Kodachome bites the dust?

[djl251]

The following was mentioned on the A and I site:

 

"A&I will be discontinuing Kodachrome (K14) services effective

March 1, 2004"

 

So if you have some in the refrigerator, you might want to hurry

up and shoot it.

[watts]

Presumably Kodak will still offer Kodachrome processing via

their US facility for at least a while longer. I spoke to a chap from

Kodak UK a few months ago about Kodachrome and, speaking

'off the record', he was quite sure that Kodachrome wasn't going

to be around for many years longer. FWIW his opinion was that

Kodak would continue to offer Kodachrome processing for at

least the next couple of years but that things looked bleak for the

emulsion after that. To be frank the writing has been on the wall

for Kodachrome for a long time - the fall in demand for it goes

back much longer than the recent rush to digital. I like the stuff

and used to use it a lot (in fact I would use it as my film of choice

now if I didn't find it so difficult to scan well) but generally it has

been the preserve of a few amateur old gits. Most pros and

serious amateurs have long ago gone down the E6 route. It's a

shame - at a risk of sounding like Erwin Puts, Kodachrome is

the classic Leica colour film.

[david_ditzel3]

Kodak's most recent vendor price catalog still lists Kodachrome 64 and 200 for sale. Kodak will continue to process the film for a while after they stop selling the product. Don't worry about rushing through your freezer stash at least until Kodak announces that it is discontinuing manufacturing the film. I am sure Kodak will give plenty of warning of when they will shut their processor down. Although if photographers used more Kodachrome, the product would stay around longer.

[gerard_captijn]

Kodachrome is easy (and cheap) to manufacture and difficult (and expensive) to develop. I think that Kodak should give a small film factory (Foma?, Bergger?, Efke?, Ilford? the Russians?) the rights to manufacture Kodachrome after they decide to stop manufacturing. With one manufacturer worldwide and one processing entity per continent, Kodachrome should be able to continue for another 25 - 50 years.<div></div>

[jack_thistle]

I can understand why and independent lab would want to discontinue procesing. It's strictly a volume game in that if you don't take in the volume of emulsion to warrant running the line (and quality control then becomes more difficult with lower processing volumes of film thru the line) it becomes a double edged sword in that the consistant quality suffers along with the financial impact of maintaining the line up to spec. Having managed an E6 lab for quite some time it was consistancy thru processing volume that made the line better. With a K-14 (Kodachrome) line, you have to be a chemist and have the emulsion to push thru it or all bets are off, quality wise and economically (it's too much cash to run a an expensive process at half capacity)

[Rob F.]

Digital cameras, and the popularity of E6 may not be the only reasons for the decision. An instructor at the junior college here said that Kodak has been trying to get rid of Kodachrome for many years, because the processing is more environmentally polluting than E6. The advent of digital may have furnished a convenient rationale for taking action.

[awahlster]

I'll second what Rob mentioned I has been my understanding for about the last four years that the main reason for the coming end of Kodachrome is the huge problems and cost of disposing of the byproducts created by developing it. The EPA considers it hazardous waste (which it is big time from what I have read) and as such disposal becomes very expensive and very limiting as places that will accept this type of waste become fewer and fewer.

[jack_thistle]

I'm unaware as what the effluent (by product run off) of the K-14 (Kodachrome process) is but I know that Kodak eliminated formaldehyde as a preserving agent in the final wash processes of many chemistry's back in the early 90's. Most effluent releases from E6 are diluted quite considerably by the three wash processes involved in the entire process. The most critical part of the E6 process that the EPA has considered is the silver content ( a metal) that is unrecovered either electrically or chemically (thru trailing process or electical means) of fixing baths. Metal that is unrecovered is a big matter.All labs have some sort of silver recovery process (after all it is a marketable metal once recovered) and it is a strict law in allowing unrecovered metal to pass thru.

[jack_thistle]

I was remembering back when I managed my E6 lab and we ran quite a bit of sheet film, 4 X 5, 5 X 7 (yes the oddest format) and 8 X 10 sheet films along with a ton of 220 (mostly all Kodak EPP emulsion) I would take the recovered silver and ship it to a smelting and processing company every two months or so. Our account grew with this company in the recovered silver we pulled out of the line and I actually convinced my manager to allow us to use the funds for a Photo Dept party at the sports bar across the street from our offices. He thought it was a good idea and the accounting folks in the corp office actually didn't mind (my guess is that the line item for silver ecovery was to hard to actualize and describe) Go figure. We'd accumulate about $600 worth of processed silver in our account every 6 mos or so. I can't remember the actual troy ounces they processed out of it though

[jay_.]

Kodachrome 25 died because it was a low-saturation high-contrast shell of Kodachrome-II (discontinued allegedly because of EPA issues)and most people were happy when Velvia came along in the early 90's and discovered that it was as sharp and grainless, and the saturation and contrast were adjustable from moderate to high by simply re-rating the film at EI 32, 40 or 50 respectively.

 

Kodachrome 200 simply can't compare grain-wise with E200 which in turn can't compare with Provia 400F.

 

Kodachrome 64 is a high-contrast film with dull, muddy reds and lackluster greens that can't compare with any 100-speed E6 film of recent vintage.

 

Add in the difficulty and time of processing and Kodak abandoning R7D on it years and years ago and it's no surprise Kodachrome is circling the drain.

 

However it *is* digital that's hammering the last nail in the coffin, both because the manufacturers have brainwashed everyone into disregarding the archival issue (the last remaining virtue of Kodachrome)because digital is certainly on the shakiest ground in that respect, and on a larger sense because digital marketing has given slide film in general a lethal injection and Kodachrome was already in failing health.

[fuck]

<i>Kodachrome 200 simply can't compare grain-wise with E200 which in turn can't compare with Provia 400F. </I><P>

That's just the point for some people. Relative grainlessness is not the metric that I use to judge any given film.

[Rob F.]

Jay wrote, "Kodachrome 64 is a high-contrast film with dull, muddy reds and lackluster greens that can't compare with any 100-speed E6 film of recent vintage."

 

Yes! I took along a roll or two of it to Mexico several years ago, thinking that Kodachrome's famous warm color rendition ought to work magic with the warm earth-tones of Mexican architecture. I was disappointed with the lackluster results, while Velvia delivered the punchy look I wanted; and Provia 100 was the next best when there wasn't enough light for Velvia 50. At that time, Velvia 100 wasn't out yet. I was very glad I had made Fuji films the mainstay of the trip, with only a couple rolls of Kodachrome for experimenting.

 

There was an earlier version of Kodachrome 64, called, as I remember it, Kodachrome II. It had a wonderful color rendition that I still miss.

[fuck]

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[stephen hazelton]

When Kodak quit processing Kodachrome in the 120 size, they waited until the expiration date of the last film manufactured, then quit processing it. So if you love Kodachrome and have a freezer full, watch out that you don't get stuck with it.

[msitaraman]

Skully, wasn't Kodakchrome II introduced in the early 1950s? Great pic, by the way. Shows how a routine shot from a half century ago acquires significance simply by aging-the clothes, of course, make the picture interesting today...

 

Notwithstanding arguments about the relative lackluster look of K-64 & K-200 relative to modern E-6 emulsions, many will remember that the quality of Kodachrome slides depended (depends) a lot on the processing, as the dyes are introduced into the film during processing, unlike the Ektachrome emulsions. Towards the end of the old days (say 1978-1995), high volume K-14 process labs, would produce obviously more sparkly and jewel-like results with K-25, (reminiscent of the old K-II with K-12 processing) than low volume labs.

 

Woe betide you if you got your film into a lab/batch where the chemicals were not fresh or stabilised. The slides would lose a smidgen or more of contrast and saturation.

 

Everything went to hell when thanks to anti-trust laws, Kodak had to divest itself of exclusive K-14 processing and let indpendent labs into the game. Quality control was just not as consistent, whether at Kodak, or more frequently at the independent labs. In the last few years, it has been near impossible to get a high quality processing run anywhere.

 

Add to this the very, very high cost of a Kodakchrome processing line-around a million dollars in the 1970s, reputedly (the original processor was nearly 100 feet long, and was operated in a pitch dark room for half its length) its easy to see why this film has been doomed for the last quarter century.

 

That it has lasted this long (nearly 70 years) is a testament to the extraordinary technology that it actually is.

 

And for those who like it, its color palette is unique, and evocative.

[Spearhead]

The problem with Kodachrome is that you have to use Kodak for processing. The last time I paid for Kodachrome processing, the film came back destroyed and, on top of that, was mounted despite stickers all over the bag that it was to be uncut. This didn't involve mail either - Kodak picked it up from a local lab.

 

They were nice enough (after about ten phone calls) to give me free processing to cover all the remaining Kodachrome I had, including some they gave me, but it was enough to keep me from buying it again.

 

The best thing about Kodak is a guy named Dan Sapper, who occasionally shows up on photo.net and was the person that really made the effort to get some action.

 

I don't shoot color in 35mm any more, but if I did, I would choose something I can get processed locally by a pro lab.

[jay_.]

<<There was an earlier version of Kodachrome 64, called, as I remember it, Kodachrome II. It had a wonderful color rendition that I still miss.>>

 

Kodachrome II (ASA 25) was the beautiful, rich-colored predecessor of Kodachrome 25, introduced in 1974, which as I stated earlier, was more eco-friendly but lower in saturation and higher in contrast. The film that was used in the photo was the original Kodachrome, which started out (I believe) ASA 8, then jumped to 10 0r 12 before K-II was introduced.

 

The predecessor of K64 was Kodachrome-X (ASA 64), a film of even worse color rendition.

 

<< >Kodachrome 200 simply can't compare grain-wise with E200 which in turn can't compare with Provia 400F.<

That's just the point for some people. Relative grainlessness is not the metric that I use to judge any given film.>>

 

No, that's the point for *most* people. Your "metric" is in the infinitessimal minority.

[al_kaplan1]

Jay has the sequence right. I think that Kodachrome II and Kodachrome-X were process K-12, so the processing went through quite an evolution over the years. Consider that we're only up to E-6 with Ektachrome, and that E-3 useage overlapped both E-2 and E-4, being for different Ektachromes.

 

What I could never figure out back in the 1970's was why U.S. made Kodachrome plus a Kodak mailer st you back close to eight bucks but you could buy English or French Kodachrome WITH a Kodak mailer for about $3.75. I used to shoot a lot of K-II and the slides still look good, great color. Agfa and Ansco of that vintage has long since faded to sh*t, and the Ektachromes aren't a lot better.

[Robin Smith]

To my eyes K64 offers very good color fidelity much superior to most E6 films particularly in the absence of color shifts in the shadows. It is very high contrast though no question. This makes the images extraordinarily punchy. You learn to work with it. As someone says though there are times when its relatively muted colors seem not to be the thing. Anytime you work in overcast or cloudy conditions though you can rely on K64 to bring in the goods in terms of high impact photos. It is a little rough on formal portraits due to its high contrast and I would never recommend it for flash use. Nevertheless I think it is a sad thing that the Ks are clearly on their way out. I personally find it a perfect film for Northern Europe - somehow its palette and contrast match the light perfectly.

 

I also happen to like K200 for the similar reasons to K64 - it is very sharp and its grain adds character to the shot without actually reducing the sharpness of the result.