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Kodachrome Takes Its Final Bow Today
Ellis D. Tripp writes "Today marks the end of an era for photo geeks, with the shutdown of the world's last Kodachrome film processing line. Dwayne's Photo, of Parson, KS will pull the plug on their K-14 processing equipment at the end of business today."
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
You give us those nice bright colors
You 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
And everything looks worse in black and white
Kodachrome
You give us those nice bright colors
You 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
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)
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Here's the original story from the New York Times.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
On that topic, I still say only the original Edison wax cylinders had true audio fidelity. Vinyl is just a cheap knockoff, trading convenience for quality.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Kodachrome is hard film to use; I gave up trying to take indoor photos with it years ago. I have continued to use it (about 25 rolls in the last two years), mostly because the quality of the images is obviously different from modern film or digital, and evokes nostalgia in older viewers. And I liked the bragging rights. It's no surprise that Kodachrome is gone; Kodak had been phasing it out for years -- first killing the larger format versions, then the iso25 and iso200 variants, and the motion picture film. The economics just weren't there; virtually every other color film uses identical (C41 or E6) processing chemicals, and Kodachrome used a different and apparently more toxic set. Without scale, it was more expensive to buy and process than other color films, and the emulsion can't even be scanned by most slide scanners. You're left with only nostalgia and archival properties to drive sales, enough for a small specialty chemical company perhaps, but not for Kodak.
Kodachrome is a transparency ("slide") film, not a negative one like Kodacolor. Also, unlike conventional transparency films like Ektachrome and Fujichrome, the color dyes are not present in the emulsion when you shoot the film but are introduced during processing, which makes developing the stuff a bitch. One effect of this is that the dyes in Kodachrome are much longer lasting than those in other transparency films (the ones developed using the E-6 process).
Actually, the process Kodachrome uses to produce the color is still based on the fundamental instability which plagues all chromogenic systems- even though the dye coupler is not in the emulsion(as would be the case with Kodacolor and Ektachrome), the fact is that the process is still the same. A dye coupler combines with developing agent by-products in proportion to the amount of underlying silver that is developed. I've always wondered how Kodachrome achieved greater archival permanence; maybe it is because the coupler/developing agent byproduct reaction happens only in processing and the dye coupler does not have a chance to become spoiled while unused sitting in an emulsion.
I predict Kodak and Fuji will be out of the film business by the end of the decade.
The end of the decade is about 1 day, 7 hours, and 25 minutes from now.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Fuji currently makes several positive and negative type films. They also make a color-neutral type for professional use that looks as dull and washed out as our eyes generally see. The differences between Kodachrome and Provia are fairly minor, to be honest. Kodachrome was actually a black and white film that had color added to it, so it requitred special chemistry and had a curiously super-saturated blue tint (it's more reactive to blue than most any other film.
http://www.soerink.nl/film/film.html
You'll note the 3.7 value for blue on Kodachrome. But realistic it's not.
http://www.maremmaphoto.it/filmtest.eng.html
Close, but not quite.
I use Fuji NPS 160/160S, though, as it's spot-on realistic to what your eyes see. Slightly dimmer blues and not as punchy (I find Velvia garish, like a poster, almost). But very nice, especially for portraits.
NOTE: Fujifilm USA stops importing film from Japan if the numbers get too low. In most cases, though, the film is still made in Japan - you have to sometimes order from a shop that deals directly with Japan or import it. (the same is true for Agfa as well)
Every time I consider the maniacal steps involved in process K-14 (small .PDF), I'm amazed that anything shows up at all.