Future Kodachrome Colour Developing

dsmccrac · Nov 7, 2012

Matt, i will trust your recollections of whether slides or negs/prints were more expensive at the time, and likely the $12.99 processing included fits what I was thinking it cost (and in line with what was in the article i posted). At any rate, (whether it was cheaper than prints) that was not cheap back then -- $12.99 plus tax would be close to $40 today. Being a poor student, I did stop shooting 'chromes for financial reasons, but perhaps that was at some point later on in the 90's when all the grocery stores had photolabs and were churning out the prints for peanuts. I consider those the dark days of my film life -- not helped by the fact that i ignored my OM-2 for a decade and used this crappy P&S with a bad zoom and a really bad autofocus -- I was young and dumb, but that is no excuse! :confused:

Poisson Du Jour · Nov 7, 2012

The Kodachrome processing mailer was $20 mailed to VisionGraphics in Sydney when it was done here in Australia. This cost was included in the roll purchase (around $30). I considered it one of the most expensive, but not the particularly most beautiful films to expose and process. At the time it was preferred over E6 emulsions, which I had not quite 'warmed to'. The period referred to is from 1978 to 1993, around which time my last rolls of Kodachrome were exposed and sent off and a shift made to Velvia and Provia.

Roger Cole · Nov 7, 2012

nickrapak said:
+1. I would be willing to part with a few bucks to get a handful of frames. Of course, we'd need to make sure we have good K-Chrome, a good camera, and most importantly, a reliable financial intermediary.

+1 for me too, I'll be in if this happens.

Diapositivo · Nov 7, 2012

EdoNork said:
The question is: CAN you develop a roll of KODAKCHROME at that price if I put the money on the table?

My train of though really. Not that I am interested personally. But the questions that came to my mind were:

- is the Kodachrome processing really feasible at this time?
- how many rolls would need to be ordered for the work to start?

At that price the interest is probably limited to particular situations. We "poor" people can never imagine how many people are there who just don't know how to spend their money. During a staying abroad many years ago I personally knew a person who would certainly be glad to have somebody buy for them a Kodachrome roll on the internet, develop it for $250, by a slide projector and organize a projection while boosting that the entire operation costed him $1000 and considering it a very funny thing to say (laughing very loudly, that is: there's no limit to the vulgarity of certain "new rich").

BUT if the process is feasible, the "first adopter" will slightly make it more affordable for the subsequent ones.

The problem with the production of Kodachrome film remains.

I think I shot one or two rolls of Kodachrome in my life, so it's more of an academic interest.

wblynch · Nov 7, 2012

I would pay the price for 1 roll.

Perhaps 5 people could create a single order?

I would love to photograph the Pasadena New Year's Rose Parade on Kodachrome.

Poisson Du Jour · Nov 7, 2012

Better films out there for photographing roses with accurate colour.

Photo Engineer · Nov 7, 2012

Well, one guy told me that Kodachrome made a garbage dump look nice. It had extremely vivid colors.

PE

Poisson Du Jour · Nov 7, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Well, one guy told me that Kodachrome made a garbage dump look nice. It had extremely vivid colors.

PE

:confused:

michaelbsc · Nov 7, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Well, one guy told me that Kodachrome made a garbage dump look nice. It had extremely vivid colors.

PE

I always heard that was an objective.

wogster · Nov 9, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Mannes and Godowsky had custom coatings and custom synthesized chemicals made by EK even when they lived in NYC. When they moved to Rochester, their labs expanded and they got more chemicals and coatings. Steve here has had to replicate all of this with a fixed film base to work with and some rough formulas in patents that represent an amalgam of K14 and the previous process, as the product we knew was still in development.

PE

I think, it would be easier to reinvent Kodachrome, then to make a process for existing stocks of Kodachrome. The only way to make a K14 process, would be if Kodak were to release the chemical formulas to the public domain or sell them to the new producer. The issue becomes making film stocks in small enough quantities that it could be all sold before it expired. Also to make the chemicals in small enough quantities that it was used up, before it expired.

Brian C. Miller · Nov 9, 2012

wogster said:
The issue becomes making film stocks in small enough quantities that it could be all sold before it expired. Also to make the chemicals in small enough quantities that it was used up, before it expired.

A few things come to mind.

AT WHAT PRICE??? The price to develop the film will be $250 per roll. The price per roll might be, what, $200? So nobody will pay to buy the film, and nobody will pay to have the film developed. Any Kodachrome replacement would not be cheap, as in under $50 per roll. Face it, when it was only double the price of E6, it wasn't popular. Steve McCurry started shooting digital instead of Kodachrome in 2005, and Kodachrome was discontinued in 2009.

Like PE said, there's nothing special about the process, because several other manufacturers have done the same thing, and dropped it. Kodak held out. Finally Kodak dropped it. I can't imagine anybody bringing back Kodachrome, especially investing millions in redevelopment, as long as Fuji is making E6. Fact is, I can't imagine anybody bringing it back as long as C41 is available.

If somebody wants to shoot Kodachrome "at any price," that person can do it right now. The price and the minimum order has been stated, and it isn't that exorbitant.

wogster · Nov 9, 2012

Brian C. Miller said:
A few things come to mind.

AT WHAT PRICE??? The price to develop the film will be $250 per roll. The price per roll might be, what, $200? So nobody will pay to buy the film, and nobody will pay to have the film developed. Any Kodachrome replacement would not be cheap, as in under $50 per roll. Face it, when it was only double the price of E6, it wasn't popular. Steve McCurry started shooting digital instead of Kodachrome in 2005, and Kodachrome was discontinued in 2009.

Like PE said, there's nothing special about the process, because several other manufacturers have done the same thing, and dropped it. Kodak held out. Finally Kodak dropped it. I can't imagine anybody bringing back Kodachrome, especially investing millions in redevelopment, as long as Fuji is making E6. Fact is, I can't imagine anybody bringing it back as long as C41 is available.

If somebody wants to shoot Kodachrome "at any price," that person can do it right now. The price and the minimum order has been stated, and it isn't that exorbitant.

I think the real case was three technologies doing the same thing, and when the market began to shrink, one of them had to go. Rather then dwelling on the past, here is another idea, to save slide imagery.

They coat RA4 emulsion on a film base, the film comes in 8x10 sheets, you take a C41 negative and contact print it on a portion of the film, you can contact print an entire roll if you like, or just selected images, someone can then build an easel to do this, I am sure. Process in RA4 chemicals like a normal print. Then use a paper cutter to cut the images out of the sheet and mount them for projection. Now you have one film technology (C41) and one print technology (RA4), keeping film alive until it becomes retro and everyone wants to get in on the action again.

Prof_Pixel · Nov 9, 2012

wogster said:
They coat RA4 emulsion on a film base.

You can't simply coat the emulsion layers of color print material on a transparent base to make a transparency.

Color print dyes 'get 2 shots at the light' when viewed (light passes through the dyes - hits the base - and is reflected back through the dyes on its way to your eyes) and would make a pretty 'weak' transparency. In addition, color print materials have much lower maximum densities than transparencies (it would be wasted because of front surface reflections of prints).

There WERE Kodak products in the past designed to make display transparencies from color negatives.

Roger Cole · Nov 9, 2012

Prof_Pixel said:
You can't simply coat the emulsion layers of color print material on a transparent base to make a transparency.

Color print dyes 'get 2 shots at the light' when viewed (light passes through the dyes - hits the base - and is reflected back through the dyes on its way to your eyes) and would make a pretty 'weak' transparency. In addition, color print materials have much lower maximum densities than transparencies (it would be wasted because of front surface reflections of prints).

There WERE Kodak products in the past designed to make display transparencies from color negatives.

Duratrans.

I wasn't even completely sure it's gone. Too bad. And another one gone and another one gone... glad I'm really in love with black and white.

Roger Cole · Nov 9, 2012

The real problem, besides the fact there's no real market, with anyone coming out with a new Kodachrome like process is that those chemicals would also have to serve the commercial photo finishing business, where the infrastructure is already tiny and still shrinking. The few remaining labs, few enough of whom even do E6 any more, would have to set up whole new lines. It isn't going to happen. Just won't. Even if a new film were made easier to manually process somehow the market for home processed color is tiny. It wouldn't exist at all except that C41 and E6 materials made for commercial use are pretty easily adapted.

The only way I can see it even COULD happen would be for a new, re-invented, leaner Kodak by whatever name to do occasional runs and supply maybe one or two contracted labs with chemicals for periodic batch runs, maybe in something like a K-lab. I doubt there's a market for this. If there were, and if the price could be kept competitive with E6, then I'd still put the odds at maybe 0.001% or so. Of course I pulled that number out of my changing tent as it were - it's possible, but it's vanishingly unlikely.

I agree with PE that it's gone. I just still like talking about it.

Photo Engineer · Nov 9, 2012

As I have said time after time, Kodak has abandoned the patents for K-14 allowing anyone to use them. They are open and clearly disclosed.

PE

Ken Nadvornick · Nov 10, 2012

Roger Cole said:
The only way I can see it even COULD happen would be for a new, re-invented, leaner Kodak by whatever name to do occasional runs...

At least one current Kodak representative has already publicly hinted that something like this might be... well, not necessarily impossible in a post-Kodak world.

One never knows until one does. Stranger things have happened in the long history of our species...

(TWO of these, just so no one gets confused.)

Ken

Roger Cole · Nov 10, 2012

Ken Nadvornick said:
At least one current Kodak representative has already publicly hinted that something like this might be... well, not necessarily impossible in a post-Kodak world.

One never knows until one does. Stranger things have happened in the long history of our species...

(TWO of these, just so no one gets confused.)

Ken

Yeah, and that's pretty much what I'm acknowledging. Not impossible, just very, very unlikely. Like the flaming monkeys...

Ken Nadvornick · Nov 10, 2012

Roger Cole said:
Like the flaming monkeys...

If you teach a monkey to start a fire, you'll keep him warm for a night. If you set a monkey on fire, you'll keep him warm for the rest of his life...

:eek:

Ken

TexasLangGenius · Nov 10, 2012

Roger Cole said:
I agree with PE that it's gone. I just still like talking about it.

I like thinking about Kodachrome, too. I think, though, that we need to put as much money and effort as possible in keeping E6 alive, since it's more economical. In several hours, I should be getting 9 rolls of slides and 2 reels of Super 8 back that I shot at Caprock Canyons State Park. I scrounged up enough money to shoot it and plan to keep doing so into the future. I'll post links to my flickr page.

One thing I want to ask, PE (it's not about Kodachrome, I promise ). Let's say that commercial E6 went the way of Kodachrome. Would it be far more economical and easier to start a small commercial E6 line (say, like Ilford with black and white). I hope this doesn't happen, but I pay good money to shoot E6, because it's really good stuff. I'd hate to see that happen to E6.

AgX · Nov 10, 2012

Prof_Pixel said:
You can't simply coat the emulsion layers of color print material on a transparent base to make a transparency.

Color print dyes 'get 2 shots at the light' when viewed (light passes through the dyes - hits the base - and is reflected back through the dyes on its way to your eyes) and would make a pretty 'weak' transparency. In addition, color print materials have much lower maximum densities than transparencies (it would be wasted because of front surface reflections of prints).

There WERE Kodak products in the past designed to make display transparencies from color negatives.

Agfa still offers two display films aimed at RA-4 processing.
One even got maxD>3.

wogster · Nov 10, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
As I have said time after time, Kodak has abandoned the patents for K-14 allowing anyone to use them. They are open and clearly disclosed.

PE

The patents, yes but not the formulas. If Kodak really wants to say Kodachrome is dead, they should make the formulas available through something like a creative commons licence, with the only condition being that anyone who decides to use them must credit Eastman Kodak with the process design.

wogster · Nov 10, 2012

Prof_Pixel said:
You can't simply coat the emulsion layers of color print material on a transparent base to make a transparency.

Color print dyes 'get 2 shots at the light' when viewed (light passes through the dyes - hits the base - and is reflected back through the dyes on its way to your eyes) and would make a pretty 'weak' transparency. In addition, color print materials have much lower maximum densities than transparencies (it would be wasted because of front surface reflections of prints).

There WERE Kodak products in the past designed to make display transparencies from color negatives.

Okay you would need to change the emulsion slightly to get a brighter image, the problem with the display transparency materials is that when they were around, you had to buy a roll that would cost as much as a 2 year old car, and would take 30 years to use it all up. I'm talking a material that would be in similar quantities and prices as 8x10 printing paper. You could then transfer a few sheets out of the box, into a light safe, seal up the box and drop it in the deep freeze. Since it's RA4 chemistry, it's the same as your prints, so chemicals would be cheap and easy to obtain. A bigger benefit, you wouldn't really need E6 either. film manufacturers could really produce 3 emulsions a C41 in 100, 400, 1600 ISO and two print materials one for prints and one for transparencies. With a shrinking market share, the fewer materials might be enough to make it economical to make film, until of course 2020 when it becomes retro and takes off again. The would be another side benefit, it would be possible to produce a transparency from a digital image, since it has better preservation then digital or negatives.

I currently plan on getting a roll of traditional B&W film, taking the entire roll of my now 1 year old daughter, then getting that processed, somehow, so that she will have a permanent record of her as a baby, because I realise that nearly all the images taken of her, so far are digital. I have the old B&W prints of when I was her age, taken 50 years ago, then look wonderful now, even if they were taken with a $2 box camera.

Stephen Frizza · Nov 10, 2012

wogster said:
The patents, yes but not the formulas. If Kodak really wants to say Kodachrome is dead, they should make the formulas available through something like a creative commons licence, with the only condition being that anyone who decides to use them must credit Eastman Kodak with the process design.

Kodak has made everything needed to do K-14 available. It should be made known that there are various publications from as early as the 1960's which clearly state multiple formulas and methodologies required and capable of producing a colour result from kodachrome. I suspect (and while I do not know for sure) that the process methodologies and formulas would be very similar and with appropriate tweaking could be adapted to k-14. Think Dyanchrome, Fuji and I believe Konica may have also had processes similar to k-11, k-12 there is information and methodology info that can be adapted from these sources as well. Mind you with what Kodak has released about the k-14 process (which I believe is everything) I know as fact what is in the patents makes it possible for processing to be done. Though as I have stated in the past the Yellow Dye Developer I use is not from the K-14 process.

Diapositivo · Nov 10, 2012

AgX said:
Agfa still offers two display films aimed at RA-4 processing.
One even got maxD>3.

That's extremely interesting.
A fast search gave me this:
http://www.agfa.com/sp/global/en/binaries/AVITONE CP94_tcm611-42599.pdf

Sadly it's not sold in roll format. It's not clear what the sensitivity is. It says it is to be exposed through an enlarger. I suppose the ISO speed would be quite low.
Still, if it existed as roll film, even at ISO 6, I would gladly try it.

Did anybody try to take pictures with this material?

Future Kodachrome Colour Developing

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