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

[Poisson Du Jour]

Cibachrome P-30 chemistry was highly corrosive. My understanding is that the bleach-fix was the issue. It needed to be neutralized before disposal.

That part is correct. The $43,000 EPA / Council permit (for the lab) for disposal of used IC chemicals ensured it was not a threat to the surrounding residential living environment (odours also had to be satisfactorily dealt with). It was carted off-premises after in-house treatment (aka "The PooMobile").

 

[BMbikerider]

I have a small scanning business where we market to seniors and their children to 'digitize' their heirloom transparencies. Scanning 40 year old Kodachrome slides is a joy. They look like they were made last week. The colour, the quality is fantastic. Especially when compared to 40 year old E6 type slides which are faded and thin.

I have just finished a job for an elderly friend of mine, scanning approximately 220 Kodachome slides all taken between 1967-1975. To be honest they were dreadful! Apart from the possibility that the person who took them was not very photographically saavy, so ignoring those with camera shake, or those that were over exposed or, under exposed, the number that were good enough to save on a memory stick without having to do a great deal of work on them was probably less than 50. There were a lot that had faded so badly over the years and blue had become the prominent colour cast, then there were a few that had distorted reds, so that peoples faces looked badly sunburned.

How long ago these were last looked at I have no idea, but they were all stored in the original yellow boxes which were then in the thin card outer box used when they were posted back. I have no reason to believe that they were stored anyway else differently.

Towards the end of Kodachrome around 2003 or so, I used 2-3 cassettes of Kodachrome 200 ISO film on a trip over to Europe. They had to be sent to the normal Kodak address in England and from there they were all sent over to Switzerland for processing. I think it was close on 3 weeks before they came back. The quality was appalling! All had a very prominent pink colour cast. On one cassette in particular there were no true blacks but no real clear areas either, so they were not over exposed. In all they were rubbish! If I had been asked my opinion, I would have said they had been exposed to a heat source prior to processing. I know the film was 200 ISO but the grain when the slides projected was almost akin to that of the long gone Kodak Infra red.

If it ever came back, I for one will never again use Kodachome.

 

[Arctic amateur]

Not pretending we'll see the return of Kodachrome. But the nuances of manufacture can't be impossibly arcane or impossibly difficult when Kodachrome and Agfacolor were being manufactured successfully in the 1930's (eighty years ago), in the days of airships, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler and Frankin Roosevelt, and before anyone now working at Kodak was born ! In the 1980's we had Kodachrome being made in matching quality in the US, UK and France, processed consistently in many countries, and with various quite presentable "copy-cat" products made in the UK (Ilford) and Japan and possibly USSR.

Not at all impossible, just uneconomical. Kodak doesn't have unlimited funds -- if they did, they wouldn't have gone bankrupt.

 

[Nzoomed]

I have just finished a job for an elderly friend of mine, scanning approximately 220 Kodachome slides all taken between 1967-1975. To be honest they were dreadful! Apart from the possibility that the person who took them was not very photographically saavy, so ignoring those with camera shake, or those that were over exposed or, under exposed, the number that were good enough to save on a memory stick without having to do a great deal of work on them was probably less than 50. There were a lot that had faded so badly over the years and blue had become the prominent colour cast, then there were a few that had distorted reds, so that peoples faces looked badly sunburned.

How long ago these were last looked at I have no idea, but they were all stored in the original yellow boxes which were then in the thin card outer box used when they were posted back. I have no reason to believe that they were stored anyway else differently.

Towards the end of Kodachrome around 2003 or so, I used 2-3 cassettes of Kodachrome 200 ISO film on a trip over to Europe. They had to be sent to the normal Kodak address in England and from there they were all sent over to Switzerland for processing. I think it was close on 3 weeks before they came back. The quality was appalling! All had a very prominent pink colour cast. On one cassette in particular there were no true blacks but no real clear areas either, so they were not over exposed. In all they were rubbish! If I had been asked my opinion, I would have said they had been exposed to a heat source prior to processing. I know the film was 200 ISO but the grain when the slides projected was almost akin to that of the long gone Kodak Infra red.

If it ever came back, I for one will never again use Kodachome.

I had only ever shot super8 kodachrome, but never had any problems, even with expired films of 20+ years old!

I had all mine go to the Switzerland lab and the processing was perfect.

My last batch of film went there in 2006 only a few years before they closed that lab down.

Never heard of Kodachrome fading, especially to blue.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Regarding the Ciba/Ilfochrome issue above, one of the main issues was the catalyst. The phenazines used were quite carcinogenic.

PE

 

[1L6E6VHF]

Kodachrome 200 was grainy indeed. Worse, it was what I would call "loud" grainy (perhaps PE could tell me the right term for it). The amplitude of the grain was high, as well as the size.

Kodachromes 25 and 64 were FAR less grainy. I only shot about 4 rolls of KL, vs. about 40 rolls of KM25 and 60 rolls of KR.

From my observation, Process K-11 Kodachromes had larger grains than Kodachrome II, just as Kodak said they did, but the smaller grain of Kodachrome II had more amplitude than that of K-11 Kodachrome.

Finished Kodachrome slides definitely faded toward the cyan if exposed to light for significant time. Ektachrome for heavy projection or display use, Kodachrome for long dark storage stability.

 

[Craig]

Cibachrome P-30 chemistry was highly corrosive. My understanding is that the bleach-fix was the issue. It needed to be neutralized before disposal.

Yes, but it was also designed that if you mixed the 3 spent chemicals together ( dev, fix and bleach) they neutralized each other.

 

[kb3lms]

At the Canadian Kodak lab where he worked, the norm was "processing included" but they certainly did see a fair amount of US film.

When I was a kid, my dad was "forced" to buy some 126 Kodachrome on a trip to Canada. (The place we were at didn't have any Ektachrome in stock.) Now, he didn't like Kodachrome because he had to wait longer for it. When we got home, he took about 40 126 cartridges into the camera shop he used to have all this Ektachrome and 1 cartridge of Kodachrome processed. The man in the store told him he had already paid for processing since it was Canadian Kodachrome and he should send it away in the mailer. No way dad was waiting for that so he had the shop send it to Fair Lawn, NJ. The man in the store gave me a new 126 cartridge of Kodachrome and told me to have fun with it, put it in the Canadian mailer and send it in. I got my slides back in about 10 days, so I guess they were perfectly happy with a US film in a Canadian mailer.

Jason

 

[Photo Engineer]

Yes, but it was also designed that if you mixed the 3 spent chemicals together ( dev, fix and bleach) they neutralized each other.

No, they had a separate neutralizer chemical that you had to use! Mine came in tablet form.

PE

 

[Craig]

No, they had a separate neutralizer chemical that you had to use! Mine came in tablet form.

Was that P30 or P3 chemistry? I still have some P30 kits and just looked at them. No seperate neutralizer. The P30/Cibachrome manual says that all 3 spent solutions when mixed together are nearly neutral and can be poured down the drain with no further treatment.

 

[MattKing]

When I was a kid, my dad was "forced" to buy some 126 Kodachrome on a trip to Canada. (The place we were at didn't have any Ektachrome in stock.) Now, he didn't like Kodachrome because he had to wait longer for it. When we got home, he took about 40 126 cartridges into the camera shop he used to have all this Ektachrome and 1 cartridge of Kodachrome processed. The man in the store told him he had already paid for processing since it was Canadian Kodachrome and he should send it away in the mailer. No way dad was waiting for that so he had the shop send it to Fair Lawn, NJ. The man in the store gave me a new 126 cartridge of Kodachrome and told me to have fun with it, put it in the Canadian mailer and send it in. I got my slides back in about 10 days, so I guess they were perfectly happy with a US film in a Canadian mailer.

Jason

The Canadian mailing envelopes were just convenience envelopes. If you put a non-process paid roll in them, you were supposed to get a bill for the processing. And if you sent a process paid Canadian roll to a Canadian lab in your own packaging, you were supposed to get your film back processed without charge.

I don't know what US Kodak labs were supposed to do with Canadian process paid film.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Was that P30 or P3 chemistry? I still have some P30 kits and just looked at them. No seperate neutralizer. The P30/Cibachrome manual says that all 3 spent solutions when mixed together are nearly neutral and can be poured down the drain with no further treatment.

There may be a change, but I have found that it would take a lot of developer to neutralize that bleach. Even with the fix. Do what they say.

However, this does not remove or neutralize the bleach catalyst.

PE

 

[Agulliver]

On the longevity of Kodachrome....in 1993 I inherited my late grandfather's entire output of 8mm films...a large box full of KII reels, mostly still on 50' spools with a handful edited onto 200' spools. 5 hours in total. I last projected it about 5 years ago, all shot 1967-73...all KII...and it looks like it was shot yesterday. It's not been especially carefully stored, in that cardboard box. Granddad died in 1973 and the films were stored in my uncle's attic for 20 years.

About 10 years later I inherited slides, cameras and negatives from a great aunt. There were Perutzchrome, Ektachrome and Kodachrome slides....maybe 400 in total. 200 K'chrome (KII and K14, she shot from the 60s into the late 80s) and the rest evenly split. The Perutzchrome have all faded such that I could only get B&W images from them. They are basically purple and white, but can yield reasonable images when copied or scanned. The Ektachromes are washed out on projection but can be scanned to produce reasonable colour images...for the most part...some project OK.....and the Kodachrome? Like it was shot yesterday. Every single frame.

My own experiences with K14 and E6 film are super 8 from the mid 80s until it's demise, and slides from the mid 80s onwards. Actually all my cine and slide films are in great shape, but I look after them well...always stored in their containers, in dark cupboards/drawers which are clean and not too close to heaters. But while only anecdotes...I do believe that Kodachrome keeps better than any other reversal film.

However, I thought that Kodak bods said something more like 'we investigated bringing Kodachrome back but decided on Ektachrome'....as in Ektachrome instead of Kodachrome.

 

[Agulliver]

Perhaps Kodak could also be in charge of a presidential ballot re-count too.
Or maybe bring the Olympics to Chicago.
APUG'rs, stop all this nonsense, this kooky-talk, Kodachrome ain't cummin back !!!

You are probably going to be proved right......but.....had someone told me just a month ago that Ektachrome would be coming back I would have called it crazy talk....and yet we will have it by the end of the year.

My strong gut feeling is that we will have Ektachrome rather than Kodachrome, and not both....and the only thing any of us can do if we want Kodachrome to come back, is to buy the Ektachrome when it's released. Show Big K that there's still a market for colour reversal film. Let them know we're delighted with Ektachrome and would be ecstatic if Kodachrome came back too....while not getting hopes up too high.

 

[RPC]

You are probably going to be proved right......but.....had someone told me just a month ago that Ektachrome would be coming back I would have called it crazy talk....and yet we will have it by the end of the year.

The difference is that the return of Ektachrome was unlikely, but not that unfeasable to do. The return of Kodachrome, as we have seen time and time again, is quite unfeasable.

 

[bvy]

I wonder how their investigation is going...

 

[cmacd123]

The Canadian mailing envelopes were just convenience envelopes. If you put a non-process paid roll in them, you were supposed to get a bill for the processing. And if you sent a process paid Canadian roll to a Canadian lab in your own packaging, you were supposed to get your film back processed without charge.
I don't know what US Kodak labs were supposed to do with Canadian process paid film.

presumably process and return it. BUT they may have not been looking for the pre-paid film. One uncle of mine was always having that problem, he worked for the CPR and so he was always visiting the states and having to buy US market film.

Place I worked after high school sold Grey market Kodachrome, but still had Kodak pickup service. One day a customer back from a trip sent a bunch of film and it all ended up in a batch that the lab had problems with. Images were off as far as colour. Kodak replaced the film with apologies, but metioned that they were doing so on behalf of "Kodak Limited, London, the manufacturer of the film" Softly thereafter our buyer came to visit and with the Kodak rep and informed us that we were no longer ordering from the Grey Market importer. Don't know if the timing was coincidence or not, but Kodak seems to have checked the status and origin of every roll.

When we did send US market film it came back with a two dollar and some odd charge for processing. and yes the instuctions were to take the film out of the mailers and put it into the kodak processing envelopes. but only the top tab of the envelope was returned with the film. Mind you if you sent movie film in the box, tehy did use teh box to return the film, otherwise it came in a slim box with "processed by Kodak"

 

[trondsi]

You are probably going to be proved right......but.....had someone told me just a month ago that Ektachrome would be coming back I would have called it crazy talk....and yet we will have it by the end of the year.

My strong gut feeling is that we will have Ektachrome rather than Kodachrome, and not both....and the only thing any of us can do if we want Kodachrome to come back, is to buy the Ektachrome when it's released. Show Big K that there's still a market for colour reversal film. Let them know we're delighted with Ektachrome and would be ecstatic if Kodachrome came back too....while not getting hopes up too high.

This exactly. I really like slide film so I will be sure to buy Ektachrome when it arrives. It sends a signal.

 

[Nzoomed]

This exactly. I really like slide film so I will be sure to buy Ektachrome when it arrives. It sends a signal.

I dont think I will be buying any other than a roll or two for testing until i can empty my pile of e100g in my freezer!

 

[Nzoomed]

The difference is that the return of Ektachrome was unlikely, but not that unfeasable to do. The return of Kodachrome, as we have seen time and time again, is quite unfeasable.

But Kodachrome is a less complex film to make than Ektachrome, only problem is that a processing lab is needed.

 

[pentaxuser]

I wonder how their investigation is going...

A good question and if reading APUG is part of it and they believe we are not unrepresentative of the film market then I could hazard a guess. It would not be anywhere this side of optimistic unless Kodachrome can be re-started easily and cheaply and be closed equally easily and cheaply

I suspect we have more chance of Kodak reducing the price of TMax 400 bulk rolls to match the opposition. Come to think of it, not a bad idea.

pentaxusers

 

[flavio81]

But Kodachrome is a less complex film to make than Ektachrome, only problem is that a processing lab is needed.

That's what I thought, but PE has stated K14 films are even harder to make.

 

[Photo Engineer]

K14 films are hard to make (coat) due to the extreme thinness of their layers.

PE

 

[wiltw]

Was that P30 or P3 chemistry? I still have some P30 kits and just looked at them. No seperate neutralizer. The P30/Cibachrome manual says that all 3 spent solutions when mixed together are nearly neutral and can be poured down the drain with no further treatment.

There was an evolution in chemistry. Way back when, the kit came with neutralizer chemicals that you added before disposing of the stuff. One guy wrote that at the time his darkroom still had metal drain pipes from the sinks, and "even with the neutralizer, it destroyed the pipes in very short order. Just ate through them. Nasty stuff."
Someone else wrote, " Ilford had to reformulate the P-30 chemistry. According to the B&H website they are using a modified version of the P-3. It doesn't use sulfuric acid. They call it kit 3.5 and/or P-3V. It isn't real clear."

Note that 'neutralization' refers to the inherently acid pH characteristic of the solution, and would not have something to do with rendering any carcinogens to be not hazardous to one's health...it only indicated that (in theory) the pipes were less likely to corrode.

P3 was the commercial processor chemistry, the AII was the amateur stuff back in the early 1980s, and the P30/P30P was the renamed chemistry intended for both amateur and commercial use.

Ilford published this comment about the P3 chemistry:

"NEUTRALIZATION Read the handling and safety procedures before working with liquid chemistry. Neutralization is accomplished by adding 16 ounces of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) for each gallon of used bleach. After the sodium bicarbonate is added the solution will fizz vigorously. Use a container at least twice the volume of the solutions to be neutralized. DO NOT cover the container."​

From old B&H information,
Ilford P3V (P-30) (Liquid) Kit for Ilfochrome Paper - 3.5 Liters
B&H # ILP3035LK MFR # 1137758

"Ilford Ilfochrome P3V (P-30) - Ilford is no longer able to produce powder chemistry since Mobberley stopped production. As a quick fix, they have introduced a Kit 3.5 (based on P3 chemistry used in professional labs). With the introduction of the new bottle (with child proofed caps), they will re-introduce a P30 kit in 2-litre size (planned with sulphuric acid but easy to convert to old acid)
"P30 or P30P chemistry used a different type of acid than P3. However, the ready to use solution contains more or less the same ingredients sulphamic acid + p-Toluenesulphonic acid or Sulfuric acid + 7K + Ludigol 100° + KI and Bleach accelerator
"The Bleach of the Kit 3.5 contains about 33% sulfuric acid, which is totally different from the point of view of hazard
"p-Toluenesulfonic acid is an organic compound as a white solid that is soluble in water, alcohols and other polar organic solvents; TsOH is a strong organic acid, about a million times stronger than benzoic acid; It is one of the few strong acids that is solid and, hence, conveniently weighed; Unlike some other strong acids, TsOH alone is non-oxidizing
"From Ilford's experience in developing P30, P3, P3X or P5 processor, the bleach temperature is the critical factor for metallic part corrosion; Therefore, Titanium was recommended for building equipment in contact with sulfuric acid as soon as the temperature exceeds 32°C. "​

 

[RPC]

But Kodachrome is a less complex film to make than Ektachrome, only problem is that a processing lab is needed.

Plus lots of demand and money to risk.