Kodak ‘Investigating What it Would Take’ to Bring Back Kodachrome

markjwyatt · May 2, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
What would it take to bring Kodachrome back?

All of the following together at once at the same time simultaneously:

The parting of the Red Sea.
Return of the gold standard.
Politicians becoming honest.
The second coming.
A massive earthquake separating California from the mainland.
The end of cell phone use including digital imaging.
The reversal of Climate Change.
Wars end and be wiped out for ever.
Internet only containing verifiable facts.
Everybody coming together and loving each other.
End to hunger.
And most important: People stop asking for Kodachrome to come back!

The parting of the Red Sea- if global warming is true, it is possible
Return of the gold standard- Russia just did it.
Politicians becoming honest- got me on that one.
The second coming- it will happen. Be vigilant.
A massive earthquake separating California from the mainland- many are praying for it
The end of cell phone use including digital imaging- EMP event from N. Korea still possible
The reversal of Climate Change- Quite possible
Wars end and be wiped out for ever- a few nukes could accomplish that, and would create the EMP needed for the end of cell/digital usage. But then Kodachrome would be pretty low on the totem pole.
Internet only containing verifiable facts- All facts on the internet are verifiable (on the internet). Check it out on the net.
Everybody coming together and loving each other- with the exception of Democrats and Repuplicans, this could happen.
End to hunger- eating stops hunger
And most important: People stop asking for Kodachrome to come back! More likely than "Politicians becoming honest"

flavio81 · May 3, 2022

Only 29 pages? Photrio can do better. APUG had a "Bring back Kodachrome" thread of over 100 pages if i recall correctly, if not more.

It was also very, very silly.

As is believing that the real Kodachrome will be resurrected by Kodak. The most likely thing to happen is Kodak repackaging Gold 200 as

Kodak Professional
Kodachrome 200
Film for color prints

Sirius Glass · May 3, 2022

flavio81 said:
Only 29 pages? Photrio can do better. APUG had a "Bring back Kodachrome" thread of over 100 pages if i recall correctly, if not more.

It was also very, very silly.

As is believing that the real Kodachrome will be resurrected by Kodak. The most likely thing to happen is Kodak repackaging Gold 200 as

Kodak Professional
Kodachrome 200
Film for color prints

The dreaded Kodachrome has been Deleted! thread went on for over 3,500 posts before it died out. This dreadful thread unfortunately has just gotten started, but deep in ever poster's heart they know that they are just farting into the wind accomplishing merely a waste of bandwidth and their desire is just doomed.

Cholentpot · May 3, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
The dreaded Kodachrome has been Deleted! thread went on for over 3,500 posts before it died out. This dreadful thread unfortunately has just gotten started, but deep in ever poster's heart they know that they are just farting into the wind accomplishing merely a waste of bandwidth and their desire is just doomed.

Shame as it was. That was a living historical thread. Should have left it alone.

Sirius Glass · May 3, 2022

Cholentpot said:
Shame as it was. That was a living historical thread. Should have left it alone.

It is alone, just crying in its beer. BTW not the exact title, just to give you something to keep you busy.

flavio81 · May 3, 2022

Cholentpot said:
Shame as it was. That was a living historical thread. Should have left it alone.

It should be pinned, in its locked state, so nobody starts another silly one

Moderators, take note.

Cholentpot · May 3, 2022

flavio81 said:
It should be pinned, in its locked state, so nobody starts another silly one

Moderators, take note.

Cut off one head...

Might as well corral all the Kodachrome into one place.

Sirius Glass · May 3, 2022

Closing this thread would make the world a better place to live for the rest of us who realize the Kodachrome will never come back.

mshchem · May 3, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Closing this thread would make the world a better place to live for the rest of us who realize the Kodachrome will never come back.

So You are saying we can expect Kodachrome in 120 in time for Christmas? Sweet! I also expect Adox is using Color Mission as cover for New Cibachrome!

Can't wait !

Sirius Glass · May 3, 2022

mshchem said:
So You are saying we can expect Kodachrome in 120 in time for Christmas? Sweet! I also expect Adox is using Color Mission as cover for New Cibachrome!

Can't wait !

Shame on you! You forgot HIE and Panatomic X.

mshchem · May 3, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
Shame on you! You forgot HIE and Panatomic X.

Oh Panatomic X is in all the new disposable cameras labeled as Fuji 400. Worse thing about HIE is I can't use my IR goggles.

jnamia · May 3, 2022

what a waste of research time and money. Kodachrome™ look can be achieved easily with any color film with a heavy cyan cast no one really cares about Kodachrome film. maybe Sinopromise or LOMO can make a cheap Chinese knockoff that says Kodachrome™ .. it will look and act like same thing except it will be better because it won't cost 300dollars a roll to process.

grat · May 3, 2022

Somewhere, George Mann's head just exploded.

While I don't think Kodachrome is coming back, and it certainly won't be a K anything process if it does, that's just epic level trolling.

cmacd123 · May 3, 2022

jnamia said:
maybe Sinopromise or LOMO can make a cheap Chinese knockoff that says Kodachrome™ .. it will look and act like same thing

maybe the next product from the new incarnation of ORWO., the return ofmonopack Technicolor, with movie printing service with dye transfer matrices. NOT

Helge · May 4, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
What would it take to bring Kodachrome back?

All of the following together at once at the same time simultaneously:

The parting of the Red Sea.
Return of the gold standard.
Politicians becoming honest.
The second coming.
A massive earthquake separating California from the mainland.
The end of cell phone use including digital imaging.
The reversal of Climate Change.
Wars end and be wiped out for ever.
Internet only containing verifiable facts.
Everybody coming together and loving each other.
End to hunger.
And most important: People stop asking for Kodachrome to come back!

Just ready availability of K14 processing or equivalent.

If you could make a highly automated and optimized version of Kodachrome processing, it might actually turn out to be a cheaper film overall than E6.

You would need to send off your film to a central location in your region of the world though.
And Kodak would definitely not run into monopolization accusations this time.

pentaxuser · May 4, 2022

The OP, farmersteve, opened this thread/can of worms and it was his only contribution to it He hasn't been seen since Nov 2020

To be fair he was only reporting a petapixel article and may have been thinking it was worth our perusal but became appalled at what he had innocently begun when it ran and ran and ran........ so left us

If any reference to Kodachrome making a comeback is left for a couple of years then any bets on how many pages the next one will last?

Actually it may be a way of checking on how many old stagers we have lost. When the response is only one response of "Koda what?" then that's when we know we have lost the last of the original APUGers

pentaxuser

Helge · May 4, 2022

The alternative would be to design a camera called "Kodachrome" or "Technicolor" or similar high profile, retro chic moniker, that would use a dichroic prism to split the colours onto B&W film.

Agulliver · May 4, 2022

jnamia said:
what a waste of research time and money. Kodachrome™ look can be achieved easily with any color film with a heavy cyan cast no one really cares about Kodachrome film. maybe Sinopromise or LOMO can make a cheap Chinese knockoff that says Kodachrome™ .. it will look and act like same thing except it will be better because it won't cost 300dollars a roll to process.

It's not that nobody cares about Kodachrome.....but some of us who do care also acknowledge that it's not coming back due to insurmountable obstacles including the K14 process. Those obstacles will remain insurmountable unless some huge lottery winner decides to be altruistic and lose their entire fortune on it, or the film market increases in size 100-fold.

pentaxuser · May 4, 2022

Agulliver said:
It's not that nobody cares about Kodachrome.....but some of us who do care also acknowledge that it's not coming back due to insurmountable obstacles including the K14 process. Those obstacles will remain insurmountable unless some huge lottery winner decides to be altruistic and lose their entire fortune on it, or the film market increases in size 100-fold.

Time to find out the number of Elon Musk, me thinks

jnamia · May 4, 2022

Hi Agulliver

Yea I know. poor word choice on my end maybe .., the obstacles are high, and like everything people get broke and bored ( and with inflation looming more broke ), so some poor do-gooder recreates the K14 process, pays $150,000+ for a custom roll of film to be sliced and diced and distributed with processing included to the community and it's more expensive than anyone can afford but they are still caring but not buying. As it is now a roll of fresh135format chrome 36 exp film and E6 processing together is something like 40-50$ a roll depending on the brand and lab who does it, im guessing maybe as a novelty one of these people who was cheering from the sidelines and excited and outspoken would buy 1 or 2 rolls for 100 bucks each including processing, but will they really keep buying it? I don't think so, from what I have seen photographers on the internet can be cheapskates ...they talk a lot about how they will do things or will buy stuff, and instead of putting their money with their mouth is, they just buy another Nikon or Leitz lens ... it's what they would rather do. the market probably won't sustain $100/roll, especially because there is no way it will be like the romantic memory of Kodachrome they used to shoot years ago, it will be a disappointment ... much like the new version of polaroid impossible film is nothing like what polaroid "used to be like". .. it's the same story over again .. so sure if LOMO or SINOPROMISE decides to market inexpensive E6 (or C41) film that says New Kodachrome™ that's probably the best, most cost effective and profit making situation. Heavy cyan cast and no one will care that it wasn't 100$ a roll except the people who will typically incessantly complain about LOMO or EK or FUJI or ORWA or (the rest of the film makers) ... like what happened with "galaxy photo" when they sold direct positive / reversal paper kits and people got all pissed off because they claimed "Ilford" was the real direct positive paper ( because it used regular developer?), and didn't care or realize that kodak had been selling a direct positive reversal kit labeled just that for tmx film for decades ( you can probably still get a kit for at the formulary ) .. if people have a reason to complain about stuff, they will, and then they'll move on to the next thing to complain about after they put the company out of business, maybe they'll complain about that, the company abandoning the community ... its just history rhyming. again and again ...

Helge · May 4, 2022

Thing is, Provia is a better film overall than Kodachrome ever was (even archivability is probably up there).
In fact, it's probably the best colour film ever made.
And it's available right now.
Go shoot it, instead of yearning for something that would probably become old hat to you after a few tries.

Cholentpot · May 4, 2022

Helge said:
Thing is, Provia is a better film overall than Kodachrome ever was (even archivability is probably up there).
In fact, it's probably the best colour film ever made.
And it's available right now.
Go shoot it, instead of yearning for something that would probably become old hat to you after a few tries.

Silly rabbit.

It's not about what's better. It hasn't been for decades when it comes to film. It's about what feels good and the nostalgia. Tmax-400 is a-ways better than Tri-X but people will die on that hill and claim Tri-X is the greatest ever. Even though it's not the same Tri-X as it was.

Tri-X is evocative, it's an emotional attachment. Brings back memories of the greats who used it.

jnamia · May 4, 2022

Cholentpot said:
Silly rabbit.

It's not about what's better. It hasn't been for decades when it comes to film. It's about what feels good and the nostalgia. Tmax-400 is a-ways better than Tri-X but people will die on that hill and claim Tri-X is the greatest ever. Even though it's not the same Tri-X as it was.

Tri-X is evocative, it's an emotional attachment. Brings back memories of the greats who used it.

is tmax400 better than tri x (400/320)? not sure what better means, it replaced a bunch of film, as did tmax100 ... not sure it's any better though

tri x 400/320 and tmy look like pretty much the same thing as far as I can tell, pretty much no difference except tri x might have and the ability to abuse it a little more ( alleged 7 stop latitude ) without going to mashed potatoes like tabular grained "wannabe Digital" films tend to do. im guessing if someone from, never mind the 1970s or 60s, but the 1980s or even the 1990s or early 2000s picked up a fresh roll of tri x thinking it was the same thing they "used to shoot" and did it for nostalgia sake they'd either return the film as damaged goods ( and get nowhere because it was "improved" when they weren't looking ) or have a cerebral episode because it's nothing like it used to be, it just has the name. like the complainers I mentioned above they'd probably be online anti-evangelizing and badmouthing kodak thinking people care, you know after they returned from the ICU, or like the guy in the diving bell and butterfly type their scathing commentary through an assistant. (it's not far fetched, I was in an iron lung for years and my assistant used to type all my internet posts, correspondence, and assist me with the camera and in the darkroom.) the closest thing to what it (tri x) used to be for nostalgia sake might be some Eastern European non tabular grain film, maybe Forte seeing it was the olde plant that uncle George used.

mshchem · May 4, 2022

ANSCOCHROME w accelerated Fading!!! Kinda Lomo baby!

Cholentpot · May 4, 2022

jnamia said:
is tmax400 better than tri x (400/320)? not sure what better means, it replaced a bunch of film, as did tmax100 ... not sure it's any better though

tri x 400/320 and tmy look like pretty much the same thing as far as I can tell, pretty much no difference except tri x might have and the ability to abuse it a little more ( alleged 7 stop latitude ) without going to mashed potatoes like tabular grained "wannabe Digital" films tend to do. im guessing if someone from, never mind the 1970s or 60s, but the 1980s or even the 1990s or early 2000s picked up a fresh roll of tri x thinking it was the same thing they "used to shoot" and did it for nostalgia sake they'd either return the film as damaged goods ( and get nowhere because it was "improved" when they weren't looking ) or have a cerebral episode because it's nothing like it used to be, it just has the name. like the complainers I mentioned above they'd probably be online anti-evangelizing and badmouthing kodak thinking people care, you know after they returned from the ICU, or like the guy in the diving bell and butterfly type their scathing commentary through an assistant. (it's not far fetched, I was in an iron lung for years and my assistant used to type all my internet posts, correspondence, and assist me with the camera and in the darkroom.) the closest thing to what it (tri x) used to be for nostalgia sake might be some Eastern European non tabular grain film, maybe Forte seeing it was the olde plant that uncle George used.

So you agree with me.

Kodak puts out Kodachrome 2k or some nonsense and it'll sell like hotcakes. A few greybeards will have aneurisms and everyone else will happily shoot Kodacrome2k and move on.

Kodak ‘Investigating What it Would Take’ to Bring Back Kodachrome

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