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Author Topic: End of an Era....Dec 30...last of the Kodachrome processing  (Read 6683 times)

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donding

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« on: December 26, 2010, 12:21 »
0
If you have any KodaChrome slide film left you got til noon on Dec 30 to get it processed at the last place in the world that still processes it....Dwaynes Photo in Kansas City Missouri.

They will be out of the special chemicals used to process the film which is only available from Kodak.

It is the end of an era.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/26/sunday/main7185884.shtml


« Reply #1 on: December 26, 2010, 12:35 »
0
I never used Kodakchrome because it wasn't processed in Brazil (you could order processing, but it would be sent abroad, so costs were prohibitive).  I do miss slide film however, Fuji Velvia was my preferred travel companion.

donding

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« Reply #2 on: December 26, 2010, 12:41 »
0
I never used it either but I have some Kodachrome slides that some one else in the family took many years ago and fortunately my Epson Scanner will scan slides as well as negatives and the color is spectacular in those slides.

« Reply #3 on: December 26, 2010, 12:47 »
0
Have you ever scanned them? I remember having read some issue regarding scanning Kodakchromes, but I don't remember if it was a general issue or of one of my scanners.

donding

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« Reply #4 on: December 26, 2010, 12:51 »
0
I just scanned one last week of my father. It scanned fine with my scanner which has the attachment bar for them. It wasn't the sharpest scan I've seen and it was scratched as well, but the color was still fantastic.

lisafx

« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2010, 13:36 »
0
I only got seriously interested in photography when digital came around, so I've never used Kodachrome.  All I know about it came from Paul Simon.  He's gonna be pretty broken up about it though ;)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLsDxvAErTU[/youtube]

« Reply #6 on: December 26, 2010, 13:50 »
0
Oh, yes, I had my own version of the song, "I've got a Canon camera" and "Mama don't take my Fujichrome away"  ;D

lisafx

« Reply #7 on: December 26, 2010, 13:56 »
0
Oh, yes, I had my own version of the song, "I've got a Canon camera" and "Mama don't take my Fujichrome away"  ;D

;D!!  Works for me!  In my case it would be "canon camera" and "CF card".....

donding

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« Reply #8 on: December 26, 2010, 14:06 »
0
Oh, yes, I had my own version of the song, "I've got a Canon camera" and "Mama don't take my Fujichrome away"  ;D

;D!!  Works for me!  In my case it would be "canon camera" and "CF card".....

 :D :D In my case "Nikon camera" and "Lexar Professional CF card"....... ;D

« Reply #9 on: December 27, 2010, 09:05 »
0
Read about this yesterday online. Kind of a sad end-of-an-era thing.

Always liked the Paul Simon song, too.  :)

« Reply #10 on: December 27, 2010, 09:29 »
0
That is really sad. My entire childhood is captured on kodachrome. I just finished a months long project of scanning them all as a gift. There was some degrading of the slides because od age, but they all scanned great

« Reply #11 on: December 27, 2010, 11:02 »
0
Good riddance Kodachrome!...It took you long enough to finally die!  Ugh I remember those unforgiving days in college...our professors always made us shoot slide film...the most unforgiving of all films, so that we would learn to get perfect exposures the first time, only a half of a stop off and you were pretty much screwed, nowadays you can be off by 3 whole stops and still manage to pull a sellable photo out of your raw file. While Kodachrome did teach me to tediously meter the differences between my shadow and highlights I must say shooting raw makes me much less anxious about my exposures after a big shoot, and I will not miss the whole praying that the labs machines did not have a tiny grain of grit in their machines. I have many rolls of film with that single little scratch from a dirty roller running down the entire length of film rendering slides useless with out serious touch up time...remember that?. I do however miss popping those juicy little gems into the slide projector...slide shows projected on the biggest wall in the house were always the most fun way to review images from a trip.  Photography is seriously much more laid back since digital.  I think of digital as the equivalent of cooking in a microwave as opposed to slide film which is like cooking on a woodstove, pain in the ass not to mention the expense of buying film and having it processed, an 8 gig card is like the equivalent of buying 40 rolls of film....and OMG flash cards are reusable. Microstock would never have existed without the demise of the expense of film and processing.

« Reply #12 on: December 27, 2010, 13:28 »
0
Well, I still love the smell of woodsmoke on my freshly-cooked 6x6 or 6x9 Ektachrome.
But, yeah, scratches and dust are hell.

« Reply #13 on: December 27, 2010, 13:52 »
0
nowadays you can be off by 3 whole stops and still manage to pull a sellable photo out of your raw file.


I'd sure like to buy the same camera you are using...

I would rather live in a world without digital cameras. Now there are just too many picrures around. 15 years ago you might have to sit and see a whole magazine of slides (50 images) from someone's holiday. Now the amount of images is 500, and they are even crappier because the people will point and shoot at everything because it does not cost them anything. The amount of crappy snapshots is overwhelming, nobody even bothers to look at their old images because they are too many to wade trough.

BTW, if you compare digital to black and white film the digital's dynamics suck big time.

I will miss Kodachrome. Here are some great old Kodachrome shots to brighten the day:
http://www.shorpy.com/node/2830?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/4465?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/1003?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/115?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/3374?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/137?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5008?size=_original
« Last Edit: December 27, 2010, 14:05 by Perry »

donding

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« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2010, 14:14 »
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^^^ I love the end of the road one. It really is a look into the past..

PaulieWalnuts

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« Reply #15 on: December 27, 2010, 14:19 »
0
^^ Some great images and colors on that Shorpy site.

Sad to see film disappearing but after I started shooting digital in 2003 I never used a film camera again. My Canon A-1 collected dust for a few years after before I finally Ebay'd it. Still have a Canon Canonette rangefinder.

vonkara

« Reply #16 on: December 27, 2010, 14:25 »
0
I still have my Nikon F75, which was the last Nikon film camera line. It might worth something one day
« Last Edit: December 27, 2010, 14:28 by Vonkara »

donding

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« Reply #17 on: December 27, 2010, 14:33 »
0
I've got a lot of film camera's....Wonder if B&H would let me trade them all in on a new Nikon D90.... ;D

« Reply #18 on: December 27, 2010, 15:59 »
0
I think of digital as the equivalent of cooking in a microwave as opposed to slide film which is like cooking on a woodstove,
I don't cook in microwave, I only use it for reheating.

But yes, your comparison is valid, try to bake bread in a microwave vs in a woodstove, and tell me which bread is better. :D

« Reply #19 on: December 27, 2010, 17:05 »
0
I think of digital as the equivalent of cooking in a microwave as opposed to slide film which is like cooking on a woodstove,
I don't cook in microwave, I only use it for reheating.

But yes, your comparison is valid, try to bake bread in a microwave vs in a woodstove, and tell me which bread is better. :D

lol.

I'm waiting for my "new" Mamiya C220 to arrive off ebay. I've never tried a TLR. Just imagine - Canon 1 Ds Mk3 quality for just $150 on the camera and lens and $1 per frame!

donding

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« Reply #20 on: December 27, 2010, 17:54 »
0
I found a site that shows early Kodachrome images. It's really rather interesting to go back in time. Here's the site if you want to take a look
http://sites.google.com/site/earlykodachromeimages/

« Reply #21 on: December 27, 2010, 19:22 »
0
Amazing, Donna, thanks for posting!

« Reply #22 on: December 27, 2010, 20:40 »
0
I remember the last roll of film I had processed at a supposedly good film lab. I was so shocked at the result I asked the lab manager if he had to teach the technicians to throw the film on the lab floor and drag it the length of the building. It actually had bits of dirt embedded into the film to say nothing of the huge scratches throughout. He offered to "rewash" the film. I told him, no, just keep it as a reminder of why digital will eventually put him out of business.

Kodachrome film and its processing at one time was the standard by which photography output was judged. You knew that a perfect exposure would yield predictably perfect results. The proliferation of outside (of Kodak) labs seriously degraded Kodachrome and other film results. I see slide film of all kinds with failing chemistry after 10=15 years, mostly from non-Kodak labs. I think the Photoshop auto color control was designed to correct those film processing defects as much as the effects of aging.

I won't grieve the passing of Kodachrome any more than I did for glass plates. We're way beyond both.

WarrenPrice

« Reply #23 on: December 27, 2010, 22:33 »
0
Still offering and selling scans of 30 year old Kodachrome slides as exclusive images on Cutcaster.  As some one said earlier in this thread "It made you learn to expose properly."

I'm glad I have some old chromes but haven't used a roll in many years.  I'm digital now ... with a keepsake Nikon FE2 and my old workhorse 80~200 f4.5 lens.  Now, where did I put that?  ???  :P

« Reply #24 on: December 29, 2010, 20:05 »
0
Good riddance Kodachrome!...It took you long enough to finally die!  Ugh I remember those unforgiving days in college...our professors always made us shoot slide film...the most unforgiving of all films, so that we would learn to get perfect exposures the first time, only a half of a stop off and you were pretty much screwed, nowadays you can be off by 3 whole stops and still manage to pull a sellable photo out of your raw file. While Kodachrome did teach me to tediously meter the differences between my shadow and highlights I must say shooting raw makes me much less anxious about my exposures after a big shoot, and I will not miss the whole praying that the labs machines did not have a tiny grain of grit in their machines. I have many rolls of film with that single little scratch from a dirty roller running down the entire length of film rendering slides useless with out serious touch up time...remember that?. I do however miss popping those juicy little gems into the slide projector...slide shows projected on the biggest wall in the house were always the most fun way to review images from a trip.  Photography is seriously much more laid back since digital.  I think of digital as the equivalent of cooking in a microwave as opposed to slide film which is like cooking on a woodstove, pain in the ass not to mention the expense of buying film and having it processed, an 8 gig card is like the equivalent of buying 40 rolls of film....and OMG flash cards are reusable. Microstock would never have existed without the demise of the expense of film and processing.

Your professor was trying to teach you how to shoot like a pro. Accurate exposures. Necessary then and still necessary for top quality pro work. I will miss K'chrome.
-Loveable Larry


 

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