No more bright sunny days
The original little yellow box is no more. Kodak has finally pulled the plug on Kodachrome, one of the first colour films to be available to the masses.
Kodachrome has had a special place in the hearts of many photographers for nearly three-quarters of a century, but was at its peak of popularity during the 1950s and 60s, though today it accounts for less than 1% of Kodak's sales of film.
The writing has been on the wall for sometime as Kodachrome was the odd one out in a bag of colour transparency film. Kodachrome is the only film developed using the K-14 process; the majority of colour slide film uses a more standard E-6 process, which is universally available.
With the rise of digital all but killing off the amateur slide market Kodak stopped manufacturing the 25 and 200 ASA versions of the film a few years ago, leaving the 64 ASA version in production until now. There is currently only one laboratory that can develop the film, Dwayne's Photo, in Parsons, Kansas, USA, who have said they'll continue to do so for a year or so.
Personally, I'll miss Kodachrome. Back in the days when we shot everything on 35mm transparency (there are more than a million slides stored in the BBC Archive) the majority was on film that used the E6 process as we had an in house laboratory, but occasionally a few rolls of Kodachrome would run through the Nikon F3s our photographers used.
I can remember Willie Smith, the BBC News photographer during the 1970s and 80s trying out the new Kodachrome 200 at Wimbledon. He captured a fantastic picture of Martina Navratilova diving to return a shot on centre court, the image taken on a manual focus 600mm lens was pin sharp and looked superb, I'll see if I can locate it and post later in the day.
The long turn around was not so much of an issue back then as you could rush process Kodachrome by delivering it to a location in central London, though by today's standards the whole idea of waiting seems out of place.
I loved 200 ASA Kodachrome; it had a wonderful grain structure that nothing has matched since, but I do occasionally still shoot on Kodachrome 64, though only for pleasure.
My last roll was shot earlier this year on a family holiday, and there is still something magical about popping the yellow and red roll into your camera. You feel a need to do it justice.
Anyone who has waited a week or two for the holiday snaps to return in their little yellow box will know what I mean. Three rows of card mounted transparencies holding the fruits of your labour, just glorious.
That division between taking a picture and seeing it is something that digital has taken away. That pause allows us to forget the moment, and then be surprised, or maybe disappointed, all over again when we hold the little image up to the light; it allows us to look at the scene afresh.
I'll shoot at least one more roll, but that's maybe it. I've got a few rolls left, but I will probably let them remain in the fridge, a reminder of times gone by.
Along with every other blogger, I can't end the post without mentioning that Kodachrome will of course always be remembered for at least one reason, the fact that as far as I am aware it's the only brand of film that has been immortalised in song. So perhaps the last word should be left to Paul Simon: "Kodachrome, they give us those nice bright colours, they give us the greens of summers, makes you think all the world's a sunny day"... and what's wrong with that.
To see some great Kodachrome moments then Kodak is currently running a collection by a number of photographic greats and it's also worth checking out The Kodachrome project.
I'd love to see your pictures shot on Kodachrome or hear from any users, past or present. You can e-mail your photos to me or comment below.
Please see our terms and conditions, but remember that the copyright remains with you. The pictures will only be used by the BBC for the purposes of this article.
I'm 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~46~RS~)
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RIP Kodachrome. While I love digital I always regret never fully exploring the medium of film, and a huge chunk of that potential experience just became lost forever. I feel disproportionately sad.
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I Feel So Sad to See The Demise Of Cameras That Use Film, I Think Digital Pictures Lack Soul.
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I never learnt more about photography than when I started out with a 35mm camera with Kodacrome, manual focus, manual flash, manual light reading and you really had to compose the shot.
Film and developing was expensive so you really did not waste a shot, now you can take 20 pictures of the same thing and chuck the lot if need be - it makes life easy, too easy for craft I'm afraid.
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I'd like to say that I will miss Kodachrome as if it speaks volumes about the quality of my photography if I don't. Perhaps its a generational thing *ducks from handbag swipes* that I love my digital camera. My first camera was digital and I have never known anything else (apart from disposables but does anyone really rate those at all?). Never knowing anything else I am perfectly satisfied. The tides have sadly turned, such is life.
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I still do all of my photography on a film camera. In black and white. In the same way that music producers will always go back to use vintage analogue equipment because despite all of the modern advances the old stuff does the job better, there will always be a place for film (I hope)
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I don't think anyone will ever write a song about the chip in a digital camera as Paul Simon did about Kodachrome, says it all really.
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Is this picture Film or Digital? Or more importantly, does it matter which?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/gallery/2008/feb/06/photography?picture=332635675
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Kodachrome 25, wow... with Leica... I used to put 30 of them in my bag, not any other film, for any trip to anywhere (but when it was an assignment). Altho I haven't used any film camera for 10 years, these slides are the best quality archives I got, and scans and Photoshop editing from them are totally rewarding.
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Kodachrome 64 hasn't been updated for around 25 years and it's mind-boggling that it's hung around for so long. This is Kodak's Concorde - old, technically out-moded, expensive to run - but people liked it and using it became a show of prestige.
For I transparencies I use Kodak's Ektachrome 100G and the substantially cheaper Elite Chrome 100. Meanwhile I've been having a ball with Kodak's new Ektar 100 film in medium format, which is on the verge of relegating my digital SLR to the bottom of the camera bag (next to that roll of Kodachrome 64).
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:'( ... wondering (sorry for the ignorance) but were this films used to be the slides some of us watched in classrooms back in school ?
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K25 and K64 taught a generation of photographers like me about what colors in nature really looked like. Brilliant stuff, and scans from my Kodachrome slides look, well..., fantastically good with interesting detail. Sorry to those who never got to know Kodachrome or other films. Worth exploring for the serious young photographers, if only to understand where the medium came from. These days I use digi for nature and landscapes. But for all street photos or people portraits, BW film and a rangefinder is, IMO, the only way to travel. This is all to bid fond farewell to my old friend Kodachrome, and hope my other old BW film friends from Illford have at least another 30 years of life. Those BW film shots really do capture something extraordinary -- and its all about people.
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"Mama don't take my memory card away" just does not have the same sound to it :-(
It taught several generations of photographers to look and plan photographs rather than just pointing and shooting.
Only magazines like National Geographic had budgets that allowed photographers to shoot on motor drive with Kodachrome.
It was unforgiving but brilliant when you got it right !
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taintedlovepd wrote:
"I Feel So Sad to See The Demise Of Cameras That Use Film, I Think Digital Pictures Lack Soul".
Good digital cameras can do everything good film cameras can... in the right hands.
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"The writing has been on the wall for sometime"
Nice.
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Kodak and many of the other 35mm film compnies really have themselves and there developers and printers to blame. For some years I have used both digital and 35mm SLR cameras, sometimes along side one another with the same exposure settings and whether you pay very highly for the 35mm developing or dirt cheap the results are just not as bright or colourful as digital. Indeed, I have to ask where has the colour gone on many 35mm prints as they are uniformly grey and un interesting. Is this a case of film makers shooting themselves in the foot? Or a heightened chroma channel output on digital? At present the realism of digital and the brightness and dynamic range means there is no way current 35mm can compete. Add the use of raw file type and the ever increasing pixal count and lower thermal noise and there is just no point in getting the old SLR's out anymore. But what do you do with them? Sad really.
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>> Good digital cameras can do everything good film cameras can... in the right hands.
Except dynamic range a decent negative film will still have a dynamic range several orders of magnitude greater than current digital sensors, especially when it comes to black and white.
Personally I've never got why people always turn digital/film discussions into an either/or situation. I shoot both and enjoy the extended visual palette and range of options it affords me. It's a shame that one of those options is being taken away, but hardly surprising.
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Hello Taintedlovepd, just a quiz: Is soul in a film camera, a digital camera, or the operator?
A thought about future of film: old - old photographers' task included doing their own emulsions, and nowadays we have ways do that better...
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Makes me want to cry.
I will miss the beautiful greens and bright yellows that only Kodachrome could produce. I would use it for special projects with that specific ability in mind. Yet another sad day in celluloid.
Digital is convient, portable but some things still look better in gelitian.
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I used to Kodachrome Professional (ASA 40) in my Pentax Spotmatic with various lenses. It was an artificial light film but I had a conversion filter for daylight use. The colour rendering was infinitely better that the run-of-the mill 25 ASA Kodachrome because the filter suppressed all the UV better than a UV filter. It was also pin-point sharp, like the Ilford Pan F I used for monochrome. Those were the days! I now use a Nikon Digital SLR with just 2 lenses. It is superb but I do miss film, especially my old Kodachrome.
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With retirement looming, I decided to re-enter the world of film photography after a 30 year hiatus. With the advent of digital, 35mm equipment is available dirt cheap, and I took advantage of the fact to stock up on Nikons.
Now, I will have to do a lot of experimentation, as my old standby film is going away.
Sniff!
Jeff
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