Kodachrome - Totally dead?

[MattKing]

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

I bought a bunch - from Dan!

 

[BradleyK]

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

I bought and shot around 150 rolls after that dark June day. Kodachrome was my exclusive color film for some 30-odd years. And while not happy to see its passing, I understood the reasons why. I (begrudgingly) accepted its end and have moved on. Would I like to see its resurrection? Of course. But I realize the return of Kodachrome is as about as likely as a pig laying eggs. Folks, lets put the thing to rest, stop dwelling on the past, load up with some of the current offerings from the folks at Ilford, Fuji, and Kodak...and go out there and shoot...

 

[falotico]

Autochromes are alive and well, only today we call them digital movies. I just saw "American Hustle" (screened via digital projector) and, like Autochromes, there wasn't a true red in the whole picture. Like many additive processes the entire palette was skewed towards the green; yellows were great, though. It was shot originally on film then transferred to a digital file--probably film neg direct to digital positive.

As far as how much "K" film I have bought, let me say this gently: that's the kind of argument that will cause people to hate Kodak products. If I like a cupcake it doesn't mean I have to raise an acre of wheat. EK failed to sell enough "K" film, not because of me, but because they failed to support the end use of the "K" film product. I can account for five different projectors; six cameras (two Zeiss, one Nikon, one Minalta, two Kodaks) as well as screens, splicers, film cleaning fluids and slide trays and viewers which were primarily dedicated to "K" film usage. How much do does EK want us to buy?


EK realized it could make more money by forcing the consumer to buy paper prints. It started to market film negatives aggressively. Now the roll of film in the camera, once it was developed, was effectively useless to ninety per cent of the end-users. She or he had to have it printed on paper and received an envelope full of snapshots. Some were completely messed up--at fifty cents a pop--and many of the rest looked like they had soaked all night in a cup of coffee. But the neg/pos system allowed much greater latitude and the image could be improved by various tweaking. EK never developed a paper print process which would do justice to a "K" film image--at least not at a comparable price. EK could sell all kinds of print film products: paper, chemicals and labs and force John Q. Public to print every frame. With "K" film you could pick and choose the photos that you liked, but it was very inconvenient to have them printed on paper. Besides, sometimes you only wanted to print one shot out of two rolls. Notice how much less money spent that represents.


The "K" reversal film had an appealing directness. The photographer alone was responsible for the final result. The image that you saw was the actual frame of film that was in the camera. The Zapruder film was in Dealey Plaza when JFK was shot; the flag raising footage was on Iwo Jima during the battle. I have heard that someone paid ten thousand dollars for a single "K" slide of Marilyn Monroe in Korea. We have forgotten all about the artifact quality of film--I guess because of all these digital photographs. When I see a digital photo I think of what Julia Child said about MacDonald's milkshakes, "I like them almost as much as if they were real".


All this talk about economics and the current EK products is missing the point. It's like the boy in high school who handed a cute girl a list of reasons why she should like him and not George. Don't tell me what I like. We're talking about four layers of emulsion and an anti-halation backing. The real problem is manufacturing the dye-couplers. We don't even know the name of the guy who was in charge of that business. It might be possible to make the thing pay. I would recommend tying it in with a paper print process. People always liked the "K" film image. Snapshots of that quality would have a real appeal.

 

[removed account4]

kodachrome isn't dead, i heard they were reviving it
not sure why people keep propagating the myth that
it is gone

i have a frog that sings too
[video=vimeo;46018110]http://vimeo.com/46018110[/video]

 

[PKM-25]

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

That would be a lot more profitable and viable than Kodachrome. John Sexton would be over the moon....

 

[Photo Engineer]

Falotico;

Your comments are based on an incorrect assumption.

Kodak did not "sell" the customer on prints. The customers that were polled did not like setting up a projector and a screen to view slides, or using a light table. They wanted to pass prints around. Simple as that. And it was easy to mix and match just by looking at a print rather than "squinting" at slides to pick the ones they wanted to project.

As for use in motion picture, the duping process for making prints was a real pain! And, the quality of the dupes was poor. SFX could not be easily handled on Kodachrome either. Also, making Kodachrome prints did not work at all well with K12 or K14 because exposure through an "opaque" base for re-exposure was not possible.

PE

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Kodak did not "sell" the customer on prints. The customers that were polled did not like setting up a projector and a screen to view slides, or using a light table. They wanted to pass prints around. Simple as that. And it was easy to mix and match just by looking at a print rather than "squinting" at slides to pick the ones they wanted to project.

Ron,

There were regional differences - the US/Canada consumer market preferred prints and Europe consumer market (in particular Germany) peferred slides.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Ron,

There were regional differences - the US/Canada consumer market preferred prints and Europe consumer market (in particular Germany) peferred slides.

And then it suddenly changed when Agfa got a masked color negative and a good paper to match. I remember when they came out with a color printer for this new system in about 1975 or thereabouts. That converted them to prints as well.

PE

 

[DREW WILEY]

I don't know if Kodachrome is really dead or not... thought I heard something rustling around in an old slide carousel the other night
... Or maybe we shouldn't have watched that haunted house DVD over the holiday...

 

[BrianShaw]

death rattle???

 

[removed account4]

death rattle???

ribbit

 

[sepiareverb]

At 34 pages, not dead apparently. Hopefully it will run out at 36.

 

[falotico]

It was ungracious to suggest that EK had any other motive than to optimize marketing of its product line. Of course there was no ill will against the "K" film. But the arguments keep switching. Sometimes it is that the capital investment to bring back the "K" film is too great; sometimes it's that current products produce a superior image; now it's that consumers preferred the paper print system. As H.L. Mencken said, “Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.”


I'm as big a fan of Dr. Hanson's integrated dye-coupler masks as the next guy. But if it's inconvenient to squint at a "K" film slide, NOBODY squints at a strip of brown-colored negative film. It doesn't mean anything to the average human being. The consumer is forced to buy paper prints to understand what the photographs look like.



It is argued that in consumer tests the public preferred the paper print system. The reasoning is fine as far as it goes. But in reality it was not a fair test. If you handed the consumer a "K" slide and a frame of color neg, the consumer would always prefer the slide. How is it fair to hand the consumer a paper print six inches wide and ask him or her to compare it to a color positive 35mm wide? A fair test would have been to hand the subject strips of developed color negs and the corresponding prints, and then hand him a box of "K" slides and the corresponding prints. If the prices were the same I bet that "K" film would make a good showing.


This focuses the argument on what I think is the real issue: EK never developed a process to make adequate paper prints of "K" film photographs at a competitive price. The technology does not exist. It might not even be possible using real photography. To paraphrase Dr. Hanson, the only thing that does not look good on Kodachrome film is a photograph of Kodachrome film.

The policy of EK changed when Dr. Hanson had his inspiration that dye-couplers could perform two functions in a film stock. He realized that they could form the final dye image of the print; and also, uncoupled, they could act as a mask to screen out contaminating light rays of the wrong color and thus increase the color contrast when printing. This gives considerable latitude to the lab in processing the final images.

But this changed the whole policy of EK. The company began to think it terms of making a print of the film that was in the camera. It opened up the opportunity of getting into color motion pictures. A camera neg could be edited into an interneg and several dupe negs could be made with no loss of quality. A thousand prints of a motion picture meant that EK could contract to process over 800,000 feet of MP film. A lucrative market opened up, and efforts to develop prints from "K" films were put on the back burner.

 

[ME Super]

At 34 pages, not dead apparently. Hopefully it will run out at 36.

No, I think it will go to 37 or 38, depending on whether a motor drive is being used or not.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

It is argued that in consumer tests the public preferred the paper print system. The reasoning is fine as far as it goes. But in reality it was not a fair test. If you handed the consumer a "K" slide and a frame of color neg, the consumer would always prefer the slide. How is it fair to hand the consumer a paper print six inches wide and ask him or her to compare it to a color positive 35mm wide? A fair test would have been to hand the subject strips of developed color negs and the corresponding prints, and then hand him a box of "K" slides and the corresponding prints. If the prices were the same I bet that "K" film would make a good showing.

My earlier comment about prints being more popular with consumers in the US/Canada and slides more popular with consumers in Europe (especially Germany) were based on the actual sales of sensitized goods. There was no such 'test' involved.

Ron gave one possible reason and price difference may be a second reason; however, there are many other possible reasons as well.

 

[brianmquinn]

No, I think it will go to 37 or 38, depending on whether a motor drive is being used or not.

Let's prey he is not using a half frame camera!

 

[Photo Engineer]

Falotico, Fred is right. The customer told Kodak. Kodak ran no test per se. Sales of projectors and screens went down and sales of prints went up, and this included prints from slides. They got direct prints from Ektachrome paper and Ciba / Ilfochrome or prints from color negative film.

Kodak forced nothing on them at all. Customers then began buying less and less reversal film due to digital, and not anything Kodak did. But, negative film sales continued to remain in the sustainable region. And today, prints are still being made in high quantity.

So, your entire argument falls apart.

As for European love of reversal film, Fred is also correct, but my earlier comment still holds. At a given point in time, the European customer base wanted prints as well and Kodak made loads of paper in France and England for that market. It was different than that made in the US, due to customer preference.

To paraphrase what you have quoted, it is hard to convince someone who does not want convinced and knows little of the actual subject from close personal experience.

PE

 

[PKM-25]

Doesn't he still have a warehouse-sized freezer full of Polymax?

He is getting down to the last of it, likes Ilford MG quite a bit. I'm pretty sure the 11x14 I bought from him last year in on Poly though...

 

[falotico]

Forgive me, I'm not sure which posts are from Fred. I will agree that the market chose paper prints over color positives on a transparent base. I regret that I have never seen an example of Kodachrome 400--perhaps some day I will. I am not arguing that we should invade Iraq here; my point was that there was no paper print process that was adequate to the "K" film. The Ektachrome prints always ran a little blue/green and the old ones did not have the most stable dyes. Cibachrome--Bela Gaspar's bleach-out chemistry--sleeps with the fishes. But it produced magnificent results; museum quality.

For the price, color neg film with dye-coupler masks produces the best paper prints by far. The quality and the convenience made it a staple for paper prints. Paper prints from the "K" film were too expensive and the quality suffered. EK innovations were geared to paper prints. Was there ever an Instamatic Camera for the "K" film? I honestly don't know.

My argument is that there was no technology which allowed the "K" film to compete in the paper print market. If there had been people would have been offered a set of prints along with their box of slides. It's unlikely that industry will produce that technology now, but who knows?

The quote from H. L. Mencken was presented merely because it seemed apt; I appreciate the experience and judgment shown by the posts in this thread.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

(I'm Fred).

For many years, Kodak offered 'Kodachrome' Prints on a plastic base. They were very durable and the color was quite good.

http://www.photoconservation.com/in...nts&catid=37:photographic-processes&Itemid=57

 

[Photo Engineer]

Falotico, you missed one of my earlier posts. Kodak did offer prints with Kodachrome on a reversal print material called Kotavachrome. It died out. It was very good with high dye stability, but was not wanted by the customer and was obsoleted by the K-12 process as well.

And, to revive the slide business in Europe, Kodak introduced Directacrhome which was compatible with the Ektaprint 3 negative paper print process. It only lasted a few years and was never sold in the US.

So, Kodak did a lot of work on trying to revive the slide > print business. Eventually, customers chose internegatives to make prints.

And, BTW, Kodak did make a dye bleach paper which was in R&D and was to be introduced Dec 8, 1941. Its trade name was to be Azochrome. The plans were cancelled for obvious reasons. I. G. Farben supplied many of the chemicals BTW.

PE

 

[ME Super]

For the price, color neg film with dye-coupler masks produces the best paper prints by far. The quality and the convenience made it a staple for paper prints. Paper prints from the "K" film were too expensive and the quality suffered. EK innovations were geared to paper prints. Was there ever an Instamatic Camera for the "K" film? I honestly don't know.

If it's prints your after, then there's no question, for analog processes masked negative onto paper makes the best paper prints. For reversal to print, we have the numeric process and the internegative method (IIRC, PE recommends using a film like Portra for the internegative). And yes, Kodak did make Kodachrome for the Instamatic cameras. I shot some in my youth. Actually shot some as late as 1991 or 1992 in an Instamatic camera. And when I was in high school in the late 80's, a friend of mine shot Kodachrome in 110 format.

 

[falotico]

Well, a lot of "K" film product out there and I will make a point to see as much of it as I can. Amazing that there was a "K" film Instamatic! Would love to see the shots!

Since it's quite apparent that there's no market for "K" film anymore and EK will not reintroduce the product, let's try and get EK to release more of the propitiatory information about Kodachrome and Kodachrome processing into the public domain. With the right structuring it is possible that EK could get a tax deduction. Some guy is rediscovering how Vermeer painted his paintings; making "K" film information available might inspire somebody.

 

[Rudeofus]

Since it's quite apparent that there's no market for "K" film anymore and EK will not reintroduce the product, let's try and get EK to release more of the propitiatory information about Kodachrome and Kodachrome processing into the public domain.

Yes, and we could even make them publish these secrets for every one to see! Like this one, and this one! And we should ask (there was a url link here which no longer exists) listed in these patents to offer us help here on APUG! And whenever he offers help with getting a K14 processing line going, we need to say that we are waaaay too busy doing more important things ....

 

[ME Super]

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.