Kodachrome passes into history.....

[Ritchie200]

By Michael Winter, USA TODAY

After 75 years, the darkroom door has closed for good on Kodachrome, the legendary color slide film that helped document suburban America in the 1960s and '70s. This afternoon, the last processing lab in the world, located in Kansas, stopped accepting rolls to be developed.

Noon local time was the deadline for film to reach Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kan., and the small, family-run outfit was swamped with mail. ABC News reports that Dwayne's deliveries today included 500 FedEx packages and 18 bags from the Post Office, almost all of which was Kodachrome.

(Presumably/hopefully three rolls from yours truly were in one of those bags.) A woman flew from England to hand-deliver her film.

"I'm very surprised and maybe a little bit in shock," Grant Steinle, VP of operations and owner Dwayne Steinle's son, told ABC. "It was really an icon of photography." (The New York Times had a feature on Dwayne's yesterday.)

The last roll probably will be processed sometime next week.

There's at least one erroneous report (tweeted and retweeted) that Dwayne's is going out of business. It is not. The lab continues to develop, print and digitize a variety of films, including such long-ago abandoned formats as Disc, 126 and 127.

Kodak announced in June 2009 that it was halting production of the slide and Super 8mm movie film famous for its vivid colors. Dwayne's was the final shop to sell and process the film, which at its demise accounted for less than 1% of Kodak's film sales. Kodachrome distinguished itself from other color transparency films because of the complex (and expensive) developing processing, which, combined with the shift to digital, helped write its obituary.

For many years, Kodachrome was a standard for print professionals and the choice of camera-happy fathers and accomplished amateurs. The film also inspired the infamous song by Paul Simon, and lent its name to a state park in Utah.

Kodak gave photographer Steve McCurry the last 35mm roll ever made, and he hand-delivered it to Dwayne's. Perhaps best known for a riveting portrait of an Afghan girl that appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1984, he's posted some of those final 'chromes on his blog.


USA TODAY

Man, I'm gettin' old....
Jim

[EL34]

I have shot tons of Kodachrome.

25 when light conditions were ok or doing tripod work
shot a bunch of 64 also.

It's all just an old memory now.

[supro66]

I bet we will all still be here when they make the last CD/DVD also

What is a 45 anyway

I remember using a 8 inch floppy disk to run a CMM at work

[gmoon]

Sigh.

Although I never shot much Kodachrome (I was a newspaper photog in the 80's and continue to be a commercial photographer), I'll miss it. Kodachrome was one of the earliest commercially-viable color emulsions, and remains (or did) one of the best. Kodachrome dyes were much more archival than E-6 dyes, and many 50+ yr-old 'chromes are still pretty accurate today. Not perfect for skintones, but great for everything else...

Being a newspaper guy, shipping off Kodachrome for processing didn't work on deadline, so when we shot color it was always Ekta-something-or-other. Until Fuji(chrome) ate Kodak's lunch in the 80's, and forced them to get it together.

One drawer of our refrigerator is still stuffed with roll and sheet film. Film--haven't used that stuff for almost 10 years...sigh again.

[EL34]

I shot maybe 20 rolls of Kodachrome 25 and 64 in India in 1976.
Still have the slides but they look like they need to be cleaned.

I sure would like to have a look at them again, but I don't have a slide projector

[Ritchie200]

Yeah, my dad shot loads of the stuff and it still looks great.  I inherited the slide projector!  Now I worry if I can find a replacement projector bulb if this one goes....

"Until Fuji(chrome) ate Kodak's lunch in the 80's"  Man I used tons of Fuji 120 back in the 80's because it WAS head and tails above Kodak - but boy did I feel like a traitor...

Jim

[gmoon]

I +think* we still have a projector...somewhere  I never used it much. Often we had the transparency film processed, and not mounted but "sleeved." Kinda depended on the client. Certainly with 120 film it was never mounted.

The Fuji film was (is still?) great! Kodak played catch-up and did improve their E-6 film over time, but the damage to Kodak's rep was done, and their lock on the US market. I did sometimes used Ektachrome 120 too, but Fuji exclusively for 35mm reversal stuff.

I do recall that even 400 ISO (I still tend to say ASA, instead) negative film was REALLY grainy in the mid-late 70's. That was "high speed" color film back then.

"Canned air" might help clean old slides, but if they are moisture-damaged as well (if the dust is really stuck to the emulsion) cleaning alone probably won't cut it. The dusk will imprint on the film itself. Labs usually use some kind of "deionized" air or something like that to reduce the static effect. (anybody remember those antistatic brushes with the small alpha particle sources? ) 

At that point, more extreme cleaning might help but a transparency/negative scanner (and Photoshop) would be something to consider...

[Geezer]

I shot maybe 20 rolls of Kodachrome 25 and 64 in India in 1976.
Still have the slides but they look like they need to be cleaned.

I sure would like to have a look at them again, but I don't have a slide projector

Doug, I just checked ebay & they have TONS of projectors on there......folks can't seem to GIVE them away!
In the few minutes I was looking, several ended @ $10-$15 without any bids at all!

We have my father-in-law's old projector & LOADS of slides he took on his world travels. He was an engineer with Ford & GM in the 50's & 60's. The kids love looking @ the old pics from Japan, Sweden, all over Europe & his (countless) fishing/hunting trips to Canada..... Moose & Muskies, galore!

G

[DummyLoad]

somebody had to do it!   

[EL34]

Doug, I just checked ebay & they have TONS of projectors on there......folks can't seem to GIVE them away

cool, I may consider picking one up.

My slides lived in Florida for 25 years.
It's more than dust, it's mildew.

I'll have to get them out and have a look.
I think they need some sort of strong cleaner that is made for silde film.

My Pentax lenses all had the funk inside also.
Sold that Pentax rig on Ebay a while back for next to nothing.

somebody had to do it!   

And I just had to listen to it several times in a row
What a great song

[DummyLoad]

And I just had to listen to it several times in a row
What a great song

one of my favs. by him... 

[billcreller]

I still have a few hundred slides I took in Europe in the early 50s.  Spain is the most interesting to me, like the bull fights etc. Had to get rid of the pics of the girls though, too bad too.   The island of Majorca is a nice place too.
  I suspect that very few people were taking those slide pics these days, and I gave away my good 35MM camera to my niece, who is an artist.