Topic: Eastman Kodak : Kodachrome Stopped (Read 6447 times)

ThierryH · « **on:** June 22, 2009, 08:51:41 am »

After 74 years, Kodak has announced the end of the Kodachrome film by fall 2009:

http://fr.biz.yahoo.com/22062009/17/eastma...-abandonne.html

Thierry

walter.sk · « **Reply #1 on:** June 22, 2009, 10:06:58 am »

Quote from: ThierryH

After 74 years, Kodak has announced the end of the Kodachrome film by fall 2009:

http://fr.biz.yahoo.com/22062009/17/eastma...-abandonne.html

Thierry

A true Kodak Moment

antonyoung · « **Reply #2 on:** June 22, 2009, 10:19:37 am »

I know people are nostalgic for Kodachrome and all, but I wonder how many years it's taken them to finally decide to axe it? I haven't shot film in years, but I thought Kodachrome had already been killed a few years back. I was in art school 20 years ago, and Kodachrome was a niche product even then. I'm pretty sure they were losing money on it then, and it couldn't have been any better the last decade or so.

As I said, I know people get all nostalgic for it, it was the best color and lasted forever and there's never been anything like it and it was formulated by god himself and handed down from on high and now that it's discontinued good photographs can no longer be made... I know all that, I'm just saying that this product had to have been losing them money for a really long time. Kodak's decline and fall is just amazing. I can't believe how badly everything has been bungled at every step of the way.

Guy Mancuso · « **Reply #3 on:** June 22, 2009, 10:22:14 am »

Sad i hear the word Kodachrome it brings back lot's of great memories.

ThierryH · « **Reply #4 on:** June 22, 2009, 10:24:53 am »

What about some images here taken exclusively with Kodachrome, just for the good memories?

Thierry

Guy Mancuso · « **Reply #5 on:** June 22, 2009, 10:28:40 am »

It would be nice , have to do a lot of digging around been a long time since I shot film. I stopped shooting film completely back in 2000.

Rob C · « **Reply #6 on:** June 22, 2009, 10:39:50 am »

Quote from: ThierryH

What about some images here taken exclusively with Kodachrome, just for the good memories?

Thierry

Most of what I´ve posted over on the other thread - the one started by James for pro work present or past on whatever medium - has been Kodachrome converted to b/w which, for me, it does very well indeed. I´d say its skin images, shot and printed as b/w digital efforts, are every bit as convincing as b/w film negs would have been, with the obvious advantage that the colours gave the originals their first part of working life. In fact, a pretty universal medium since the advent of digital which has made prints from slides so much easier and controlled.

I think one more shot in the foot was the introduction of the Kodachrome mailer system: you saved nothing but were tempted into the nonsense of buying more film than mailers in the guise of saving money; but you couldn´t process the stuff without the mailers, so you could end up as I have: more film than mailers and no place local to buy either.

Rob C

leicaman94044 · « **Reply #7 on:** June 22, 2009, 11:09:50 am »

Homage to Kodachrome:
1. KR64, Leica R7 w/50 Summicron, 1989
[attachment=14752:LaCasaCuevas.jpg]
2. PKL200 EI 500, Leica R7 w/400 Telyt + 2X TC, 1991
[attachment=14753:ZebraKrugerPk.jpg]
3. KR 64, Leica R7 w/560 Telyt, 1995
[attachment=14754:DjumaCheetah.jpg]

bill t. · « **Reply #8 on:** June 22, 2009, 11:44:03 am »

The King is dead, long live the King! (sniff).

bcooter · « **Reply #9 on:** June 22, 2009, 12:58:14 pm »

Quote from: bill t.

The King is dead, long live the King! (sniff).

I guess I come at this from the perspective of "if your a Hammer the whole world is a nail", but since I'm a commercial photographer, if there was a Kodachrome plant in my back yard I wouldn't have used it for the last 5 years.

Film's dead, at least by anyone I know who writes a check for photography.

The client's that are paying today are looking for "new" magic and film's been done. That's old magic.

BC

Geoff Wittig · « **Reply #10 on:** June 22, 2009, 01:08:34 pm »

Quote from: antonyoung

I know people are nostalgic for Kodachrome and all, but I wonder how many years it's taken them to finally decide to axe it? I haven't shot film in years, but I thought Kodachrome had already been killed a few years back. I was in art school 20 years ago, and Kodachrome was a niche product even then. I'm pretty sure they were losing money on it then, and it couldn't have been any better the last decade or so.

As I said, I know people get all nostalgic for it, it was the best color and lasted forever and there's never been anything like it and it was formulated by god himself and handed down from on high and now that it's discontinued good photographs can no longer be made... I know all that, I'm just saying that this product had to have been losing them money for a really long time. Kodak's decline and fall is just amazing. I can't believe how badly everything has been bungled at every step of the way.

1) Like most folks here I haven't shot a frame of film in 7 years, and I'd never go back, given the quality and convenience of digital capture. However, there really was a special 'look' to a perfectly exposed Kodachrome slide. Those velvety black shadows and nicely saturated red/yellow/orange tones worked wonderfully for the right subject. No one's ever used it better than Steve McCurry; just look at some of his Afghan photos from the 1980s. Really excellent color reproductions from Kodachrome in photo books of the 1970s—80s could do it justice; some of them still look great. The 'Velvia straightjacket' has so dominated nature and landscape photography since 1990 that the Kodachrome look can actually be a bit refreshing. Don't know about you, but the endless parade of glowing high saturation digital simulations of Velvia to me is like choking down a kilogram of chocolate. Sometimes I'd prefer a salad.

2) You don't know the half of it with Kodak. I live about an hour south of Rochester NY, and over the past 20+ years I've had many candid conversations with Kodak technical and scientific workers. The company's abject failure to exploit their own vast digital expertise and huge treasure trove of patents played out like a Greek tragedy. A huge portion of the technical underpinnings of digital capture and printing are based on Kodak research and Kodak-held patents. Yet the upper management was cognitively unable to recognize the clearly visible oncoming digital Tsunami, despite the fact that their own labs were creating much of the technology. Two colossal blunders in particular were fatal. First was the mind-boggling decision to sink a billion dollars into the APS film system just in time to see it crushed by digital. Second was Kodak management's smug confidence that amateur photographers in the rapidly growing developing world market could be bamboozled into buying enough film to underwrite the company's shift to digital. In reality of course folks in India, China and Indonesia jumped straight into digital capture.

bill t. · « **Reply #11 on:** June 22, 2009, 11:38:08 pm »

Kodachrome had the best darned resistance to color cast of any transparency film ever fade.

You could shoot in situations that would send any competing slide film into conniptions...open shade, intensely cyan-casted fall sunlight, you name it, ol' Kodachrome could handle it well while everything else turned harsh, ugly, and every color of the rainbow except what you wanted. And there was just something lovable about it's straight-up, ingenuous, in-your-face take on color. And talk about Max-D! And I used to work almost next door to the Kodak Las Palmas processing plant, 4 hour Kodachrome processing, two runs a day.

And on those rare occasions when it faded, it somehow managed to do so with exceptional grace yielding a warm and fuzzy look that was often an improvement on the original. If your family memories must fade, let them fade on Kodachrome.

Next eulogizer, please...

Gordon Buck · « **Reply #12 on:** June 23, 2009, 01:09:53 pm »

I had the thought to buy two rolls of Kodachrome, shoot one roll "for old times sake" in my old Konica T2 and keep the other roll for, well, because I want to. Seems that all the usual sources are out of stock. I assume a number of photographers must have the same idea.

Rob C · « **Reply #13 on:** June 23, 2009, 01:17:51 pm »

Quote from: bill t.

Kodachrome had the best darned resistance to color cast of any transparency film ever fade.

You could shoot in situations that would send any competing slide film into conniptions...open shade, intensely cyan-casted fall sunlight, you name it, ol' Kodachrome could handle it well while everything else turned harsh, ugly, and every color of the rainbow except what you wanted. And there was just something lovable about it's straight-up, ingenuous, in-your-face take on color. And talk about Max-D! And I used to work almost next door to the Kodak Las Palmas processing plant, 4 hour Kodachrome processing, two runs a day.

And on those rare occasions when it faded, it somehow managed to do so with exceptional grace yielding a warm and fuzzy look that was often an improvement on the original. If your family memories must fade, let them fade on Kodachrome.

Next eulogizer, please...

Well, Bill, if all those adobe huts had been painted white as I had suggested, obviously too late, they could have stored boxes of Kodachrome for years without refrigeration.

;-) Either that or ;-( but I think I prefer ;-)

Ciao

Rob C

bill t. · « **Reply #14 on:** June 23, 2009, 04:12:24 pm »

Quote from: Rob C

Well, Bill, if all those adobe huts had been painted white as I had suggested, obviously too late, they could have stored boxes of Kodachrome for years without refrigeration.

Well you have to understand the historical background. Yes, originally we had planned to paint all adobe structures white, but then along comes this Kodachrome stuff and everything brighter than 2 stops above the exposure is nothing but a bare piece of celluloid. So off with the white paint, back to adobe right there at Zone 5, plenty of latitude even for those who couldn't or wouldn't read the recommended exposures on the little piece of folded-up paper packed with every roll of Kodachrome. Yeah sure, Ansel could handle Zone's 7 and 8, no problem, but he mostly hung out in Carmel, where was he when we needed him?

Gordon Buck · « **Reply #15 on:** June 23, 2009, 07:59:11 pm »

Quote from: gordonsbuck

I had the thought to buy two rolls of Kodachrome, shoot one roll "for old times sake" in my old Konica T2 and keep the other roll for, well, because I want to. Seems that all the usual sources are out of stock. I assume a number of photographers must have the same idea.

Bingo! B&H somehow replenished their stock and I got my two rolls. (Even Dwayne's was out of Kodachrome but said that more would be manufactured this fall.)

evgeny · « **Reply #16 on:** June 24, 2009, 07:02:55 am »

I sold past month all my (like new) film equipment, including Nikon 9000 scanner, glass holder, light panel, many new slide and negative films, etc.

I started with film media over 30 years ago.
I really tired with film workflow and my "good bye film" was very easy.

Rob C · « **Reply #17 on:** June 24, 2009, 10:45:15 am »

Quote from: bill t.

Well you have to understand the historical background. Yes, originally we had planned to paint all adobe structures white, but then along comes this Kodachrome stuff and everything brighter than 2 stops above the exposure is nothing but a bare piece of celluloid. So off with the white paint, back to adobe right there at Zone 5, plenty of latitude even for those who couldn't or wouldn't read the recommended exposures on the little piece of folded-up paper packed with every roll of Kodachrome. Yeah sure, Ansel could handle Zone's 7 and 8, no problem, but he mostly hung out in Carmel, where was he when we needed him?

As you just said, Bill, he was laid back in Carmel. But I´m curious about the folded papers: did they specifically carry adobe warnings?

Rob C

Rob C · « **Reply #18 on:** June 24, 2009, 10:48:43 am »

Quote from: evgeny

I sold past month all my (like new) film equipment, including Nikon 9000 scanner, glass holder, light panel, many new slide and negative films, etc.

I started with film media over 30 years ago.
I really tired with film workflow and my "good bye film" was very easy.

You were very lucky. I have a Nikon F3 (one of the last and almost a virgin - don´t ask -) and a D200. I was interested in swapping the lot for a D700 but the dealer told me that there was no way that he could take either camera as part-exchange... how old can you become at such an early stage of life?

Rob C

bill t. · « **Reply #19 on:** June 25, 2009, 01:42:26 am »

Quote from: Rob C

You were very lucky. I have a Nikon F3 (one of the last and almost a virgin - don´t ask -) and a D200. I was interested in swapping the lot for a D700 but the dealer told me that there was no way that he could take either camera as part-exchange... how old can you become at such an early stage of life?

Rob, you need to be more selective about your used cameras. I recently traded a mint-like Leica M2 with 35mm f2 Summicron towards a D3X at 800% of my initial purchase price. Even adjusted for inflation that ain't bad. Will miss the little beggar, it was nice to know it was there in the bottom drawer wrapped in a t-shirt. We had a quiet evening together peeling off the black tape I applied in the 70's, a nice way to say goodbye to so many things.

Don't think I ever shot a roll of Kodachrome in that camera, for that I used the now less-than-worthless Nikon Photomic, rhymes with Atomic. Why are the most inelegant things so often the most useful?

Author Topic: Eastman Kodak : Kodachrome Stopped (Read 6447 times)

bcooter