That was probably AU$, but still - whether it's $200AUD or $150USD, it's a moot point. Unless you are able to set up processing in volumes similar to what the K-Labs did back in the day, nobody is going to pay that much per roll to develop it because you won't be able to get the unit cost for the chemistry down to a reasonable price point.
An entirely fair take tbh'I am only going to drop everything else in my life to process Kodachrome if you pay me an absolutely ridiculous amount of money.
Yeah, that $200 price tag is clearly insanely inflated. It honestly sounds like a classic 'go-away' price—basically his way of saying, 'I am only going to drop everything else in my life to process Kodachrome if you pay me an absolutely ridiculous amount of money.
As the late Ron Mowrey @Photo Engineer hear on Photrio posted many times, the Kodachrome approach had reached its theoretical zenith, and the inherent weaknesses of the technology meant that it had been surpassed with respect to colour fidelity by the more modern E6 based approaches.
Ron was one of the co-holders of one of the primary patents behind the final K-14 Kodachrome process, and was an employee of Eastman Kodak for many years.
And Kodachrome only made sense when it was used for motion picture volumes.
The standard Kodachrome processing runs developed a mile of spliced together customer film at a time. The machines were incredibly impressive - large as a small bus, and very loud. At the Kodak Canada Kodachrome processing lab where my Dad was customer service manager for 23 years, during busy times of the year, the Kodachrome machine ran 24 hours a day - the people on pre-splice, technicians running the processing machines and the people handling the processed film, all worked in shifts of eight hour each.
When home movies essentially disappeared in favour of amateur video, Kodachrome's days were numbered.
The main challenge with Kodachrome process is that you need to re-expose the film to different color light during development process, and then do color coupling per layer. On the other hand, this might give alternative process people to go wild at each layer.
But honestly, if $200 was just his raw material cost per roll, that is even more insane! It completely proves the point we discussed earlier: trying to source or synthesize the original OEM chemistry is an absolute financial dead end. It just confirms that using alternative, readily available couplers is the only viable way forward for a project like this today.No, I don't think it was that. That was the actual cost per roll TO HIM - he wasn't doing it for anyone else at that point.
As the late Ron Mowrey @Photo Engineer hear on Photrio posted many times, the Kodachrome approach had reached its theoretical zenith, and the inherent weaknesses of the technology meant that it had been surpassed with respect to colour fidelity by the more modern E6 based approaches.
Ron was one of the co-holders of one of the primary patents behind the final K-14 Kodachrome process, and was an employee of Eastman Kodak for many years.
And Kodachrome only made sense when it was used for motion picture volumes.
The standard Kodachrome processing runs developed a mile of spliced together customer film at a time. The machines were incredibly impressive - large as a small bus, and very loud. At the Kodak Canada Kodachrome processing lab where my Dad was customer service manager for 23 years, during busy times of the year, the Kodachrome machine ran 24 hours a day - the people on pre-splice, technicians running the processing machines and the people handling the processed film, all worked in shifts of eight hour each.
When home movies essentially disappeared in favour of amateur video, Kodachrome's days were numbered.
That was probably AU$, but still - whether it's $200AUD or $150USD, it's a moot point. Unless you are able to set up processing in volumes similar to what the K-Labs did back in the day, nobody is going to pay that much per roll to develop it because you won't be able to get the unit cost for the chemistry down to a reasonable price point.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?