Kodachrome - Totally dead?

Michael R 1974 said:

How about Polymax Fine Art FB? Can we get that back? Surely easier than Kodachrome. And I can process it myself.

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they'd have to buy back their paper plants in south america .. the ones they sold back in 2003 ...
unless they coat it all on washi paper and that way they could spool and cut sheets for paper negative shooters

The only paper plant owned by EK was at Harrow and is now under KA. Kodak Alaris does lease time on the Colorado machine for paper as well.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Here is a poll question!

How many of those posting here bought one or more rolls of Kodachrome in the year before it was cancelled. (Dan, you don't count! )

PE

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I bought 75 rolls of it, but only because I was traveling the country shooting the stuff for a book.

I've since received over 100 rolls for a B&W experiment for x-processing.

I would still not buy more now that I've discovered Velvia50... And Provia100f....

ME Super said:

Yes, and we need not worry about patent infringement because Kodak abandoned the k14 patent so anyone skilled in the art can duplicate the process without worrying about Kodak coming after them.

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One would not have to worry anyway, as patents loose their legal validity within 20 years.

Photo Engineer said:

Here is a poll question!

How many of those posting here bought one or more rolls of Kodachrome in the year before it was cancelled. (Dan, you don't count! )

PE

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So far, I have resisted the notion that I should post a reply in this thread, but why not. After the announcement I bought, used and had processed about 75 rolls. I miss this film, but it isn't the end of the world.

I guess I should have asked for the # used the year prior to the year of the announcement. It appears that quite a few were "panicked" into buying rolls in the last year even though they had not used it for decades.

All this shows us all how complex the market problems are in determining use short of having the actual sales figures.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

I guess I should have asked for the # used the year prior to the year of the announcement. It appears that quite a few were "panicked" into buying rolls in the last year even though they had not used it for decades.

All this shows us all how complex the market problems are in determining use short of having the actual sales figures.

PE

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2010 was the ONLY year I ever used Kodakchrome my entire life...

The dedication of "K" film patents into the public domain is evidence that EK is willing to surrender some proprietary knowledge relevant to the manufacture and processing of "K" film. There is some urgency in supplying an adequate means of processing "K" film because as of today there are latent images captured on "K" film which are fading away; some of these are of historical events. EK holds specific information of exposure times, solution composition, temperatures, and many other precise details which are necessary to produce a result commensurate with the quality advertised.


We don't even know the name of the person, man or woman, who was in charge of supplying labs with chemicals before 2010 when EK was still in the business of processing "K" film. Finding out from that person, or someone similarly situated, the recipes involved for particular varieties of "K" film; sources of chemicals; their prices; suitable substitutes; and competing processors who might be available if EK doesn't threaten them with litigation. I understand that the Soviet Union stole the "K" design and manufactured a similar product in the 1930s and 40s; (the USSR didn't respect US patent rights). Do they have labs?

All of this information is preserved in proprietary publications and writings currently unavailable from EK. When the company entered bankruptcy proceedings it was no longer obliged to honor contract duties, but instead had to obey orders from the Bankruptcy Court; then subsequently, it had to obey orders from the Bankruptcy Trustee. So it is a case of persuading the company, the court, or the trustee to make this information available for the purpose of rescuing photographs which might otherwise be lost forever. Again, this is a matter of some urgency. I am less concerned with manufacturing the film.


It is possible to develop a price model for batch processing suitable for these purposes. Then it is possible to start a non-profit organization for this purpose and solicit funds. How much will it cost? This is largely derived from proprietary information.


I was fascinated to learn that EK had developed a paper print system for "K" film based on bleaching out azo dyes. I have attached a couple of images of Marilyn Monroe which were taken in 1942 when she was 17 years old and went by the name of Norma Jean Baker. These paper prints are on Cibachrome and were made around 1990. The torso shot is about 80 per cent of the full image. The complete print measured 14 inches by 23 inches. The bleach-out process seems a good match for printing "K" films. The close up of the head indicates detail. I believe the original photos were 35mm in Kodachrome 25.

Falotico:

Kodak developed 2 early systems for making reversal prints. I was not clear enough I guess. They were both supplanted by Type R papers.

One was Kodachrome like, coated on paper and the other use Azo dyes. The Kodachrome type was sold openly for years until, I believe, the K12 process came out.

Kodak donated the patents, I think, to encourage Fuji and Konica to enter the Kodachrome K14 world. They did have work alike products for K12, but Kodak feared that they would drop out with K16 and so they made this move to encourage the Japanese to move as well. They did not! They stopped all K14 production and went to E6 films.

The engineer in charge of Kodachrome film production posts openly on Photo Net and has been interviewed for several productions on Kodachrome both film and DVD. You can probably ferret him out and contact him, but I do not feel free to give his name out here.

PE

I would not intrude on anyone's privacy, but I am grateful for all the interesting facts which are posted on APUG. I look forward to reading the posts on Photo Net!

So I gather it is hard to find examples of the Azo positives? Are any posted online? Also, am I right about the Marilyn originals, 35mm Kodachrome 25? ASA 12 was no longer sold in 1942, if I remember correctly.

Kodachrome prints, on plastic (not paper as I said above), were readily available in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Many Kodachrome orders were placed requesting prints and slides. The Azochrome was never openly sold. The only examples were in the Kodak archives AFAIK.

I know nothing about the Marilyn Monroe picture in color. I have seen an autographed B&W print, but that is all.

PE

100-year-old Kodachrome of George Eastman
by Joseph D’ Anunzio, September 2, 1914
Smithsonian National Museum of American History

"This color portrait of George Eastman, the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company... was taken by photographer Joseph D’ Anunzio on September 2, 1914, more than 20 years before Kodachrome film was introduced to the public. How is that possible?" —Tony Brooks, National Museum of American History

Ken

The name Kodachrome was used earlier. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome for:

"The first, commercially unsuccessful, Kodak product called Kodachrome was invented by John Capstaff. Capstaff, a former portrait photographer and physics and engineering student, had already worked on colour photography before he joined C.K. Mees and other former Wratten and Wainright employees in their move to Rochester in 1912 - 1913, after Eastman had bought that company to persuade Mees to come and work for him. Capstaff's Kodachrome film was a subtractive colour transparency that only used two colours: green and red. It combined two negatives, one exposed through a red filter, the other through a green filter. After processing, the silver images were bleached and the bleached part of the gelatin hardened. The negative exposed through the green filter was then dyed red-orange, the red exposed negative was dyed blue-green. The dyes would soak into the unhardened part of the gelatin, producing a positive image. They were then combined on a glass plate, producing a transparency. Capstaff's Kodachrome was made commercially available in 1915. It was also adapted for use as a movie film."

The Capstaff process used a split-beam camera to expose two matching photographic plates on glass, one sensitive to red light; one to blue/green. These were developed to negatives. Then the plates were bleached in a dichromate solution which caused the gelatin to harden in the areas where there was silver metal; in other words, where light had exposed the plate. The two plates were then completely dried and, once dry, plunged into a bath containing a dye (either red or blue/green) with an SO4 group. The dye would stain the unhardened gelatin but leave the hardened gelatin free of color. By this process a reversal of the image was obtained. The two plates were sandwiched together emulsion side next to emulsion side and then mounted in a case which illuminated them with an incandescent light bulb. This light source had a lot of yellow light and the extra yellow illumination made a more natural looking balance to the photos.

In the 1920s the effect of a dichromate bleached area of the silver metal emulsion not absorbing dye was sometimes called "the Kodachrome effect", although this usage disappeared once the full color film was put on the market in 1935. As a footnote, when Mannes an Godowsky invented chromogenic film, they had to dry the 1935 Kodachrome completely before they could process it with their depth bleach. By this depth bleach they could bleach either the green sensitive layer or the blue sensitive layer selectively. Modern Kodachrome used different colored lights to exposed the layers selectively for color development.

Mannes and Godowsky did not invent chromogenic film. They were the first to make a practical 3-layer film based on the idea of chromogenic image forming.

Thanks for spotting my mistake. I should have said "when Mannes and Godowsky invented THEIR chromogenic film." The seminal patent for dye couplers was by Fischer in 1912. Of course silver salts had been used to produce cyan "prussian blue" images before that.