Kodak Retires Kodachrome Film

[Ian Grant]

Dave, the Kodachromes my father put in a box 52 years ago have faded quite significantly, and they've been stored in a cool dry place. The first colour prints I had processed 40 years ago (and all my colour work since C-22, C41, E4, $6) are fine, and my mums snaps from about 1961 are OK too.

So just how archival is Kodachrome ?

Ian

[Sirius Glass]

Makes you want to just give up at times, doesn't it? Joe Blow consumer just doesn't give a damn how they get their daily fill of entertainment, really.

Speaking of the film vs digital divisions, here are some summarized figures of the last 3 quarters:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....l-newsEarnings

(group: revenue/profit)
2008 Q3:
CDG: 820/+23
GCG: 821/+23
FPEG: 764/+77

2008 Q4:
CDG: 958/-40
GCG: 821/-4
FPEG: 652/+39

2009 Q1:
CDG: 369/-157
GCG: 603/-60
FPEG: 503/+8

FPEG the only profitable one right now.

Help, I need an LOAA to decipher this.

Steve

[Dave in Kansas]

Ian, are you sure those were Kodachromes that faded? My dad began shooting Kodachrome in 1956 and those still look great. He shot some non-Kodachrome in the late '50's that had already begun turning pink by the early '60's.

Dave

[Sirius Glass]

Hot flash to Kodachrome lovers: sometimes under dry and cool storage conditions Kodachrome can fade in 50 years! You need to get over the fact that not every roll and processing of Kodachrome was perfect.

Steve

[Ian Grant]

That's what it said on the film

Definitely Kodachrome my dad used a Kodak Bantam Colorsnap II, it was the only film he ever used with that camera, I'm holding his old camera in my Avatar. No other films were ever in Kodachrome slide mounts either after processing !!!

There's some commercial slides my parents bought in Italy the summer of 54 that have faded more, they'd be on Ferrania slide film.

Early Kodachrome is known to fade, it supposedly became more stable with KII etc, KII fdaesbut not as badly, my K25's are still close to or are perfect.

Ian

[Ian Grant]

Hot flash to Kodachrome lovers: sometimes under dry and cool storage conditions Kodachrome can fade in 50 years! You need to get over the fact that not every roll and processing of Kodachrome was perfect.
Steve

Thanks for telling me Steve, but I already know that, and so do many others.

Ian

[Photo Engineer]

PE, I would like to ask you this question. Is it possible, or perhaps I should phrase the question, do you think it is likely or unlikely that Kodak can or will produce a transparency film (E-6 process) that has the archival quality of Kodachrome?

While I love the look of Kodachrome, the change over will not be much of a problem for me if I can find another film with similar archival qualities. I just want to have some amount of certainty that if I shoot pictures of my kids today that get put away in box in the basement and not found for another 50 years, they might still be able someday to hold them up to the light and see what they used to look like. I don't want to give them, or their eventual children the idea that the world looked pink shortly after the turn of the century.

Dave

Dave;

I have E6 slides that are about 30 years old now and look just fine. So, maybe we have process variations and keeping conditions to consider. We have to wait a while before any data is available, but I suspect that E6 has been subject to more poor processing than K14.

Let's wait before we leap.

PE

[Photo Engineer]

FYI:

Consumer Digital Imaging Group = CDG

Graphic Communications Group = GCG

Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group = FPEG <-------- Analog wins Yaaaaay!

PE

[Sirius Glass]

Thank you PE, I will add those to my LOAA*.

Steve










*LOAA => List of Acronyms and Abbreviations, you need to have one to know what it means!

[Kirk Keyes]

Once lost, things can truly be lost. If you don't believe me, please explain how the pyramids were built - with a proof! Or, even better, explain the map of Antarctica that is a polar projection of the earth from space and without the ice cover and that existed hundreds of years ago. Things get LOST! Now, please help me find some YAK gelatin.

Both of those are easy questions - the aliens did it. I read that in Chariots of the Gods in the '70s when I was 13...

I don't think the steampunk movement is really a good comparison. That's all about making modern things look like they were built by Captain Nemo in 1865.

If the MIT/RIT grad students do try to make Kodachrome in the future, it's one thing to make something that's like a product from the past, but then to make it into a venture so that the fruits of the labor and be shared/sold to others is quite another.

It will not suprise me if some intrepid group does attemt to make Kodachrome in the future as a "fun thing to do", but it's going to be a very difficult, time consuming, and expensive thing to do. There is no way they are going to be able to actually reproduce Kodachrome as it was made in 2009, the best they can hope to do is merely make something that, if they are lucky, looks like and earlier version of Kodachrome. The level of quality in their product will most certainly not match what Kodak is capable of either.

(And I hope they don't end up making it like the first batches of that magenta Kodachrome 200. That's what sold me on Fujichrome back in the 1980s.)

So I guess it's back to my darkroom/lab as I try to make T-grain film using a mixture of 1990s and 1880s technologies.