They took my kodachrome away!

ScottM

ScottM

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iBazinga!
End of an era.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/22/kodaks-kills-kodachrome-f_n_218813.html

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Sorry, Paul Simon, Kodak is taking your Kodachrome away.
The Eastman Kodak Co. announced Monday it's retiring its most senior film because of declining customer demand in an increasingly digital age.
The world's first commercially successful color film, immortalized in song by Simon, spent 74 years in Kodak's portfolio. It enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and '60s but in recent years has nudged closer to obscurity: Sales of Kodachrome are now just a fraction of 1 percent of the company's total sales of still-picture films, and only one commercial lab in the world still processes it.
Those numbers and the unique materials needed to make it convinced Kodak to call its most recent manufacturing run the last, said Mary Jane Hellyar, the outgoing president of Kodak's Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group
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I have not shot ANY film in almost 4 years. Even then i had to special order what I was shooting as I wanted slide film. To get it processed required sending it to Atlanta as there was no longer any local processing.
 
I haven't shot on film since sometime in college, so it's probably been about 5 years.

The only thing that I become somewhat sad about is that you have fewer printed pictures out there. I keep everything digital and print out some of the good ones (and keep back-ups since I don't want to lose the pictures), but scrapbooks and things like that? What happened to those?
 
Haven't shot Kadachrome in years. I've been using Velvia 50 thae last few times I shot color transparency film. I wouldn't be suprised if someone were to make it again in small quantities.
 
Sheesh.
A friend of mine shoots Kodak IR film that was discontinued about a year ago or thereabouts. Her remaining stockpile is being treated like it's the most rare thing in the universe. It's about to drive her crazy looking for an acceptable substitute that meets her standards. Last time we talked, she was testing Efke and seemed to be ok with it. Everything she does is film and she does her own developing. Excellent stuff.
 
I don't know about this 1 lab in the country thing. I've sent boxes of E6 off to three or four various labs in the past couple years, some local, some far afield.

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
I've sent boxes of E6 off to three or four various labs in the past couple years, some local, some far afield.
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Kodachrome isn't E6, that's for a bunch of common slide films.

Kodachrome is "K14".
-harry
 
Thanks, Harry; you beat me to the "punch." And speaking of "punch," I still have an unused -- of course, it's no good anymore -- roll(no box) of Kodachrome 10(the original). I had found it many years ago when I bought another camera store. The "10," of course, was upgraded to Kodachrome 25 and 64. A marvelous trick with Kodachrome 64 was to set the ASA(before ISO became PC) at 80. The processed results were dynamic.

HR
 
Digital is great but boy I remember the coolness and funky smell of the Darkroom when I took Photography back in Jr. high ( mid 1970s) there was somthing mystical about watching the photo come out from the blank white paper. The black & White especially there was just something so deep about the subjects on black and white film. I felt they invited you to imagine what was going on a bit more than color.

As a side thought I wonder how much chemical waste, if any has been saved by the migration to digital.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
...scrapbooks and things like that? What happened to those?
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The pictures went digital, so did the scrapbooks.

I do use Picasa's built-in-ability to send the best of the best to my local Walgreens (or CVS, Walmart, or any of a number of mail order photo printers) for pickup of hard copies in an hour... very affordable.

And for the BEST OF THE BEST with scrapbooking digital photographs, try MyPublisher. A friend of mine makes individual books for all of their big trips, and once a year makes a family "yearbook" with pictures from that year... he showed me his books, and these are VERY NICE--high quality thick glossy durable paper like the best coffee table books, hardbound. And more affordable than you'd think. MyPublisher gives you the software and tools to do it for free, and your first book is free, too (see the red circle on the main page)...
 
I just noticed that three different spell-check programs within my system didn't recognize Kodachrome as a word. (The one in this forum did) The former must be indicative of how seldom the name has been used in text in recent years.

HR
 
AdamZ said:
Digital is great but boy I remember the coolness and funky smell of the Darkroom when I took Photography back in Jr. high ( mid 1970s) there was somthing mystical about watching the photo come out from the blank white paper.
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I enjoyed Photography in HS. It was pretty fun to goof around in the darkroom with a cute girl!!!!:yesnod:
 
Yeah, Troy, I should probably get myself a Picasa account and start using that. I have a lot of pictures that I'd like to be able to set up scrapbook type things for.
 
mantakos said:
Kodachrome isn't E6, that's for a bunch of common slide films.

Kodachrome is "K14".
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The difference is immense, too. E6 is a simple enough process that it can be done in a home lab. That's because the dyes are in the film, so the processing tolerances are about the same as for color negative film.

K14 is a different animal entirely. The dyes are added during processing. K14 processing tolerances are an order of magnitude or more tighter than E6 or C41: fractions of a degree F, and a small number of seconds. That means that it must be machine processed, and the machines - if you can get them any more, which I strongly doubt - are more complex and cranky.

The only thing that surprises me about this is that it lasted this long.
 
Whether the print facings were black, light blue, or red, the boxes were always a distinctive yellow, and almost totally impossible to duplicate in graphics. And those boxes constituted the basis of some 35 years(or more) of my livelihood.

So, what better background would be better than - - - - - - - for signage?

HR(yes, my right-seater has a Comm. rating)

Additionally, if I happen to do any transparency exposures the Fuji Velvia and Provia are pretty hard to beat.
 

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View-Master was, by far, the largest user of Kodachrome. They were one of the few who processed it in house.

But then.....View-Master is gone too!!!
 
So I gotta throw my $1000 Ricoh and lenses in the trash with the TVs? *HMMMPH*
 
mikea said:
So I gotta throw my $1000 Ricoh and lenses in the trash with the TVs? *HMMMPH*
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Don't do that! If you still want to shoot some transparencies the Fuji-chrome Velvia and Provia are really good E-6 films. Two top-notch labs which process them are both in Colorado: SlidePrinter and Accent Photo; I've used them for years. Each has had large expansions - a la digital - and I'll be back with their Web sites in a moment. (See below)

HR

http://www.theslideprinter.com

http://www.accentphoto.com

(formerly Accent Photo, mergers of sort are now "Ascent Print," but the above still gets you to the operation.
 
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mikea said:
So I gotta throw my $1000 Ricoh and lenses in the trash with the TVs? *HMMMPH*
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I've got a pretty extensive Olympus OM-series collection that I haven't touched in a few years. The E-410 does the job a lot more easily, and handles like an OM (unlike the other DSLRs out there) - and handling was what sold me on the OM system in the first place.

The only thing I do with images these days is use them digitally, so why bother with an intermediate step?
 
As a child, teen, and young adult I was very much into film photography, and I did my own processing from the time I was about 12 years old. But as digital evolved, I shot less and less film; and a couple of years ago I sold my remaining film cameras and lenses on eBay.

I don't think I used Kodachrome since some time in the 1970's, mainly because I couldn't process it myself. Although back then it only took a day or two for slide film (including Kodachrome) to come back from the lab, I actually enjoyed the developing/printing as much as I did taking the pictures; so I used Kodacolor, Vericolor Professional, and Ektachrome.

I often miss film photography, although I find it hard to think of an objective reason why. Digital is easier, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly. But there's still something... maybe it's just nostalgia.

-Rich
 
I've got a lot of Kodachrome slides I shot when we were younger. I remember when the name changed from Kodachrome II to Kodachrome 25. Then I shot a lot of Kodachrome 64. Great stuff and 38 year old slides from a trip to Europe still look great. But, I haven't used film in years. All digital these days. And my old Minolta SRT-102 uses a mercury cell for the light meter that you can't get anymore. The equivalent is a zinc-air battery that has a 6 month life once you activate it, whether you use it or not. I guess I'll just leave it in the bag and continue to shot digital now. Looking at the cost of film and developing, I'd say my Sony A100 DSLR is long paid for, given that I've taken over 8000 pictures with it in 2 1/2 years. I don't think I shot that many slides in 35 years. Amazing what you do when the incremental cost of each picture drops to zero.
 
Ghery said:
And my old Minolta SRT-102 uses a mercury cell for the light meter that you can't get anymore.
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This problem, at least, can be solved. Check out C.R.I.S. Camera for an adapter that drops in and lets you use a silver oxide battery. I've got one in an Olympus 35RC rangefinder camera that works just fine.
 
Happy New Year, the first Kodachrome free year of the 21st century. While Kodak stopped making the film in 2009 it was still possible to get any you had left processed. But that stops now.
Dwayne's Photo, a lab in Parsons, Kansas, was the last lab still processing popular film, which was created by Kodak in 1935. Dec. 30 was the last day Dwayne's would still accept rolls of the film for processing
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/30/last-kodachrome-developer_n_802921.html


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)
 
I hope I don't find any undeveloped rolls squirrelled away. I shot a lot of that stuff years ago, but it's been all digital for a number of years. Used a lot of Kodak's prepaid mailers over the years.
 
Probably the thing I miss most about 35mm film was the metal or plastic cans they came in. I had dozens of them around and used them for all sorts of stuff.
 
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