Kodachrome in China?

railwayman3 · Jan 9, 2011

Antonov said:
No, NOT restoration. This locomotive is built from scratch. Whole new locomotive!

Correct, I've seen this brand new loco running on the main line here in the UK.

I would have said that it really was an "impossible project" to build a steam loco from scratch....until I saw it happen with my own eyes! (To keep OT, I'm only sorry that I didn't have time to shoot it on Kodachrome.)

michaelbsc · Jan 9, 2011

Antonov said:
Come on people, if a group of enthusiasts made STEAM locomotive in 21th century, then what are we talking about?
And, I think it is harder to make running steam locomotive then roll of Kodachrome.

I think you've got that backwards. I expect it's far simpler to make a steam locomotive than to make a roll of Kodachrome.

I think it's far simpler to make 35K rolls of Kodachrome than to make 35K steam locomotives. But from a one-off perspective the locomotive wins hands down.

Colin Corneau · Jan 9, 2011

Actually a '57 Bel-Air in every showroom is pretty illogical, and not at all what I was alluding to. Apples and oranges...for starters, the infrastructure to make a 57 Bel Air wasn't still in working form 2 or 3 years ago.

As for marketing and promotions, a full page ad here or there doesn't cut it. I never saw it even mentioned in any camera store I went to -- I basically thought it had already been discontinued. So, what do newer or younger photographers and artists think?
Moot point, at this time, of course...point worth making, though. Perhaps a 'chicken or egg' situation, but ask yourself why Nike or Honda bother advertising? Hint: it works.

Antonov · Jan 9, 2011

michaelbsc said:
I think you've got that backwards. I expect it's far simpler to make a steam locomotive than to make a roll of Kodachrome.

Tell that to people who built that locomotive. I don't want to argue on subject of this matter, but I highly disagree. Making a steam locomotive is a hell of a more complex task then making a roll of Kodachrome.

I think it's far simpler to make 35K rolls of Kodachrome than to make 35K steam locomotives. But from a one-off perspective the locomotive wins hands down.

But, this is true.

Photo Engineer · Jan 9, 2011

Lionel1972 said:
Thanks PE for the info. From I have read, it seems that people loved Kodachrome 25 best and the early versions were more like ISO 10, does it mean that the overall look of slower versions may be nicer? If so, I wouldn't mind sacrifying speed and some later refinements for the look I see in some of those old transparencies.

Lionel;

The ISO 10 version was replaced by an ISO 25 version, but due to advances in speed and grain technology, the overall result was a better film. This has been true ever since. For example, today's EKTAR 100 is probably the equal or better than the EKTAR 25 of 20 years ago.

I would guess that if Kodachrome R&D had continued, we would have an ISO 400 film that equaled or surpassed Kodachrome 64 of today. This is due to advances in technology. By the same token, and ISO 100 Kodachrome using today's technology would probably equal the ISO 25 Kodachrome that was discontinued recently.

PE

railwayman3 · Jan 9, 2011

Colin Corneau said:
As for marketing and promotions, a full page ad here or there doesn't cut it. I never saw it even mentioned in any camera store I went to -- I basically thought it had already been discontinued. So, what do newer or younger photographers and artists think?
Moot point, at this time, of course...point worth making, though. Perhaps a 'chicken or egg' situation, but ask yourself why Nike or Honda bother advertising? Hint: it works.

I think we're agreeing there. Most people know and identify Nike and Honda as reliable brands, but they still spend millions of $ in marketing and sponsorships solely to keep their names in the public eye.

Nike present their gear as being used by top athletes, sportsmen and women, while Honda must have spent millions when they were making and racing F1 cars which no-one would ever buy for practical use. But people see the names, and the glory rubs off onto the everyday trainers and the small runabouts which you or I might choose. I doubt that Nike and Honda products are much better-or-worse than their peers, but it's the skilled positive marketing which works.

Photo Engineer · Jan 9, 2011

Guys;

I have built model steam locomotives that run on electricity and have seen the construction and dissasembly of real locomotives. I have friends that do build model steam locomotives that really work. One of these guys also worked in the paper division at EK. I think that we would all agree that making a steam locomotive, even full scale, is easier than making Kodachrome from scratch! I agree with the analogy to TIP. They are struggling to make it work.

PE

2F/2F · Jan 9, 2011

As has been discussed ad nauseam on APUG, it is not impossible to develop ones own K-14 film if that is what one really wants to do. Make your own chemicals, add 3x the number of steps to your process, and include filtered exposure steps. I am sure more than a few will rig up a way to do this at home to use up their existing stocks. For those that really love Kodachrome, and feel it is worth it, this is not all that far fetched. It would seem to be the only way to get around that fact that even if the film did exist, nobody would buy it! For all this talk about how great Kodachrome was, nobody bought it!

Personally, I do not think any of this is worth it. Kodachrome is not something that I believe is worthy of going to such lengths for. I can understand someone who wants to, but it is not me. I would suggest simply buying and processing lots of E-6 film, so we do not lose it too. It really couldn't be all that long until it is gone too. Why put all the effort into saving one film that is of limited use and wasn't selling? Put all that effort (and $$$$$) into the remaining line of E-6.

Antonov · Jan 9, 2011

Photo Engineer said:
Guys;

I have built model steam locomotives that run on electricity and have seen the construction and dissasembly of real locomotives. I have friends that do build model steam locomotives that really work. One of these guys also worked in the paper division at EK. I think that we would all agree that making a steam locomotive, even full scale, is easier than making Kodachrome from scratch! I agree with the analogy to TIP. They are struggling to make it work.

PE

As an engineer I hope you understand that you are comparing uncomparable things. Model steam, real and electric, are far beyond real working steam locomotive. Don't make wrong assumptions based on models and what you saw and don't forget that dissasembly is something totally different from project and assembly.

bblhed · Jan 9, 2011

I think a lot of people are missing the logistics problem of Kodachrome here.

You can go out and buy all the parts to build a Ford Model T if you wanted to and had the time.
The 57 Chevy, you can find all the parts and build a brand new one if you were so inclined.
People have built and operated steam locomotives and boats.

All of those things work because there are roads and rails, and lakes to use them on, along with that you can still buy Gasoline, and coal, and wood grows out of the ground, water that can be made into steam is plentiful as well. Those items were made to be operated and maintained by average people and so they were relatively simple machines.

While there are lots of cameras and slide projectors out there, and the basic film carrier can be easily bought how many of the people that complain and say give us back Kodachrome could actually coat the film themselves? Once you have it coated and get it into a camera could you process it? Even if you could process it do you know how to make the chemicals to process it in? Your talking about a project that would involve the skills and resources of hundreds of people and while that could be put together, you would have to sell literally millions of rolls of film to support it. Unless you can get commitment for sales of millions of rolls of film and processing of it no company is going to support it.

At least we can still look at the photos that already exist on Kodachrome.

Quit crying about what is never coming back and start buying what is still available, get some E-6 and shoot it, I personally shoot an average of two rolls a week in Winter and four or five a week in Summer, what have you done for slide film lately besides complain about Kodak?

Photo Engineer · Jan 9, 2011

Antonov;

I did not bring up steam locomotives, you did. I was using disassembly to illustrate two facts. The first is that you can take it apart and put it together again and the second is that taking it apart shows you how it was put together. Neither of these is possible with film unless the film is totally destroyed in the process. And, you learn little by taking film apart!

Also, having made color papers and films, from scratch and by hand and by automated machine, I can assure you and everyone that building the locomotive is much easier than building the film from scratch. Now, if you include in that step of building a locomotive, the hand forging of drivers, and the hand milling of the flanged wheels, or in fact even the making of the steel for the castings of the locomotive, I might begin to agree with you a bit.

For film, you need tentered estar support with rem jet. You need an electron bombarder, you need a coating machine with chill, heat and two stations for holding those rolls. You need a slide hopper, you need silver nitrate, Tetraazaindene, NaBr, KI, HNO3, H2SO4, NaOH, Gelatin, Hypo, Rhodium Chloride, Iridium Chloride, 3 sensitizing dyes, 9 emulsions from the preceding, Di-t-Octyl HQ, Hardener..... etc... And you have to put them together to work with the process chemistry which is just as complex. BTW, this is only a partial list of ingredients. There are literally thousands of ingredients, but with a locomotive, there are not so many.

PE

Diapositivo · Jan 9, 2011

I think the missing variable in the equation is entrepreneurial risk.

I don't know how much APUG forum is representative of analog photographers in general, but I think it is up to a certain extent. I read several comments about people who tried Kodachrome only because it was going to disappear, and they liked it, and they would have liked to use more of it if possible.

I do think that Kodak might have made a risky choice: invest new money, improve the product, market it for its unique archival quality, for its history, for its saturation, and that this risky choice might have worked. But it might have failed, as well.

Now put yourself in the clothes of Kodak managements. You are in the middle of a very difficult transition from analogue to digital imaging. You are competing with real giants in a world dominated by scale economy and barriers to entry. Investors are nervous about analog photography being some kind of an industrial dinosaur, and about Kodak wasting all its patrimony in this absurd fight, instead of just let the business die slowly and give the money back to the investors. You want to reassure them that the transition is going forward and that their money is not wasted. The alternatives Kodak had was to either peacefully die and distribute their treasure, or to throw a lot of stockholders' money in trying to reinvent itself. They chose the second, it is not working brilliantly.

At the moment, Kodak is making profits from analogue photography, which it sees as a dead road, and trying to find its place in a digital market, possibly still losing market on it, but which it sees as the only possible sustainable future.

If I were the Boss at Kodak, I would think many times before spending money in a venture to resurrect Kodachrome. It could work, but I could lose my chair easily as well.

It's not unreasonable to say that KC, with some decent marketing, could have been relaunched. It certainly could have worked. But it is easy to talk, when it is somebody else who is taking the risk of this bet.

Fabrizio

Colin Corneau · Jan 9, 2011

We can go back to the moon, too, if we want to...takes a lot more than wishes.

2F/2F · Jan 9, 2011

Colin Corneau said:
We can go back to the moon, too, if we want to...takes a lot more than wishes.

You had to use THAT as an example. Now we'll have to hear from both sides trying to disprove and prove that we ever made it there at all! GREAT!

Bob-D659 · Jan 9, 2011

I had a package of that coated in China Kodak C41 film. It was terrible stuff compared to drugstore brand Fuji film. I was on a vacation and ran out of colour neg film, so I bought it at a K-Mart or some other discount type chain store in some town on Hwy 395 in California. That was the only film I could find there in 2006 or 7. If that was all that was available for C41 film, I would expect everyone to switch to digital. It was so bad I threw out the rest of it after getting one roll processed.

Steam locomotives are very low tech machines. They have effectively always been hand made, they are just huge. They don't even require the precision machining required to make a mold for an injection molded styrene measuring cup or a skate board wheel bearing.

Ric Trexell · Jan 9, 2011

What is so good about K-Chrm.

I have read nearly all the posts here and I'm wondering why you are so crazy about K-chrome. To me the most important thing in any film is how long it will hold an image. If the colors shift a little or a lot, well that is better than having the whole image fade away. I'm going to be 59 next month and I have 40-45 year old slides, mainly Kodachromes. Some of my slides show a little fading, but most are like they were taken yesterday. The slides I take today will out live me. Perhaps they will be digitalized and last a few more decades should someone in my family decide to keep the digital files up to date, and the CD's (or whatever storage is available) are readable. Even if my slides and negatives have a severe color shift, they can be converted into b/w and the image will be there. For the person that only wants to show slides or sell pictures for stock, that is a minor point as most people viewing your slides will not give a rip what the color accuracy is, and photo buyers will probably want digitals delivered yesterday anyway. People talk like they are not ever going to die. If my pictures are taken on Kodachrome or Fuji chromes or b/w, it will not matter to me in 30 years, and probably less. So why are you so concerned about your K-chrome? The picture is the important thing, not the means of recording it.

lxdude · Jan 9, 2011

2F/2F said:
You had to use THAT as an example. Now we'll have to hear from both sides trying to disprove and prove that we ever made it there at all! GREAT!

Well, just today we have a new member named "Man from moon", so maybe that will settle it once and for all.

Sirius Glass · Jan 9, 2011

I cannot believe that bandwidth wasted on this thread when all of this "I know better than Kodak about Kodachrome and the film market" which has already been beaten to death in the dreaded Kodachrome has been deleted! thread. Next the senseless rants about making Kodachrome in my daddy's barn or in grandma's cesspool will start. Please go read the almost 3,000 posts in that thread and stop wasting both the bandwidth and PE's time rehashing the same old crap.

Steve

railwayman3 · Jan 9, 2011

Bob-D659 said:
I had a package of that coated in China Kodak C41 film. It was terrible stuff compared to drugstore brand Fuji film. I was on a vacation and ran out of colour neg film, so I bought it at a K-Mart or some other discount type chain store in some town on Hwy 395 in California. That was the only film I could find there in 2006 or 7. If that was all that was available for C41 film, I would expect everyone to switch to digital. It was so bad I threw out the rest of it after getting one roll processed.

I have a letter to my late Father from Kodak UK, dated 1973 and enclosing copies of reciprocity tables which he had requested. The letter states "The adjustments in these tables apply to each stated Kodak film, irrespection of its country of manufacture. All Kodak factories in the world make each type of film to exactly identical high quality standards, and, when used in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations, the results are indistinguishable". I guess no one at that time would have believed that, one day, a factory would be in China....

2F/2F · Jan 9, 2011

Sirius Glass said:
I cannot believe that bandwidth wasted on this thread when all of this "I know better than Kodak about Kodachrome and the film market" which has already been beaten to death in the dreaded Kodachrome has been deleted! thread. Next the senseless rants about making Kodachrome in my daddy's barn or in grandma's cesspool will start. Please go read the almost 3,000 posts in that thread and stop wasting both the bandwidth and PE's time rehashing the same old crap.

Steve

...and BUY SOME EKTACHROME, DAMMMITT!

railwayman3 · Jan 9, 2011

Sirius Glass said:
I cannot believe that bandwidth wasted on this thread when all of this "I know better than Kodak about Kodachrome and the film market" which has already been beaten to death in the dreaded Kodachrome has been deleted! thread. Next the senseless rants about making Kodachrome in my daddy's barn or in grandma's cesspool will start. Please go read the almost 3,000 posts in that thread and stop wasting both the bandwidth and PE's time rehashing the same old crap.

Steve

No one is forcing anyone to read the thread. It will die a natural death, as all threads do, when everyone has got it out of their system, no harm done. There's lots of othermore interesting threads on APUG to choose from, far more than most of us will ever have time to read.

railwayman3 · Jan 9, 2011

2F/2F said:
...and BUY SOME EKTACHROME, DAMMMITT!

When people tell me what to do (and certainly when they don't say "please") I tend to deliberately do the opposite. Just find my mail order list of Fuji dealers....

Only joking...well, partly.

2F/2F · Jan 9, 2011

railwayman3 said:
When people tell me what to do (and certainly when they don't say "please") I tend to deliberately do the opposite. Just find my mail order list of Fuji dealers....

Only joking...well, partly.

Well, I am not biased for Ektachrome or Fujichrome. I use both (though more Ektachrome now, and more Fujichrome in the past). I was just messing with Steve, mainly.

eclarke · Jan 9, 2011

Possible, sure, but just about nobody wants to buy it. You also can't set up and make 20 rolls of 135, making film is serious business. People have whined about disappearing technologies since technologies existed, film will go away, cars will go away, tv sets will go away, technology changes and the young people embrace and accept it.....EC

Antonov said:
Hm, some of you "attacked" me, maybe you got me wrong. So I will try explain again.
Making film is not rocket science, and even if it is, it is still simpler then lot of more complicated products - I mean, probably 90% of your electronic equipment is made in China. Why in the world would be a problem for them to make Kodachrome? Come on people. Don't make it sound impossible.
As for Kodak, well my point is clear. Instead of them to focus on what they know, and what is their specialty, they are investing who knows how many millions of dollars in those cheap cameras and that sort of stuff.
Fuji is my idol. Why? Because they managed to make balance with digital and analog part. They produce high quality digital products but also high quality analog products - who else produces 6x9 rangefinders these days?! You think Kodak can afford that? Nope. Why? Because of their marketing strategy.
PE, I really appreciate you and your work on this forum, and you gave to analog photography really much, so please, please don't get me wrong - that Kodak advertisment is, well to say at least, pathetic. You cannot market your flagship product like that. Marketing Kodachrome would need to include something like "you remember all those famous color photos from Time, NG, etc. - we made it with Kodachrome!" or "have you ever wondered how is it possible to see so perfectly clear color images 80 years ago - we know - Kodachrome!" or something similar, you got the point.
I would like to make one thing clear also. Someone asked why didn't Chinese started to make Kodachrome - I will tell you - because no one told them to do so. Be sure, that if some of those companies ( Lucky or Shanghai ) would get couple of thousands of emails, that you have big possibility to do something. They will not make something that they don't know of. But if you point them, they will make it. I know some people, local salesmen, who are getting their stuff in China. And you know how? They went to China and said "I want this and that in this size and that, make me 1000 pieces", they paid it, and in month with container they got what they wanted. No one in China produces it ( why would it, it is local figure for only this part of the world ), but they told them and payed them, and they got what they needed.
Also, considering Shanghai GP3 films I have 10 rolls, waiting them to be used and looking at this group http://www.flickr.com/groups/shanghai_film/ I really like results, it reminds me on T-Max. So I really don't know why are you saying that these films are lousy. Oh, have I said, that 10 rolls are 21.65$ with delivery, so I don't understand these remarks about expensive shipping.
Please, don't get me wrong anyone here, I'm just saying that it is possible.

railwayman3 · Jan 9, 2011

2F/2F said:
Well, I am not biased for Ektachrome or Fujichrome. I use both (though more Ektachrome now, and more Fujichrome in the past). I was just messing with Steve, mainly.

No problem....I'm also in a bit of a mischevious and winding-up mood today, letting off steam at the end of a silly week of unreasonable people demanding things yesterday, then no thanks when you do put yourself out. We all get it, I guess.

Kodachrome in China?

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