mat shots with the Nikon (to back up spot meter readings).
BTW, if you get out the OM-1, be sure and check the foam light seals on the back. I have a 1977 version and the foam is decaying severely. and bear in mind that you can't get the batteries for the meter any more - they make some replacements but most of them don't put out the right voltage.
A viewmaster?
Having been taking pictures pseudo-seriously (i.e. not a pro, but not just doing birthday pictures of my kid) for a couple decades, I can say that there are pluses and minuses to each.
Kodachrome was a really high-quality film. It had great grain characteristics, wonderful color reproduction, and extremely good shelf-life. It's been very popular with the NatGeo set because it worked so well for capturing things like sunsets on the Serengeti. On the down-side, it was only made in relatively low speeds, ISO 200 or slower, so it wasn't well suited for photojournalism, sports, kids playing in the back yard, etc. It also used a different chemical process from other films (C-41 for print, E-6 for most other slide films, K-14 for Kodachrome), and the chemical process was quite a bit more complicated than even other slide films.
Velvia is a nice film, as well, but it has a tendency towards super-saturated colors, so it has a different feel from Kodachrome.
Digital has come a long way over the years, but it still lacks the dynamic range, resolution, and color reproduction capabilities of film, particularly the specialty films like Kodachrome or Tech Pan. Despite that, it's much cheaper to shoot, easier to handle, easier to process, easier to print, and lends itself much more readily to the Web than film does, which is why I haven't shot a single roll of film in ten or twelve years.
Ken Rockwells scanned film vs digital camera images:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filmdig.htm
Film:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/images/filmdig/4990scan.jpg
Digital camera:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/images/filmdig/digital.jpg
"If you do fret the pixel counts, I find that it takes about 25 megapixels to simulate 35mm film's practical resolution"
Camera was a $700 Tachihara 4x5". lens SChneider Symmar 150 mm f/5.6, film Fuji Velvia, scanner a cheap Epson 4990.
2003, $1500 Microtek 1800f scanner:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/images/filmdig/1800fscan.jpg
2005, $500 Epson 4990 scanner:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/images/filmdig/4990scan.jpg
I don't know what digital camera he compared to.
film @ 2400 dpi: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d200/images/film/2400dpi.jpg
Nikon D200: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d200/images/film/KEN_5127-nn.jpg
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d200/d200-vs-4x5.htm
Nice shots.
Not even close to correct. The equipment is essentially unique and not at all like any other processing system. That was always one of the issues - there was never going to be anything like "1-hour processing" for Kodachrome, the process is two orders of magnitude more difficult and fussy than anything else.
I am having a hard time understanding the media excitement over this "milestone."
You can still buy and develop other films that are considered superior to Kodachrome. Meanwhile, you can also simultaneously use a DSLR and operate in a fully digital fashion. The only people who are losing out are the ones with undeveloped Kodachrome in their cameras.
BTW, if you get out the OM-1, be sure and check the foam light seals on the back. I have a 1977 version and the foam is decaying severely. and bear in mind that you can't get the batteries for the meter any more - they make some replacements but most of them don't put out the right voltage.
I've made a couple replacement battery packs for these, using a quite small silver battery with very carefully selected germanium diodes to get the right voltage; it's possible to fit the combination of the battery and diode into the same form factor as the old mercury or other batteries. You need to get your voltage right to within about 50mV to make the meter accurate, but cheap diodes have enough variation you can manage this. (I'm not yet sure how their precision holds up long-term, however.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
The problem with slides is that the dynamic range, especially of Kodachrome, surpassed that of prints, so the prints were crappy looking. You had two choices:
1) Make a contrast-reducing mask, used along with an internegative, for a "type-C" print, the same kind of print made from negative stock. Of course the intermediate processes reduced the fidelity of the resulting print, but if you went to a good lab the results were pretty good and very pricey.
2) Use Cibachrome or some positive process print. Ciba prints always looks murky and strange to me (I can immediately spot them in a gallery). Other positive process prints had unstable dyes, at least until the 80s or so. I can still tell my positive process, direct-from-slide prints from my Type C ones.
A third alternative was to scan them in. This was easy when you worked for National Geographic :-) For us mere mortals, decent sub-$5K slide scanners didn't really exist until about five years ago.
Still, I shot nothing but slides (when I shot color and not BW), and used nothing but Kodachome if I could. All my Kodachrome slides, dating back to the 70s, look as good now as the day they came back from the lab.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
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
If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match
my sweet imagination
everything looks WORSE in black and white
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
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Leave your boy so far from home
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Mama don't take my Kodachrome
Mama don't take my Kodachrome away
Looks like Mama DID take his Kodachrome away!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.