Last roll of Kodachrome film goes through last Kodachrome lab | Hacker News Reader

Last roll of Kodachrome film goes through last Kodachrome lab

kansas.com

33 pointsbuzzblog22 comments

It's a good thing for photography that even though Kodak is fading out of film, film itself isn't quite dying. Last year at PMA there were 22 new emulsions announced and demoed, and there's still a market for even very large format film sheets (up to 12x24, that I know of). There are also new large-format cameras appearing on the market yearly, so the medium isn't dying.

Calumet ran an industry survey a few years ago, and discovered that large format film was actually a GROWING niche in the photographic industry, primarily with amateur fine art landscape photographers, and it is still common among current fine art landscape photographers.

And there are still people shooting portraits and still lifes with view cameras.

Shame, but the real death was when K25 went away eight years ago. Fiddly stuff, that, with no room for error (and slow lenses need not apply) but, damn, those colours! Fall foliage may never look the same. But I guess this guy, a handful of National Geographic types and a Paul Simon tune can't stop the march of progress.

I think the only thing to do is buy a vintage old film camera and buy all the film you can. I switched from digital to film a few months ago and I'm enjoying the process so much more.

Won't do you much good if you can't develop that film.

There are 3 120 and 4x5 film development places within 15 minutes (driving) of my apartment.

B&W film (which is I think the majority of those "new emulsions" is embarrassingly easy to develop; the list of possible developers includes random things like polluted river water and certain kinds of red wine. Color is touchier but can be done at home.

Is there a reason you cannot reproduce those colors? I'm guessing the film accentuates colors, rather than simply being more accurate than others, so with a very accurate (true-to-life) digital photo and a carefully designed 'shop filter, it should be reproducible.

Kodachrome used very different dyes than E6 (current slide film) or C41 (color negative; basically similar structure) and was sensitive to slightly different wavelengths. As a result its color gamut, as it were, is very different form either of those two, or digital (designed as it was to look like existing film). I'm not sure that a filter would be enough to "correct" for that; it could be a lot like trying to mimic infrared, which can be faked but not really replicated by anything that can't see into those wavelengths.

The headline is mildly ambiguous.

To be more precise, this is the last roll of Kodachrome which was produced. Not the last roll of Kodachrome which Dwayne's will develop.

From Dwayne's website:

Kodachrome Film Status: The last day of processing for all types of Kodachrome film will be December 30th, 2010. The last day Kodak will accept prepaid Kodachrome film in Europe is November 30th, 2010. Film that is not in our lab by noon on December 30th will not be processed.

Which is a great relief to me, because I still have 3 rolls of film I'm saving for 3 special occasions over this summer.

When the history of Kodak is written, Kodachrome should get an entire chapter as an example of managerial malpractice.

Imagine: you have loyal fans, hundreds if not thousands of pro and amateur photographers who ONLY use your product, each pro shooting thousands of rolls of film per year (yes, pros go through a lot of film). Fuji tried to duplicate it but couldn't.

The entirety of the market for Kodachrome is 100% owned by Kodak, from manufacturing the film, the unique developer process, the chemicals, etc.

The film also has unique archival characteristics and other characteristics that mean almost all competitors are locked out - if you want the Kodachrome "look and feel", you have to use Kodachrome.

Fans as rabid as Mac fanbois, unique lockin, capture of nearly 100% of the value in the entire chain ... and Kodak cancels the product.

There is much that makes me nostalgic about film but I regret its loss as an educational tool the most. Learning photography is about learning to slow down.

A finite roll, an arduous and tactile development process all encourage patience and being methodological in a way digital photography doesn't.

In my case I learnt on digital and the freedom of digital meant I have been able to continually experiment unafraid of wasting film (and money). The learning process for me has been a mixture of reading the basics and a large amount trial and error. I started snapping away but as I have learnt what works I spend more time deciding the what, where and how (so now I am the annoying relative that takes ages to take the family photo).

Film and developing doesn't really cost that much. Comparing the cost of a film camera (used) plus film and development, you'd probably have to shoot hundreds of rolls to equal the cost of a digital body.

I did not mean to say film is the only way to learn photography; it clearly isn't. The art transcends any tools used to perform it. I just feel nostalgic for my journey from a n00b to non-n00b and how the challenge of film contributed greatly to it. More power to you, and to anyone, who masters the art regardless.

Reading this took me back to the intro photography course I took back in college a decade ago. I'm told a couple years later they had switched to digital for their courses because they lost their source for reagents for their paper processor, and getting a more modern piece of equipment just wasn't cost effective.

In that semester I learned that getting a "great" image out of a digital camera still isn't as satisfying as getting an "ok" image after spending time in the darkroom, smelling all the chemistry, and fighting with color balance and exposure time.

It is indeed sad. Kodachrome 200 was my favorite film. I loved the way it would go blue when overexposed and red when underexposed. I even have a panroamic photo on my wall I took at "Kodachrome Canyon". It was named because the red rocks worked well with the film. Though by then I was shooting on a Canon G1 and only used an old roll as a prop. Once I went digital I never looked back.

Presumably you should be able to setup a digital filter to apply the same effect to any source image.

The feel of the colours, perhaps, but not the dynamic range. I used to think this was film-nerd wankery, but now that I'm shooting a lot of film (particularly B&W), the difference is immense. Digital sensors have not yet come even close to the dynamic range of film.

For non-photographers: you know that shot where your friend is standing over the railing with the ocean behind him that you can never get? Where he's either pitch black with a beautiful ocean behind him, or he's properly lit and the background is pure white? Welcome to dynamic range limitation.

The popularity of HDR as an imaging technique is just one of the things that have evolved to make up for the lacklustre performance of digital sensors, especially when it comes to high-contrast landscapes.

you know that shot where your friend is standing over the railing with the ocean behind him that you can never get? Where he's either pitch black with a beautiful ocean behind him, or he's properly lit and the background is pure white?

Also for non-photographers, when it's really bright outside, put the sun behind your subject and use your on-camera-flash for fill. It's magic :)

You can get high dynamic range digital cameras but they tend to be expencive and lower resolution.

Slide film like Kodakchrome actually captured a pretty narrow dynamic range. It was harder to get right, but it rewarded you with more "bits" in the colors.

For example, I did a test with print film and systematically tried different exposures. The whole roll looked the same. With slides, just being off a few stops would blow the shot. Also, printing on paper would lose half of the range so shooting slide and scanning would have much better digital images.

Ironically, the Canon G1 behaved a lot like slide film. The G2 was much more forgiving like print film. These days I find digital to be very forgiving and easy when I might have had trouble with film. (ex: shooting a wedding, it's easy to properly expose a dark suit next to a white dress.)

Speaking of BW print film, what are you shooting these days? I used to like Plus-x 125 for the silky tones and Tri-x 400 for the grainier contrast.

There is actually still a lab or two around that process with the K-14M method (the Kodachrome process). A dear friend of mine still shoots the occasional roll of slide film (of which Kodachrome, for its warm tone, is his favorite), and he employs a "professionals' lab" that still - at least as long as they can get their hands on chemicals - develops all types of positive and slide film, and even black and white process film.

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