The End of Kodachrome

Hi everyone this was on the BBC News last night and also on BBC News web site. Now that more photographers are going over to digital camera’s how much longer will it before you can't buy film?


Eastman Kodak said it will retire Kodachrome colour film this year, ending its 74-year run after a dramatic decline in sales.
"The majority of today's photographers have voiced their preference to capture images with newer technology -- both film and digital," said Mary Jane Hellyar, president of Kodak`s Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group.
Kodachrome was once the film of choice for many baby boomers' family slide shows and gained such iconic status that it was celebrated in the mid-1970s with a song of the same name by Paul Simon, with the catch-phrase: "Mama don't take my Kodachrome away."
The film's durability and ability to capture rich, vibrant colours also made it a favourite among professional photographers like Steve McCurry, known for his portrait of an Afghan girl with green eyes for the cover of the National Geographic Magazine in 1985.
But it is a complex film to manufacture and requires a complicated process to develop, and today there is only one lab left in the country that processes the film.
It also faced competition from Japanese rival Fuji Film.
In the end, Kodachrome accounted for less than 1 percent of the company's total sales of still-picture films, the company said.
Even McCurry has now moved onto digital and other film including Kodak's Ektachrome.
"In fact, when I returned to shoot the 'Afghan Girl' 17 years later, I used Kodak Professional Ektachrome Film E100VS to create that image, rather than Kodachrome film as with the original," he said in a statement.
Underscoring the decline of film, the company that popularised consumer photography more than 100 years ago said 70 percent of its revenue today is from consumer and commercial digital

 

Film will be around for some while yet, Kodak are a rather bizzare company and quickly drop their film products at the earliest oportunity, bizzare because the alternative digital product by Kodak is not even remotely on a par with their film products.

 

Kodachrome gave the best results for taking colour slides when I started railway photographs. It was really too slow for any lighting conditions other than bright sun; just money wasted. That was its other problem - the cost. Kodachrome was not cheap even by the standards of the early 1960s. Which was why I (and others I know) sometimes resorted to cheaper alternatives from Gevacolor, Ilford, Perutz and the like. Anyone remember those? If you tried those, you will probably like me have lived to regret it.

No problem about film remaining available in the long term - until someone comes up with a digital version of the single-use disposable snapshot camera.

 

Colour film will eventualy disapear, with the current range of high end Digital backs and DSLR's there is really very little reason to use colour film, but B&W is a different matter altogether, 120 and sheet film has no equivelent in digital, digital just dosnt have the feel and latitude of high quality B&W film, the biggest deciding factor is as fewer people shoot high quality medium and large format film, and even fewer get them printed to high quality then the majority of people will not know what real high quality is, 75% of shots on the internet would look very average printed at anything above 10x8, but the fact they look acceptable on the Internet means people are satisfied.
Um er not sure if that makes any sense but I think I know what I mean........ :-k

 

Spot on Chris.
Anyone who has spent a lot of time in a darkroom doing monochrome printing will know what you mean.
I'm not sure that colour film will disappear though. For some applications film is still essential - digital recording still has a long way to go to match the resolution of film.
Having said that, I'm more than happy to use digital; I couldn't afford to take the number of photographs I do if I were still on film!

 

Or have the space to store all the prints, what a headache that is!
Hope life is going ok for you David, keep up the good work on ya site.