Kodachrome processing cost?

[Steve Smith]

Also, it was not illegal to sell film process paid, just for Kodak to do so. I used to get Agfa and I think also Fuji slide film with process paid mailers here.

Strange that you can have a law which is applied selectively.


Steve.

[CCOS]

Strange, I got 2 Kodakchrome 64 from 1982 just taken and mailed Kodak Denmark about how to procces them.
The answer was that if they are the "new" kind form midt 1970 I could just sendt them to Lausanne in the bags that came with them.
If the film in 1982 was sold as pre paid in Denmark that also the fact to day even so many years after.

So I belive that until 31 dec 2010 it's possible to get the KodakChrome processed in Switzerland to.

Jesper

[Steve Smith]

Strange, I got 2 Kodakchrome 64 from 1982 just taken and mailed Kodak Denmark about how to procces them.
The answer was that if they are the "new" kind form midt 1970 I could just sendt them to Lausanne in the bags that came with them.

That's what I did with some 1986 Kodachrome last year.


Steve.

[benjiboy]

Actually, that judgment was rescinded in 1994, along with another prohibiting Kodak from producing film to be sold under private labels, like they now do with Freestyle. The court decided that Kodak no longer had such dominance that such practices would be anti-competitive. Also, it was not illegal to sell film process paid, just for Kodak to do so. I used to get Agfa and I think also Fuji slide film with process paid mailers here.

Sorry, that was the last I heard, I'm obviously behind the times, in the U.K there were no independent labs that processed Kodachrome, it was only sold process paid.

[railwayman3]

Strange, I got 2 Kodakchrome 64 from 1982 just taken and mailed Kodak Denmark about how to procces them.
The answer was that if they are the "new" kind form midt 1970 I could just sendt them to Lausanne in the bags that came with them.
If the film in 1982 was sold as pre paid in Denmark that also the fact to day even so many years after.

So I belive that until 31 dec 2010 it's possible to get the KodakChrome processed in Switzerland to.

Jesper

Any "Process K-14" 35mm Kodachrome (from its introduction in the mid-70's) should still be processable, but Dwaynes, in Kansas, US, is now the only lab in the world which can deal with it, and their service is scheduled to finish on 31st December.
Kodak state, however, that the European process-paid films sent to them in Lausanne must reach them by 30th November 2010, presumably to allow them time to courier the films to Kansas before Dwaynes cease the processing service.

[railwayman3]

Strange that you can have a law which is applied selectively.

Steve.

I believe that at one time (1970's?) the UK Government Monopolies Commission also ordered that Kodak should make Kodachrome available here without the processing included (but did not prohibit the process-paid version). I don't think that many people purchased that version, as there were (SFAIK) no independent K-14 labs in the UK.

I think that the issue here was, like the US, that Kodak were seen to be dominating the market and restricting customers' choice!

[lxdude]

Strange that you can have a law which is applied selectively.

Steve.

It's not considered selective because it is applied to any company which meets the criteria of the law. At the time of the consent decree Kodak was by far the dominant player in the US. (I earlier said "judgment" but that's inaccurate; the decree was dissolved by a judgment.) Kodak controlling processing of the dominant color films effectively closed the market to any other processor. The others were not seen a having a substantial portion of the market; so if bundling processing helped them compete, that was seen as OK.

The basis of anti-trust legislation is a business entity being so dominant in its marketplace that its practices can stifle competition or eliminate competition by combining competitors.
As a fairly recent example (the 80's), the merger of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads was challenged and eventually disallowed because they had too much overlap of lines in this part of the country and a lack of other competitors. Southern Pacific was later allowed to merge with Union Pacific and Santa Fe was allowed to merge with Burlington Northern. I'm reminded of that every time I see both Union Pacific and BNSF trains running on the tracks nearby. Otherwise pretty much the only carrier would have been the SPSF.
There's a Kodak connection: The "Kodachrome" paint scheme used to unify the SP and the SF before the merger was denied, so called by railfans because it looked like a Kodachrome box of the time. It was a combination of Santa Fe's yellow "war bonnet" nose and SP's scarlet along the sides, along with a black top. And Kodachrome is the railfan's traditional film of choice.

Another example from the same period is the breakup of the Bell system and its largest component, AT&T. What had been seen as an efficient and innovative phone system came to be seen as an impediment to innovation and new technology, with potential competitors frozen out of every aspect of phone technology. The breakup was not without its problems-like people getting "slammed", i.e., switched to another carrier without their consent, phone bills became impossible to decipher-but prices went down, especially on long distance. A working pay phone became a rarity with high charges the norm- I once used my home number linked calling card to make a local call home from a pay phone because its coin box was full, and found the ripoff company had legally charged me $13!
The feds had good intentions but the execution should have led to their executions. But Bell brought it on itself by clearly acting to stifle all competition.

Having a monopoly is not the primarily the issue; using a monopoly position to stifle competition, is. Microsoft is a good example. Microsoft had gained a near complete monopoly, but its perceived anti-competitive practices are what got it in trouble here and in the EU.

[Steve Smith]

In the UK, our railway system has gone the other way. Rather than merging companies, it was split up into lots of regional companies and we now have the ludicrous situation of having railway companies who own rolling stock but no track and a track company which has no trains.


Steve.

[moose10101]

In the UK, our railway system has gone the other way. Rather than merging companies, it was split up into lots of regional companies and we now have the ludicrous situation of having railway companies who own rolling stock but no track and a track company which has no trains.

That's exactly what happened to the phone system in the USA when AT&T was split up in the 1980's.