Can we save Kodachrome?

I have a roll of K64 in my Olympus 35RC right now, and three more in the fridge. This is my first experience with Kodachrome and, admittedly, my main motivation was to try it before it disappeared.

I think there is reason to be mildly optimistic, in the long run. If anything is going to save Kodachrome, or other exotic emulsions, it'll probably be advances in small-scale manufacturing technology that make it practical to achieve similar results profitably on a much, much smaller scale. Thirty years ago things like high-precision CNC machines in a home business were impossible, and now you have a niche market using that technology to make things like reproduction parts for antique cars. By the time film becomes unprofitable for the big names to stay in the marketplace I suspect a clever group of enthusiasts will adapt relatively cheap off-the-shelf technology into a practical film-manufacturing solution.
 
leicasniper said:
What are folks shooting Kodachrome doing with it these days? Back in the 60's and 70's we were big on slide shows, and of course it was the gold standard for magazine reproduction, but I've not seen anyone with a projector in years and magazines want digital now.. It's difficult to scan well, so I would think color negative film would be easier. I know I stopped shooting it to any degree years ago. Just kind of curious.
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I stil shoot it for a few reasons

I like the color and contrast rendition
K64 is extremely sharp.
It's very archival. I have Kodachrome slides from my mom that are decades old and they look perfect, unlike my E6 slides, which are only about 20 years old and going fast.
 
JTK said:
dmr said:
Last time the numbers were posted, Dwayne's was still processing over 1000 rolls per day.


If true, that's almost nothing. Minilabs in drugstores are said to need 200 rolls/day to survive.
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I think that 1000/day number (I read that somewhere too) is just for Dwayne's Kodachrome lines. They also do E6 and C41. It looks like the three rolls of E6 (120) I had developed last month via Walmart's send-out service all went to Dwayne's. If they have a contract with Walmart then that's a lot of volume to help keep the Kodachrome stuff going.

BTW, that 200 rolls/day number seems a bit high to me. I don't know, though. I can't imagine the local Walmart, Target, Sam's Club, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, etc. all doing that much film every day.
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Dante_Stella said:
The archival aspect isn't going to mean anything when there is no equipment to read a piece of Kodachrome film as anything other than a 24x36mm curiosity.
Dante
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A developed Kodachrome slide is a low tech item. The technology involved in viewing one can involve as little as a magnifying glass. You can build a projector with a simple lens and lightsource. Flatbed scanners aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

100 years from now it's going to be a lot easier to jerry rig some sort of scanning device to read a slide, than trying to figure out how to read a SONY memory stick or other other electronic storage device.

All over the world museums are still recovering the past from Edison tubes and clay records. These are very low tech items and the means to read them are equally simple. That's why they have survived across time.
 
kdemas said:
My best advise, if you love K64, is to shoot shoot shoot. The more film they sell the more likely it is to stick around longer...
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The most pertinent one so far.

With sufficient demand, K-64 will last. There will always be aficionados who will appreciate it. The question is whether there will be enough. But strange and wonderful things have happened before to things left behind in the march of time. As a lutenist, I can assure you of that.
 
OK...you sold me...

OK...you sold me...

wayneb said:
I'm going to disagree here - I'm currently using a desktop scanner to get old kodachromes into flickr, etc and make small prints and it's fine quality. I assume there will always be flatbed scanners as long as there is printed material, which I think there will be for a very long time.

There are so many negatives and slides in existence that there will be a market for equipment to scan this media. I was in Sears recently, they still sell turntables in the electronics section.
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What special software do I need to scan my kodachromes with a turntable from sears electronics section?
 
Technology has never adanced faster than the last hundred years - transportation, radio, TV, atomic age, moon landing, digital age, etc.

A hundred years from now I am certain low cost technologies will revolutionize the photographic medium beyond anything we comprehend today. Who would have thought twenty-years ago that digital technology would take the medium by storm? In its wake, digital technology gave us the scanner and the super-simple desktop darkroom. Who would have thought that today we could scan an old color neg or slide and print an 11 x 14 with impunity? In the nineteenth century which 8x10 shooter could have imagined that a hundred years hence his/hers glass plates could be digitized and made available to the fartest reaches of the globe at a keystroke?

I will continue to do my part and shoot Kodachrome and B&W as much as possible. I will let others decide if they are to be kept or thrown in a heap. Maybe a hundred years from now my great-grandchildren will thank me for leaving a family record.
 
I have never shot Kodachrome but looking at B&H they have 2 films listed. Kodachrome 64 and a Kodachrome 64 professional. Besides the professional being $4.00 higher whats the difference?
 
MY take on the situation..."Can we save Kodachrome?"

YES...but more importantly, we MUST!

Every art form/passion needs a poster child and we have it! If we do not embrace the icon of all film photography, we have only ourselves to blame, not Kodak.
 
gb hill said:
I have never shot Kodachrome but looking at B&H they have 2 films listed. Kodachrome 64 and a Kodachrome 64 professional. Besides the professional being $4.00 higher whats the difference?
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They tell me (the ubiquitous "they") that Kodak's "professional" films are meant to be stored cold and used promptly, in that they are at their "peak" of the aging cycle shortly after shipment, and that their consumer films are shipped before the peak, intending to be stored at room temperature (or worse) until purchase and use. Some will also say that the quality control is a bit tighter for their professional line. Others say it's the same stuff at a higher price. :) That's what "they" tell me, anyway. :)
 
I just got my first batch of Kodachrome back from Dwayne's (it's the first time I've shot any since they stopped processing it here in Europe), and I have mixed feelings...

It only took 2 weeks to go from here (UK) to Switzerland, thence to Dwayne's, and all the way back to me on the reverse journey. That's pretty good.

They all scan on my V700 with a slight magenta cast (as I have mentioned earlier). It's easy to correct post-scan, but I can't correct it by a scanner setting because it's slightly different in each shot. It seems to depend on the actual colour balance of each one - the more blue sky in the shot, the greater the overall magenta cast. But it's easy enough to correct afterwards, so it doesn't bother me all that much.

The look of Kodachrome really is nice. I don't know how to describe it really, but there's a kind of "presence" with KR trannies that you don't get with other films.

But oh, woe - in the US they're still using those horrible card mounts that Kodak abandoned in Europe decades ago?! All my KR slides from the 80s onwards that were processed here are in nice plastic mounts with square corners. And now I have these obsolete abominations thrust back on me, with the stupid round corners that mean you have to lose a significant chunk of the image to get a square scan. And possibly even worse, there are loads of card fibres encroaching into the frame - the edges of the scans are hairy! As I don't send them to Dwayne's directly I can't even ask for it to be processed unmounted, because here in the UK we can only buy KR pre-paid and have to send it back in the supplied envelopes with no options.

Much as I love KR, an even though I can put up with having to send them half way round the world for processing, and I don't really mind the additional effort in removing the magenta cast from the scans, the card mounts are the last straw. I think a sad day is upon me - I think I've shot my last ever Kodachrome.
 
oscroft said:
They all scan on my V700 with a slight magenta cast (as I have mentioned earlier). It's easy to correct post-scan, but I can't correct it by a scanner setting because it's slightly different in each shot. It seems to depend on the actual colour balance of each one - the more blue sky in the shot, the greater the overall magenta cast. But it's easy enough to correct afterwards, so it doesn't bother me all that much.
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I used to shoot a lot of K200 and it would go pink or magenta if your exposure was off by a very small amount, especially in low light situations. That's the big drawback to Kodachrome. Exposures have to be dead on, because of the limited dynamic range.

But of course it can also be the processing. Just before A&I shut down their developing line, I kept getting slides back with a pink hue.
 
If you don't plan to show them in a slide projector, just ask that they not be mounted.
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As I said, I don't have that option - from the UK they're pre-paid and there are no processing options.

Or get some plastic slide mounts and mount them yourself.
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That would be just one more chore too much, and puts KR just too far away from the convenience of E6.
 
I used to shoot a lot of K200 and it would go pink or magenta if your exposure was off by a very small amount, especially in low light situations. That's the big drawback to Kodachrome. Exposures have to be dead on, because of the limited dynamic range.

But of course it can also be the processing.
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The magenta cast I see is not visible in the slides themselves when viewed with a slide viewer or projected, so the processing is just fine - it is only there on the scans. And it's there even when the exposures are perfect.
 
You can't even get them back unmounted? That s*cks!!! That's probably true for me too then!

I just found out my local camera shop has K64 on their website, although not in store in the shop. One roll costs a cool 14 (fourteen) euros. I sure hope processing is included. For the same amount of money I can get three rolls of perfectly good Fuji Sensia, processing included. But hey, my M2 & cron' weren't cheap either, and now I at least know why people want Leica's ;-)
 
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