Kodak Kills Kodachrome 399
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by
timothy
from the and-try-to-find-tri-x-pan dept.
from the and-try-to-find-tri-x-pan dept.
eldavojohn writes "Another sign that digital cameras are slowly phasing out analog comes with Kodak's announcement to discontinue Kodachrome film. This should come as no surprise as Polaroid film was phased out long ago. At least the analog photography industry knows how to change with the times."
they still make ektachrome (Score:5, Informative)
Kodachrome was like smoking pot.
Fuji is like doing acid.
Agfa is like a rainy day...
RS
Re:And it is good because? (Score:3, Informative)
Like all other technologies, its not the features, its what you do with them. I've taken good pictures and some Interesting things [youtube.com] with my $600 Canon digital rebel xti. I recently bought a cheap $33 remote timer made by a Hong Kong company so that I can do more time lapse stuff. You don't need to spend a lot, you just need to be innovative. $2000 won't buy you that.
Re:And it is good because? (Score:0, Informative)
Kodak Knows How To Change? (Score:5, Informative)
"At least the analog photography industry knows how to change with the times."
Oh yes Kodak have really coped well [yahoo.com] in the digital age.
Its not like Kodak concluded a four-year, $3.4 billion restructuring in December 2007 that eliminated 28,000 jobs, about half its workforce [bloomberg.com]. Or that its "share price sank to the lowest price in at least 35 years".
An unusual and easily misinterpreted sign (Score:5, Informative)
I see replies about the death of film, when this was less than 1% of Kodaks film sales per year. Kodachrome is difficult to process, expensive to maintain the equipment for, and has been slowly being phased out for over 50 years, ever since the killing of it in the large format. What the people here do tend to ignore is that for the death of 1 stock, Kodak has introduced new stocks, such as the Ektar 1 and E100D, that truely are visual marvels, cheaper to process and maintain, and most of all, can be upgraded to newer speeds/processes far cheaper than the now almost 80 year old Kodachrome technology. I do think Kodak has made a lot of mis-steps for Film, and I will miss Kodachrome, but I do not call this a mistake in the least.
Re:Well There Goes Archival Color Photography (Score:3, Informative)
I seriously doubt that. Unless they've been stored in sub-zero conditions, I guarantee you that your film has faded over the last twenty years. I suggest you read Henry Wilhelm's "The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs", the definitive work on traditional photographic permanence.
And the book is available for free download here: http://www.wilhelm-research.com/book_toc.html [wilhelm-research.com]
Re:no, not really a sign at all (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Any recommendations for a digital point-n-shoot (Score:3, Informative)
You're probably not going to get RAW mode in any compact in that price range... Not with stock firmware, anyway. The first compact that comes to mind with RAW mode is the Canon G10 and its predecessor, the G9.
Alternatively most of the PowerShot and Ixus range can run CHDK, which adds RAW mode, a live histogram, and a few other really neat toys to the Canon firmware.
URL for the latter is: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK [wikia.com]
Re:The ultimate irony (Score:3, Informative)
Apples to oranges, dude.
Film stock has always been DESIGNED to be temporary. In fact, I can't imagine that the film studios ever expected to get their prints back from the theaters in usable condition and they considered themselves lucky if they did.
In fact, film studios only recently have taken any interested at all in archiving. They are awful at it.
It is not film but digital preservation that is bad shape right now.
Yes, 80% of the movies ever made are gone for good.
The topic of computer data preservation pops up about every six months on Slashdot and no one yet has solved the problem by any meaning definition of the term.
Without a groundbreaking change, a similar figure for digital media will be about 100%.
--Richard
Article poster is a moron. (Score:5, Informative)
Kodachrome was killed by Fuji's Velvia and Kodak's own Ektachrome E100-series professional films years ago. They're both much easier to process (cheaper and more environmentally friendly), as archival, and provide a variety of color palettes to choose from. K64 was around for nostalgia, and nostalgia kept people buying it and Dwayne's processing it for many years beyond what made economic sense.
Polaroid "died" within the past year, moron, not long ago, and there's a group trying to resuscitate it. Polaroid sheet film is not equalled by anything in the digi-toy world, especially type 55.
If you want to know how long Kodak will keep a product going, they discontinued their last dry plate film in 2002. That's an emulsion on a glass plate, a technology that Kodak introduced in 1879 (replacing the wet plate technology, look it up). A flexible transparent base for film was introduced in 1899, meaning they kept the "outdated" glass plate technology going for 103 years after its replacement came along.
One thing that is lost is longevity (Score:2, Informative)
There is nothing just like Kodachrome. It has virtually no grain and last almost forever. Certainly longer than Ektachrome.
For anyone who worked with film it is a sad day.
By the way if you want archival quality photos by far the best is black and white film developed and printed. If it is properly
washed and stored, short of burning, it will last forever.
One of the most ignorant postings I've seen yet (Score:2, Informative)
Long overdue and not about digital (Score:5, Informative)
Most slashdot readers are probably not aware of what Kodachrome is, which is necessary to understand in order to see why Kodak is discontinuing it.
Kodachrome uses chemical technology that is essentially unchanged from the 1930s. Instead of embedded dye in the film emulsion, as is done in all other color films in use today, the film is essentially black and white, with filter layers, and the dyes are added during processing. Further complicating processing is a requirement for exposure to light of particular colors and intensities between chemical baths. Because of the complicated processing and the tight coupling between the nature of the film and the details of the processing steps, there has been no change to the Kodachrome technology since the introduction of the rarely-used higher speed Kodachrome in the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, competing slide films (Velvia, metioned upthread, also Kodak's older Ektachrome and more recent Lumiere and E100VS series films) continued to improve at least through the late 1990s. In addition to processing easy enough that it can be done in a home lab, these films are higher speed, higher resolution, less grainy, and offer more saturated colors. Continued production of Kodachrome (or, more likely, continued release of emulsions that have been in climate controlled storage for many years) has mainly served a tiny niche of photographers who have built a personal style around the film, plus a few curious newcomers.
Aside from the aforementioned "personal photographic style" considerations, Kodachrome has been practically obsolete for around 30 years, because starting around 1975 or so the last of the serious problems with E-6 process films (Ektachrome etc) -- stability during lengthy archival storage and shadow detail -- were solved.
The presence of good alternatives in other transparency films makes this a non-event. Should we see the day when transparency film is categorically unavailable, that will be an occasion for much greater wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Kodak... (Score:2, Informative)
Kodak bustes it's own @$$ long ago with the invention of the digital photo, it's business model didn't change as fast as the industry and that's why they have to close portions of their products, out of the bankrupcy.
Make no mistake, this is no "we are changing with the times", this is "we ran out of business and we are shrinking".
Re:Attention! Please tag as !analog (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, yeah, it really does. Data is either represented as discrete numerical values (digital) or as a continuous spectrum of values (analog). I can't really think of any form of data storage that doesn't qualify as one or the other. The mere fact that the continuous range is caused by a chemical process and not an electrical process does not mean it isn't analog.
Re:The ultimate irony (Score:3, Informative)
If you can still find a working Zip drive, they should still be readable in 100 years. It's not usually the platters that fail. It's the crappy head mechanisms.
Re:The ultimate irony (Score:3, Informative)
Digital photos also do not degrade with the passage of time.
That's the funny part about this discussion, all the non-photographers whom think color process pics will never degrade, as permanent as the Egyptian pyramids, blah blah.
True, PROPERLY PROCESSED black and white prints will last forever. Unfortunately the only way to tell if a B+W print was properly processed to remove all the unexposed silver and processing chemicals, and was really printed on genuinely acid-free paper, is to wait and see if it turns brown and/or stains and/or crumbles away. Pro processors are trustworthy (or .. are they?) where as quickie mart, probably not.
Color process prints and negatives degrade pretty fast under "real world" conditions... Unlikely to be viewable in a hundred years. Properly stored, maybe a bit longer. 2015, no problem. 2050, start worrying. 3000, forget about it.
At least digital has a chance of survival, if the owner recopies every year to new media, and new formats as necessary. Conveniently cost of storage implodes every year so this is no big deal. Wonder what will happen someday when that cost stops dropping.
WRONG! Re:Kodachrome?! (Score:3, Informative)
No, Kodachrome is a slide film, one of the first, and by far the most popular until Velvia came along. Ektachrome in the 60/70/80 s a very crappy second-rate alternative.
I beleive you are talking about Kodacolor - the original name for the Kodak color print film.
Until about mid-90's, just about every professional color photo you ever saw was taken on Kodachrome, Nat. Geographic being a notable user. It's still superior to most of the alternatives as far as raw image quality goes. the other posters have it right - the processing was so obscure and arcane that the turn around time to get it processed has been about 2 weeks, basically forever, compared to every other slide film (Process E6, Ektachrome, Velvia, etc..) which can be done overnight, and to Kodacolor and other print film (that can be done in an hour). Slide film is still a primary medium, print film was strictly for casual point-and-shoot but has been replaced by digital almost entirely.
Brett
Re:Wait for the "looks softer" crowd to form... (Score:4, Informative)
Thats just nonsense. It's will be a *very long time* before the pixels on a digital camera approach the size of a silver halide molecule. Most high-quality photography is still done on large-format film stock (Fuji Velvia or similar, in 6x7 of 4x5) which is then scanned to get a digital file. I routinely use Velvia in 2 1/4", scan it, and turn my $75 Yashica-Mat into a 55 MP digital camera. Side by side with my Nikon D90, there's no comparison in the image quality for appropriate subjects.
Brett
Re:The ultimate irony (Score:3, Informative)
Don't forget dye fading, and that weird fungus/mold stuff that literally eats some negative materials.
My wife has old negatives where that weird fungus stuff started eating the negatives. Seems stable now, at a lower humidity.
It's very educational / depressing to find a scan from the early 90s, then scan again just 15 years later, and see how much the negatives and prints have decayed.
I've been thinking of buying one of those 50 degree wine cooler fridges for my negatives... is that a good idea, if I black out the clear door?
Re:Attention! Please tag as !analog (Score:4, Informative)
The mere fact that the continuous range is caused by a chemical process and not an electrical process does not mean it isn't analog.
Are you sure that's why they said it? You're aware that individual grains within a photograph are either "exposed" or "unexposed", right?
Of course, the grain size and shape can vary continuously within certain ranges, as can the positioning. But it's not as (cough) black and white as you seem to think.
Re:Polaroid To Bring Back Polaroids (Score:3, Informative)
"Polaroid is trying to bring back the instant photo, in the form of a small digital camera/printer that can instantly print your digital photo."
Fuji is making instant film; they've never stopped. You can get Fuji film formats for your Polaroid cameras.
Re:The ultimate irony (Score:2, Informative)
Here's the issue we keep coming back to. It's not digital vs analog, it's what will be readable in 100 years or even 200. Digital is fine, except that you'll have to re archive it about every 10 years if you don't want to be orphaned like a 7 track 800bpi tape. Sure someone COULD build a reader, but who will finance that? And that assumes your digital media won't drop bits in that timeframe. We could take an Ansel Adams glass plate from the '30's and print it today. We could take a 1868 Timothy O'Sullivan photo of the American southwest and print that. No special tech other than we kept them in stable human habitable conditions.
Using advanced aging techniques, we can speculate on the lifespan of current inks and papers, but we KNOW that silver salts on glass last over 160 years. We KNOW silver on ph neutralized linen based papers lasts for over 160 years. In fact we KNOW that certain inks on treated goat hide will last a couple of thousand years stored in a jar in a cave.
I'm another one that believes that 200 years from now, historians will be cursing our lack of foresight in archiving not only the major events but the minor "how we lived" ones
Re:Long overdue and not about digital (Score:3, Informative)
I used to be a astrophotographer and Kodachrome had much better color and sensitivity than Ektachrome or negative color film. However, I haven't dabble in astrophotography for over 20 years but what I see on astronomy websites from people using digital SLRs it appears that most film is dead, except for evidence photography. As for evidence photography, since there is a negative/positive that if you alter it will show unlike digital photography.
Re:Attention! Please tag as !analog (Score:5, Informative)
Are you sure you understand silver-halide exposure? You're aware that individual grains are NOT either "exposed" or "unexposed". Instead, a certain number of silver nuclei in each crystal (or grain) will be present depending on how many photons the grain was exposed to. Developing helps amplify the effect, causing more of the grain to be "exposed", but by no means is it "all" or "none". Read about the chemistry of film [cheresources.com] here. In short, though, it's pretty darn analog.
Re:Take Kodachrome if you must ... (Score:4, Informative)
Old Velvia was 50ASA which was insanely slow, and hard to shoot with. Wonderful with tripod but handheld was hard. I actually found it a bit over saturated, though that's a matter of opinion.
Kodachrome's death wasn't so much caused by the continuing move to digital caused by the lowering of prices on Digital SLRs....that was certainly a factor, and continues to be so. Kodachrome was a unique film with a unique developing process and there was only one lab in the world still doing it. It was always a pain in the butt to use because of the process anyway: even in Toronto my film had to be shipped to a specific lab to get developed, or mailed to Kodak directly. I hated doing that...film gets lost in transition more than any other way, and the wait was long sometimes.
Fujichrome film could be processed in a standard E-6 process, and that was readily available in even small communities not so long ago. I switched to Provia a long time ago, and never looked back.
I'm going to go buy some tonight, actually, and it's going to cost a lot less than the $1,300 for the Canon 50D, plus it doesn't have that stupid crop factor that turns my ultra wide 20mm lens into an unimpressive relatively "normal" 32mm lens.
I'm waiting for an affordable full frame digital SLR before I move. Some will argue that the 5D is it, but I would certainly NOT argue that $3,000 is affordable. In the meantime, I scan slides.
We really need to solve the damn dust problem as well, though most people tell me it's overblown. Batteries can also be an issue for those of us who like to photograph off the grid.
Re:The ultimate irony (Score:3, Informative)
Where Film Still Beats Digital (Score:3, Informative)
Film still beats digital in low-light, high-ISO situations. If you just snap pix with your phone, you won't care. If you make a living with your camers, you will.
Yes, the very best digital cameras are very good, but their film equivalents are significantly cheaper.
Re:they still make ektachrome (Score:3, Informative)
They contract out to the one lab left in the country that develops Kodachrome.
What about the other countries, you [slightly dim and insular person]? THE country my [posterior], [I have a low opinion of you].
(Altered to remove trollosity ;-) ).
Last I heard, Dwayne's Photo in the US (not even owned by Kodak themselves) is the only lab in the *world* processing Kodachrome for end-users. The writing was been pretty obviously on the wall when things got to that stage.
Re:Attention! Please tag as !analog (Score:3, Informative)
Yes but grains there are, so a silver halide image can never be a seamless continuum of hue and brightness.
No matter how good the grains are, there are still a (very) finite number of them.
Seems we need a better definition of analogue.