Future Kodachrome Colour Developing

Roger Cole · Nov 11, 2012

He never indicated he had any intention of being a "start-up business." That implies an on-going endeavor. I've read nothing like that, just someone who has worked out how to do it considering offering it to a few people that still want and need it, and probably not at much if any profit anyway.

TexasLangGenius · Nov 11, 2012

My question still stands.

Let's say that commercial E6 from Fuji went extinct. Would it be far more economical and easier to start a small E6 line (say, like Ilford with black and white)?

If E6 does go extinct, I will be sick to my stomach, but I will still use B&W.

AgX · Nov 11, 2012

Aside Fuji there still is Agfa with one E-6 emulsion.

Roger Cole · Nov 11, 2012

AgX said:
Aside Fuji there still is Agfa with one E-6 emulsion.

You mean the stuff sold as Rollei? I suppose there is that, but how viable would processing chemicals be with only that?

The other "Agfa" Precisa is rebranded Provia 100.

AgX · Nov 11, 2012

Agfa still offers film and chemistries. Agfachrome RSX II 200 emulsion on thin PET base. Maco does types 135/120 "Rollei" conversions.

The Fuji Provia rebranded as "AgfaPhoto Precisa" is by AgfaPhoto.

Concerning chemistries I would worry much less, as there are still some independant chemistries manufacturers around to offer alternatives to Fuji and Agfa chemistries if necessary.

Ken Nadvornick · Nov 11, 2012

wogster said:
First of all, I'm not trying to tell anyone what they should or should not do, with their own money, they are free to spend it whatever way they like. There is a reality though, no start-up business based on requiring a product no longer manufactured, is going to live long, especially when that product is perishable and all remaining stocks are past their use before date. Those 8-12 rolls are not a done deal, they may be interested, but there is a long way between interested and willing to part with cash. Meanwhile, while we are futzing around and spending gobs of R&D and money on getting elderly Kodachrome processed, we might lose E6, because the market for it isn't exactly growing either. If I had a roll of Kodachrome at this point, I doubt I would use it knowing that it costs $250 to get it processed. If it was already exposed, it would have been processed into B&W by now, if it missed the last run.

Your agenda may not be everyone else's agenda. That often happens in life.

Ken

Stephen Frizza · Nov 12, 2012

Greg Davis said:
Steve, are you ready to process, or are you just gauging interest?

I can do it, I currently have a small amount of chemistry left and to process more film in the future would need to buy additional chemicals.
I posted this as a way of guaging interest, and it is good to see there is a little bit out there. Though the idea of shooting on kodachrome for the sake of "One last time"
doesn't seem justified to me. If someone wanted me to go to all the effort of processing the material I would want to see previous work they had done and know the history of the roll they are wanting me to process and also why its justified I go to the effort of doing this. The price I posted is not a price I would profit from. surprisingly doing it as $260 a roll I make a small loss but it is the absolute bone cutting minimum for doing this process at of 2012. If I do decide to do it as a one off thing I will make it very public knowledge and give a future date as to when the one time process will occur.

Stephen Frizza · Nov 12, 2012

wogster said:
A lot of people that could afford it, look at the minimum price, $250. Now you could go out and buy 13 rolls (maybe more) of fresh E6 film and get them processed for the same money. If everybody who thought about a roll of Kodachrome, went out and bought, shot and processed 13 rolls of E6, we might be able to keep E6 from following K14 into the netherworld. The Kodachrome horse is dead, so lets just quit beating on it.

I couldn't agree more. I think your suggestion of spending the money on E-6 is far more healthy. A photographer would need a bloody good reason why they need to shoot k-14 over E-6 for me to process it or have something extremely historically important that missed dwaynes last processing for me to actually do it.

wogster · Nov 12, 2012

Ken Nadvornick said:
Your agenda may not be everyone else's agenda. That often happens in life.

Ken

I don't have an agenda, the last time I shot slides, of either type was 1982, so it's more an idea of sober thought. If film transparencies are important to you, then you either need to work with current materials in order keep what you have now or you need to find a way to economically get slides from C41 negatives, possibly by using a motion picture print film. If you really want a business concept it would probably be the later, custom building a film printer that would work with a single negative to print them on MP film which would then be processed like any other MP print film, you would then cut it into slides and mount them. You might need to put a tracking number on the film stock itself, to know which slide goes with which negative in your process.

mikecnichols · Nov 12, 2012

If I get the new job I'm waiting on to hear back about, then at tax time, I would DEFINITELY be interested. My only problem is that I only have 4 rolls. If I'm still stuck at WAG, then I can't afford to do this at tax time.

All in all, it would be nice to be able to fully appreciate the color of the Kodachrome that sits in my freezer, but it isn't the end of the world if it doesn't happen either.....Ektar and Portra 160 are doing just fine for me.

Mike

mikecnichols · Nov 12, 2012

Stephen Frizza said:
I couldn't agree more. I think your suggestion of spending the money on E-6 is far more healthy. A photographer would need a bloody good reason why they need to shoot k-14 over E-6 for me to process it or have something extremely historically important that missed dwaynes last processing for me to actually do it.

I get that argument. Makes me now want to shoot some E6!

railwayman3 · Nov 12, 2012

In the unlikely event that I won silly big money in the Lottery, I would be tempted give it a go....and even fly to Sydney to watch the process! But that won't happen.

Using E6 has to be the way to go, realistically. And I think we have a few years left of E6 processing....and even after that there might still be some hope of getting the less complicated chemicals to mix-it-yourself.

Brian C. Miller · Nov 12, 2012

TexasLangGenius said:
Let's say that commercial E6 from Fuji went extinct. Would it be far more economical and easier to start a small E6 line (say, like Ilford with black and white)?

No.

There have been a lot of posts on this subject. The cost of developing a small E6 line is just too high, i.e., no profit at all, ever. If Fuji dumps E6, then just kiss it goodbye, and soldier on with C41 or B&W.

AgX · Nov 12, 2012

Well, except for that Agfa E-6 film and its conversions there is still Kodak Ektachrome in 35, 16 and 8mm cine conversions.

madgardener · Nov 13, 2012

There is no way I could afford the cost. $250 would be nearly an entire paycheck. I'm at the fringes of being able to afford my hobby as it is, which is why at the moment I shoot 35mm. During the last year of Kodachrome, just to say I shot it, I was buying a few rolls at a time from a seller on Ebay, and sending it by mail to get it developed.

It was an absolutely beautiful film, but I agree with PE, it's never coming back' no matter how much we beg. The processing is/was just too specialized.

Athiril · Nov 14, 2012

madgardener said:
There is no way I could afford the cost. $250 would be nearly an entire paycheck. I'm at the fringes of being able to afford my hobby as it is, which is why at the moment I shoot 35mm. During the last year of Kodachrome, just to say I shot it, I was buying a few rolls at a time from a seller on Ebay, and sending it by mail to get it developed.

It was an absolutely beautiful film, but I agree with PE, it's never coming back' no matter how much we beg. The processing is/was just too specialized.

I forgot how bad pay rates in the U.S. was, here the minimum award rate starts at about $18 an hour iirc.

Photo Engineer · Nov 14, 2012

And the economy in OZ is better?

PE

Athiril · Nov 14, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
And the economy in OZ is better?

PE

That too I guess, never really noticed any kind of recession effects myself, not sure we technically even had one.

But minimum wage is not too bad to live off independently here, rent, food, bills, travel is covered, with a decent amount left over with to save or play around with.

I remember in 2008, I managed to save up enough to go to Stockholm and back in my semester break during uni for 4 weeks.

polyglot · Nov 14, 2012

The economy in AU is far, far better than in the US and EU. We had a bit of a blip around 2008-09 but no big recession, no banking crisis, no real-estate crash (we're down by about 10% off 2010 when I bought but not the huge bubble-burst that the US had). Our only real drawback (and again, this is due to our solid economy) is that the AUD is overvalued which is hurting local manufacturers/exporters and that's the natural macroeconomic negative-feedback loop in action.

There are of course plenty of people saying that AU will suffer from loss of mining exports that China is slowing. They may or may not be right but for now, the AU population and economy are incredibly well-off by current world standards.

PS welcome to the first-world and having healthcare

Athiril · Nov 15, 2012

polyglot said:
The economy in AU is far, far better than in the US and EU. We had a bit of a blip around 2008-09 but no big recession, no banking crisis, no real-estate crash (we're down by about 10% off 2010 when I bought but not the huge bubble-burst that the US had). Our only real drawback (and again, this is due to our solid economy) is that the AUD is overvalued which is hurting local manufacturers/exporters and that's the natural macroeconomic negative-feedback loop in action.

There are of course plenty of people saying that AU will suffer from loss of mining exports that China is slowing. They may or may not be right but for now, the AU population and economy are incredibly well-off by current world standards.

PS welcome to the first-world and having healthcare

I had access to a lot of heavy market research documents ($ thousands per document), a lot of those guys are simply crying foul, like Gerry Harvey on TV saying how bad things are all the time, they make shit loads and have anti-competitive practises.

Reality is, car parts and snow boards that are made here, are cheaper for Australian consumer to buy from a U.S. retailer + shipping (that has had shipping from AU + markup and tax added on) that still sometimes come in half the price then buying from supposed "wholesale" here.

hoffy · Nov 15, 2012

WHile we are vastly off topic - I often thank my forefathers for having the foresight to come to Australia back in the mid 1800's - Apparently, they had a choice of 3 - North America, South America or Australia.....I think they chose very well.

Now, what where we talking about again?

Nzoomed · Nov 15, 2012

While the $260 is high, i do agree that its a realistic price and doesnt surprise me that its this high, personally i could not justify spending that much because im not a professional photographer, and feel i would be wasting my money on crap photographs, however i really want to shoot kodachrome because ive missed out, if i get better at my photography and find a good camera that i can trust, then, im happy to process one of my 24exp films, but i do agree that if we can get more interested persons, to get the cost down, as im sure a bigger batch of rolls would be cheaper to process at once, rather than a handful at a time, i would be all in to pay up front for anything like this, as long as i would get a refund if it all fell through, if everyone payed upfront, Steve would know how many have committed and get the price right.

Should we talk to Kittlegraphy first, and see if its possible to re-create this process in his K-lab or is Steve's hand process more reliable?
I would also want to know how accurate the colours would be with this process is i was going to pay so much too, if the results look the same as how k-14 film came out, then i dont have any problems, wither way im happy to wait until something gets sorted out thats reliable, ive sold 10 rolls on ebay for a crazy price, so people are serious about processing this stuff...

michaelbsc · Nov 17, 2012

I really doubt a k-lab can be properly operated - other than testing the mechanics and software - for fewer than a hundred rolls. Maybe two hundred. But I might be totally wrong.

But for a hundred rolls you could probably cut the cost 50% or maybe a little more.

Pretend for a minute that you "can" run 100 rolls at $100 each. How much stock is out there? And how much would actually go for that reduced rate?

That's a prolab rate, not a hobby market rate. And the pros have all gone mostly digital.

And what if my educated guess is wrong by 20% on both - a real possibility - so the k-lab needs 120 rolls at $120 each.

Remember that Kodak freely released all the patents and knowledge required to the public domain many years ago. So for free no one picked up the ball.

Nzoomed · Nov 18, 2012

well i do agree with you somewhat.
We still have this k-lab that is not running and am unsure of its progress.
At the same time we have Steve in Australia who appears to be the only one who successfully has processed the film, whereas the k-lab is not, perhaps more effort should be made to help streamline the process steve has currently been using, or else should we try the k-lab option, we still dont know how close to k-14 Steve's process is, perhaps its better? i dont know, but the results look pretty darn good either way.

I like the idea of sharing a camera and taking a couple of photos each and splitting the costs that way, either way, there are people serious about shooting kodachrome film, i sold some rolls on ebay for a packet and i still have 5 rolls in my freezer, i have been ironically shooting E6 and love it, i have a small stockpile of ektachrome film which im happy with, but want the opportunity to shoot kodachrome.

There is this film maker in the US who shot a film on the space shuttle on kodachrome which needs to be processed as not all his rolls got shot in time before dwaynes closed, Steve should be able to help in this department hopefully too.

Photo Engineer · Nov 18, 2012

There are at least 2 or 3 people who have gotten reasonable results with home processing of Kodachrome.

PE

Future Kodachrome Colour Developing

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