Kodachrome Availability Update

[Steve Smith]

Kodachrome isn't that readily available any longer, that's the only point I disagree on, it's now only distributed in North America and the UK. Not all UK photographic shops and professional dealers stock it but as Tim Wallis points out it is available, and I saw odd rolls on the shelf myself when I was last in the UK.

In most UK towns you can find more Kodachrome at Boots the Chemists than you can at Jessops.

EDIT: I see Tim has already said that!


Steve.

 

[Ian Grant]

Well you could see more film in any Boots the Chemist at one point compared to a typical small Jessops. That had changed in my local Jessops store when I was last in the UK, I was surprised to see quite a bit more film, no Kodachrome though.

Ian

 

[tim_walls]

In most UK towns you can find more Kodachrome at Boots the Chemists than you can at Jessops.

EDIT: I see Tim has already said that!

Indeed. Although expecting someone who doesn't even have the manners to spell my name right to pay attention to reality when the voices in his head take precedence is rather too much.


So far about the only thing this thread has conclusively proven is that if you want to make wild extrapolations from absolutely no data, Turkey and Australia are ideal places to start.

 

[Ian Grant]

Apologies for not spelling Tim Walls correctly

No-one has ever made "wild extrapolations" in this thread except perhaps those who think Kodachrome is here to stay, and I note from your previous posts that you doubt this will be the case. All my observations are as a UK citizen, and based on UK experience

Reality is quite different despite what you (Tim), PKM-25 or I might have thought, Kodachrome sales have slumped massively over the past few years, it's very easy in hindsight to come up with a wide variety of reasons but none of us can change those facts.

Maybe we could influence Kodak into making another master roll of K64, I use the "we" here to mean Kodachrome users as a whole not me specifically, but if Kodachrome was to be coated again and film sold in significant quantities it would require Kodak to boost the processing facilities, and that isn't going to happen.

You never know, Eastman Kodak might surprise us all with an entirely new T-grain Kodachrome to celebrate 75 years, but E6 based and it could be done quite easily. (It wouldn't be a true Kodachrome as we know it).

Truth isn't about who stocks what it's about the film and it's qualities when processed, films & technology evolve we have to hope Kodak is still at the cutting edge.

There are various avenues one can take over the possible demise of Kodachrome 64, PKM-25's is lets get on and use it while it's here, others let's support it but they do nothing, I have used it, I could use it, but I'm not shooting any 35mm at the moment, should I change just because K64 might be lost, I can't justify it.

Ian

 

[Photo Engineer]

Narrow expiration dates might also mean an upswing in demand and so batches were either made or packaged closer together to meet that uptic in demand. Dates mean nothing more than when stuff was drawn out of storage and packaged.

The big question is how often is it made. I hear that demand had gone down and so the 12 month production cycle was increased to about 18 months and then longer. It can be stretched out until the cycle is just close to the keeping of the product under ideal circumstances and then it becomes impossible to produce.

Film is like fresh produce or meat. It has a keeping lifetime. If you order too much, it spoils on the shelf or in storage and if you order too little, then you have gaps in availability. If demand goes up, you order batches closer together and the expiration dates get closer together.

Since 1990, demand has gone down steadily until a small recent bump upwards. That is all I know. Production cycles became further apart due to the downward trend, and when it reaches a certain point it will be impossible to produce without horrendous loss due to spoilage. Current fim may be coming out of older stored product that was on the shelf, or they may have coated a new batch. IDK. I have not followed this for months.

PE

 

[Ektagraphic]

Is their any way to find out how much Kodachrome Kodak actually sells?

 

[PKM-25]

Current fim may be coming out of older stored product that was on the shelf, or they may have coated a new batch. IDK. I have not followed this for months.

I am betting that we are still gnawing on the last coating and that Kodak is trying to time it to where we have enough to chew on into 2010 and then they nix it. I just don't think that in the current state of economy ( EK at $4.05 per share, -3.81% ) that they will take the risk of coating another batch and having it sit.

I don't know either, it all depends on if the current and perceived future use warrants another coating and none of us are going to know the answer to that secret information.

 

[PKM-25]

Is their any way to find out how much Kodachrome Kodak actually sells?

I think you would have an easier time in finding out the max capacity of the MK-82 bomb shackle from the U.S. military..

 

[Ektagraphic]

It has been out of stock at Freestyle for a while and I really want to get some. Maybe they need to make a new master roll and they are holding off or something......Freestyle keeps saying that Kodak tells them they will get it tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

[...]

I have no axe to grind about Kodachrome, or sour grapes, but there has to be some realism about the film and its future.

Ian

(bold is my emphasis) // I concur fully with this view Ian.

 

[tim_walls]

Apologies for not spelling Tim Walls correctly

Accepted . I actually woke up this morning and thought 'argh, should delete that post' but since you've replied I'll leave it but apologise for being ratty.

After the 100th well meaning shop assistant/telephone operator/salesperson/whatever has 'corrected' you on the spelling of your own name it becomes something of an open wound

 

[accozzaglia]

(bold is my emphasis) // I concur fully with this view Ian.

We are wholly aware of this, my dear. Sour grapes. You at least get the amazing pop music being cranked out from that continent right now — particularly that collaboration between a certain vocalist from Perth and a certain Sydneysider producer.

We here in North America don't.

We only get Kodachrome P/KR64.

 

[jim appleyard]

It has been out of stock at Freestyle for a while and I really want to get some. Maybe they need to make a new master roll and they are holding off or something......Freestyle keeps saying that Kodak tells them they will get it tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes.

Keep trying at Freestyle; I just rec'd 15 rolls on Sat.

FWIW, I placed a call to Kodak to ask them about the rumor of Kodachromes being discontinued. The guy told me that Kodak has no plans to discontinue it.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

We are wholly aware of this, my dear. Sour grapes. You at least get the amazing pop music being cranked out from that continent right now — particularly that collaboration between a certain vocalist from Perth and a certain Sydneysider producer.

We here in North America don't.

We only get Kodachrome P/KR64.

<giggles> A profoundly deaf person like me last heard pop music in 1974, and really, I don't concern myself with it.
But... who is the "certain vocalist from Perth and a certain Sydneysider producer"? There are thousands that collaborate/conspire in music. Presently everyman Keith Urban is about (assisting the Victorian Bushfire Appeal cause), attracting a legion of screaming, camera-wielding twenty-somethings.

 

[railwayman3]

FWIW, I placed a call to Kodak to ask them about the rumor of Kodachromes being discontinued. The guy told me that Kodak has no plans to discontinue it.

And, FWIW, I actually find that quite encouraging.

I know that K64 will not be around for ever (there again, nothing and none-of-us will be ) but in the past Kodak have produced many much more obscure products, such as scientific films and plates, which could have had only a tiny market with very limited, if any, profits.

In the end, these have been discontinued, understandably...no business can be a charity, but I feel that Kodak would be much more reluctant to axe its most inconic product while-ever it there is any small profit, and, more particularly, goodwill in it.

Could it just be that some of us are misjudging Kodak, and their "rationalising" the Kodachrome range down to just one size, one speed and one lab, is actually a way of keeping the film going as long as possible, rather than trying to maintain the production of at least four varieties (25, 64, 200 and cine) and several labs when the volume is just not there?

 

[Ektagraphic]

FWIW, I placed a call to Kodak to ask them about the rumor of Kodachromes being discontinued. The guy told me that Kodak has no plans to discontinue it.

That is Kodak always says.
If any of you have checked out The Kodachrome Project and The Kodachrome Project Forums, Dan is asking for people to wirte a lettter to Kodak about why you think Kodachrome and The Kodachrome project are important. He is having us mail it to him and he is going to send an envalope full to Kodak. You can find all the details in the Kodachrome forums. http://www.kodachromeproject.com/forum/showthread.php?t=199

 

[Chazzy]

Well, this thread has made me decide that it's time to go to the nearby camera store and buy some more Kodachrome.

 

[accozzaglia]

I'm ageing, in the way, out of the loop generally, and dunno who Keith Urban is (but as a student of urban studies, I certainly haven't seen anyone in the city come up to me and say, "Hi, I'm Keith, and this metropolitan area is me. Welcome"). I was referring to Empire of the Sun, co-formed by Luke Steele, the vocalist (Perth) from The Sleepy Jackson and Nick Littlemore, the producer/instrumentalist (Sydney) of PNAU (pronounce it like "gnaw"). Both are exquisitely schooled in pop music of the 1970s and earlier 1980s (and by this everything from country/western, Jeff Lynne, The Moody Blues, China Crisis, The Lotus Eaters, Ian Thomas, Lindsey Buckingham, even Sunscreem) without trying to play up the kitsch or retro re-creation cards. One might think this is easy to pull off ("oh, let's sound like this today"), but this is like saying one can pull off Weegee, Trevor Key, or Russell Lee without looking like they're trying to emulate or ape any of their work.

Empire of the Sun's promotional music videos so far play with vivid colour themes, some built around different colour temperatures to effect different circumstances, though clearly these come at the cost of going the digital post-production route (which is a bit disappointing). The siting of each music video location are a photographer's gold mine: Shanghai and a desert in México. They should have had the chance to shoot a 35mm widescreen music video in Kodachrome (or perhaps 4 side-by-side strips of super 8mm laid onto a widescreen 35mm format, with each of the four side-by-side components juggling and telling a different aspect of the story all at once), but oh well.

At the risk of earning some untoward glances from others on APUG, that silly question of "which might you prefer: a compromise of vision or of hearing," — silly because no one gets to pick and choose, and it's not like we sign up for it should either occur — I have always responded with, "That's silliness, but probably vision." The reasons are one-way: I "see" music (uhm, go synaethesia) in "colour", so a loss of vision would still allow me to visualize, albeit at the expense of having to put down my camera (though the results of the Steveland Morris approach from the 1983 "Kannon Camera" advert shown on Saturday Night Live could nevertheless yield some intriguing results). Absent of sound, I would lose both sound and the associated vision thereof. The challenge would then be to try to generate synaesthesia of "sound" from the visual work I'd produce. This would be infinitely harder to do.

<giggles> A profoundly deaf person like me last heard pop music in 1974, and really, I don't concern myself with it.
But... who is the "certain vocalist from Perth and a certain Sydneysider producer"? There are thousands that collaborate/conspire in music. Presently everyman Keith Urban is about (assisting the Victorian Bushfire Appeal cause), attracting a legion of screaming, camera-wielding twenty-somethings.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

The challenge would then be to try to generate synaesthesia of "sound" from the visual work I'd produce. This would be infinitely harder to do.

On the money there.
I only need to look at one of my beautiful Cibas and sometimes I will hear music.

 

[B&Wpositive]

On the money there.
I only need to look at one of my beautiful Cibas and sometimes I will hear music.

How about just the actual Kodachrome slide itself?

Paul Simon seemed to think Kodachrome had a synaesthetic property, too...after all, he did manage to make a song from the film. It is this property of the film that is the reason Kodak needs to keep Kodachrome in production. I don't think there's any other film on the market that gives that same tonal range.

So Mama, don't take [our] Kodachrome away!

(I'm also an amateur neuroscientist.)

 

[jim appleyard]

Is it me, or did Kodak WANT Kodachrome to die? We all know about dwindling demand for film, and how companies cannot continue to make something that doesn't sell, but I have not seen an advertisement for Kodachrome in years. What happened to the K-labs that were supposed to boost sale and do K-14 processing in every drug store and supermarket? The K-lab seemed to die on the vine.

The last time I went to the Kodak website, I looked on the section for slide films. There was NO mention of Kodachrome, only E-6.

If you don't advertise a product, then surely it will die,

 

[Photo Engineer]

The last ad on Kodachrome that I could find was from about 1990 and it was for the Olympics, shared with E6 films.

Kodak did not kill it. Sales slid all on their own when the E6 family was introduced. Kodak tried to sustain sales but no one wanted it. Remember that a Kodachrome 400 product and improved versions of the existing producs were all rejected by the public even though Kodak did the R&D. Samples were sent out and given to potential customers. At that time, they preferred E6 films.

I'm getting tired of this assumption Jim.


PE

 

[nyoung]

Went to Kodak site yesterday just to check general slide film offerings. Both versions of K64 were listed along with the E6 products.

 

[StorminMatt]

It actually just dawned on me today that I would have an EASIER time buying Kodachrome locally here in Sacramento than Astia - NOBODY sells Astia here. If I wanted Astia, I would have to go to the Bay Area. But I can basically get all the Kodachrome I want here.

 

[Ektagraphic]

Kodachrome really is not hard to get. I would be willing to bet that 90% of any little photo shop you go in could easily order it for you. They may charge "an arm and a leg" but they would order it....