Reports of (Colour) Kodachrome Home Processing Emerge from Sydney

[Prof_Pixel]

In the late '80s, Ray DeMoulin tried to give Kodachrome a 'push'.. See http://photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00XWtx

A key comment by Ron Andrews is "He started all of these development programs because he wanted them. Later in the project when someone finally did some number crunching, they found that the sales projections didn't justify a new film. Ray could get the programs started on his say so, but he still had to answer to some other people before he could get a product out the door."

I worked on a number of projects for Ray. I should mention that he is the guy at Kodak that started the program I worked on for the original DCS - but he did (and still does) love film!


You might want to look at Ron Andrew's Kodachrome pages at http://www.randrews4.com/kodachrome.html

[MattKing]

What I mean by it was on life support in 1978, is that already Kodachrome was starting to lose market share to other film technologies, like E6 and C41, even if digital had never been invented, we would still have seen Kodachrome fade into history.

On the market share issue, I have no disagreement with you.

I did, however still prefer the qualities of Kodachrome right through the early 1980s. When the Kodak lab in western Canada closed, that definitely started to wain.

I assume that you weren't in Canada at the end of the 1970s, or bought Kodachrome from outside the country, because as far as I am aware all Canadian sold Kodachrome included processing until the early 1980s.

[Roger Cole]

I never actually used Kodachrome, the results I saw were grainy with weird colours, and it was slow, and more expensive to process. 75 years ago, it was a brilliant idea, but, really, Kodachrome was on life support when I started shooting colour in 1978, there were other transparency films with better colour accuracy, finer grain, higher speed and easier processing even then, 34 years ago now.

No to most of that. It was rather slow, granted. But it wasn't remotely grainy, except the short lived 200 stuff. In fact it was so sharp that well into the 80s commercial shots and some stock agencies preferred either a 35mm Kodachrome or an 8x10 Ektachrome. Anything else wasn't as sharp. The colors were not subjectively weird, whatever the curves may look like. As I posted before, sometimes Caucasian flesh tones can be a bit pale, but overall the color is rich and vibrant. It does have its own look.

There's a fair amount of Kodachrome from my 2010 "farewell to Kodachrome" on my Flickr page. Some do look grainy, but those are on Kodachrome 200, which was also all well past expiration by then too. I bought it all off eBay all stores being out of it by the time I started buying it, and had no way to know how it had been stored before I got it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogerco...7625927349242/

[Photo Engineer]

What I mean by it was on life support in 1978, is that already Kodachrome was starting to lose market share to other film technologies, like E6 and C41, even if digital had never been invented, we would still have seen Kodachrome fade into history.

Market share was not lost until 1990 or therabouts.

PE

[lxdude]

Market share was not lost until 1990 or therabouts.

PE

Thanks for stating that, PE. Kodachrome was not "on life support" in 1978, or anything close to it. It was used extensively. That's 4 years after K-14 was introduced. If it had been on life support, would Kodak have come out with 120 format K64 and K-200 8 years later?

The E-6 films were improving, but they had to overcome a Kodachrome user base that had found nothing to replace it, and many were going to continue to use the K-films because they were so familiar with them.
Myself, I found Fujichrome oversaturated and Ektachrome to be bluish. I have wildflower slides from 1982 that were taken at the same time, Ektachrome in one camera and K-64 in the other, and the California poppies on the Kodachrome were orangeish the way they really were, and on the Ektachromes they were yellow. It took a long time for E-6 films to be widely preferred over the K-films, not just accepted in their place.

[wogster]

On the market share issue, I have no disagreement with you.

I did, however still prefer the qualities of Kodachrome right through the early 1980s. When the Kodak lab in western Canada closed, that definitely started to wain.

I assume that you weren't in Canada at the end of the 1970s, or bought Kodachrome from outside the country, because as far as I am aware all Canadian sold Kodachrome included processing until the early 1980s.

I was here, born and raised, I got into serious photography in the late 70's and into slides in the early 80's, the Kodachrome I saw shot by friends was not impressive, I used some other chrome films myself, and then gave up on it, when I realized I wasn't going to be projecting them, and printing negatives was cheaper and easier. This is one of the problems a lot of people here are running into, printing from slides now that the successor to Cibachrome, Ilfochrome is history, is only really possible using digital technology.

[railwayman3]

Market share was not lost until 1990 or therabouts.

PE

Not wanting to drag up what I posted some two years ago (and was well discussed then)....here, in the UK, this was just about the time when the previous high-quality factory processing went to pieces, with scratched films, poor mounting, slow service, which should never have happened with a "flag-ship" product.

[StoneNYC]

No to most of that. It was rather slow, granted. But it wasn't remotely grainy, except the short lived 200 stuff. In fact it was so sharp that well into the 80s commercial shots and some stock agencies preferred either a 35mm Kodachrome or an 8x10 Ektachrome. Anything else wasn't as sharp. The colors were not subjectively weird, whatever the curves may look like. As I posted before, sometimes Caucasian flesh tones can be a bit pale, but overall the color is rich and vibrant. It does have its own look.

There's a fair amount of Kodachrome from my 2010 "farewell to Kodachrome" on my Flickr page. Some do look grainy, but those are on Kodachrome 200, which was also all well past expiration by then too. I bought it all off eBay all stores being out of it by the time I started buying it, and had no way to know how it had been stored before I got it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogerco...7625927349242/

Roger were you there at the lab on the last day with Dan (Bayer) and I? There were a bunch of photographers so it's hard to remember them all.


~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[lxdude]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rogerco...7625927349242/

I just want to corroborate what you say on your flickr page.

Your wife is indeed lovely. She also looks like she's a delight to be around, and I will venture to say that you are one lucky guy.

[Roger Cole]

Roger were you there at the lab on the last day with Dan (Bayer) and I? There were a bunch of photographers so it's hard to remember them all.


~Stone

The Noteworthy Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nope. Never been in any Kodachrome lab.