New Kodachrome lab?

[CRhymer]

Hello,

Ron has put it rather succinctly. Most folks have no idea what drives film/paper demand, and there is no lack of conspiracy theories and hate Kodak, etc. posts (not that EK has not made a lot of goofs over these many years). However, if a buying group could be assembled, with cash up front, Kodak may just accommodate them.

The movie industry is driving the demand for film stock. When that goes, and it will, at some point, things will be pretty thin on the ground. The history of photographic processes, in this case Kodachrome vs Ektachrome and analogs, is a valuable pursuit, but is pretty much irrelevant to the situation at hand. While bemoaning the loss of Kodachrome, we are missing the fact that all of E-6 is short dated (figuratively) as well. Yes, many will theorize about this and that, but the fact is, the labs are disappearing. Even if one believes that Kodak is perversely gutting the product line, why are the independent labs shutting down? The chemicals are still available and the film is still available. People are just not using it enough - full stop, neither amateurs nor professionals.

This is not doom and gloom. Well, it sort of is, but it means we have to find other ways to make colour and monochrome negatives, transparencies, prints, etc. This is the future. There are a number of ways to get there. Let’s get to work.

Cheers,
Clarence

 

[Photo Engineer]

Thanks Clarence.

There is one more thing that I must remind you of. If you do get Kodak to make a master roll of LF and ULF film, or if you get them to make 120 film, you have to find a lab to process it. All of the machines for these sizes have been scrapped AFAIK.

PE

 

[AutumnJazz]

So I'll pretty much never be able to use Kodachrome when I eventually climb the format ladder?

That sucks.

 

[accozzaglia]

Autumn Jazz: Kodachrome was previously manufactured for 120 format through sometime in the 1990s. I have three rolls in the freezer, still sealed. They likely will never get shot, as no lab will dip-and-dunk a batch for processing. I believe PE has noted in the past that it's technically doable if a lab is really dedicated to it, but the sheer upstart obstacles make such a line impractical to impossible.

CRhymer: It's quite intriguing to hear that you can still walk into your local store and find current KR64 36exp just there as if it's another day. I always keep my eyes open here in the GTA, but I never see any flukes like that (such as at independent pharmacies, corner grocery stores, and the occasional independent camera shop remaining). It would be fun just for the sake of it. In lieu of Kodachrome, I am still quite loyal to E-6 emulsions, as it's the only colour I shoot with my Pentax 645. I have a few Fuji NPC160 220 rolls in the freezer, but I've never shot them. I guess I was thinking I might be called upon one day by friends to do a wedding of theirs. But as C-41 goes, I've tended to avoid it entirely for a number of reasons, aesthetics being one of them. If it ends up that E-6 and K-14 are both no longer processed due to chemicals no longer being produced, I might end up just staying exclusively b/w as long as the Ilfords and the Efkes and the Rolleis are still being made. And I guess Acros, too.

Kevin: Several medium format film cameras are still being made, including the Pentax 645NII. Others, like Hasselblad, do offer non-analogue film backs (or at least support them by third parties), but there is still a market for their film bodies. And I seem to recall that Mamiya is still committed to 645. I've not considered 6x7 and 6x9 systems, but perhaps someone else can verify whether these too are still being sold. And I suppose one could toss in Holga, too, if one likes shooting with a plastic lens.

With regard to Wal-Mart in Canada, it would assume that Wal-Mart Canada have an arrangement with Fuji Canada, which is a separate corporate branch of Fujifilm. I'm not sure (or else it isn't clear) there is one. While Shoppers and London Drugs do (which I haven't looked into Rexall or its other brand holding, PharmaPlus), I don't know about the Costcos we have here. If I had "throwaway" rolls of Kodachrome to experiment with sending off (without worry that they'd be lost or, more moronically, processed in the wrong chemicals), I'd chance it. But I don't, and based on what I've found, I'll go with certainty over doubt. Time's too limited to be "trying" out questionable routes of processing cheaply (e.g., the gamble of just tossing a roll at Wal-Mart Canada and hoping for the best, not unlike sending a message in a bottle).

* * *

Last thought: now that I can shoot Kodachrome and know how and where to get it processed, I am. I wish I'd known about this a decade ago when I first picked up a film camera. I love its colours, and while I use E-6 for certain applications (and entirely for MF), there's a little reminder in me that when I load a KR64 rolls into my Nikon, the emphasis in one isolating subjects with distinctive colours -- particularly synthetic ones -- and light colour temperature variations within a single frame. I'm thinking that shooting a night neon sign series could be fun. Like Kodachrome, vintage (and creative) neon signs seem to be endangered and nearing extinction.

-Astrid

 

[kevinbell]

Neon Signs

Yeah I photographed two neon signs in Myrtle Beach at night. I did the Krispey Kreme Doughnuts sign and a local breakfast restaurant "Dino's". They came out great on ektachrome. I could not for the life of me read my meter it was so dark. Luckily the AE-1 has one LED for the underexposure warning. I kept turning that shutter speed dial and figured "oh crap it's going to be so low I can't shoot this because I have no tripod with me (we had run out to get doughnuts). I got out of our Chrysler Town and Country and stood up and braced the camera on the roof of the van. I braced myself real well and the camera and took the shot on exhale. I think it was on a slow 1/30 or 1/15 speed. It was slow and I was afraid of shake. I just took the two signs and thought "well maybe?". I got them back and dang if they didn't come out looking great and in good focus. I'm 34 but it was dark and it's just hard to see in those viewfinders like that and get focus right and all at night, at least for me. Anyway they both came out great and you can also see the road pretty well and the signs lit across the road at other businesses. I don't know how Kodachrome would have done with those signs but this Ektachrome did pretty good. One more thing while I have the floor. To let you know how good Fuji holds up let me tell you this. I once bought one roll of Sensia 100 in a local camera store when I was out of town. Well they had it reduced cause it was out of date. I've shot out of date and it works fine. Well this particular roll I let sit in the camera bag and forgot about it. It sat nearly a year and it was out of date when I bought it. I decided to take it out and try shooting with it. I did. Now the second thing was stupid but I did it! I left the damn roll in the car in 95 degree weather. I did it by mistake, just forgot. I thought "oh damn it's ruined now". Well with Walmart if something doesnt come out the way you like you don't have to pay for it, you can dump it. Well I sent it off and those slides came back some of the most colorful ones I have! Believe it or not and i've used outdated film before which hasn't been stored in "ideal" situations and it still worked fine. It's surprising that after being in a car with 95 degree weather all day that they still came out but they did! I guess thats an award to give to E-6! Ha!

-Kevin

 

[AutumnJazz]

accozza, PM kodachrome64. Apparently he processes his Kodachrome himself, maybe he could process your 120 for you?

He still hasn't posted details about it, as far as I can tell.

 

[kodachrome64]

accozza, PM kodachrome64. Apparently he processes his Kodachrome himself, maybe he could process your 120 for you?

He still hasn't posted details about it, as far as I can tell.

Sorry, the "home K-14 kit" was a joke ;-)

I'm sure someone could pull it off if they really wanted to, but I don't know of anyone who ever has.

Nick

 

[Photo Engineer]

I have seen Kodachrome processed in small 1 liter graduate cylinders in a bath of water that kept the chemicals at the right temperature. The only hitches were in removing the rem-jet and re-exposing the film to 2 colors properly.

We used 35mm racks to hold the film in 12" strips, but longer could have been done simply by placing the film on the rack in a loop. Film tanks could also be used, with the film being removed from the reel for re-exposure under water. This is quite easy to do and was the norm back in the early days of Ektachrome.

PE

 

[CRhymer]

....CRhymer: It's quite intriguing to hear that you can still walk into your local store and find current KR64 36exp just there as if it's another day. I always keep my eyes open here in the GTA, but I never see any flukes like that (such as at independent pharmacies, corner grocery stores, and the occasional independent camera shop remaining). ......If it ends up that E-6 and K-14 are both no longer processed due to chemicals no longer being produced, I might end up just staying exclusively b/w ....

-Astrid

Hello Astrid,

Well, it was a bit of a fluke. I had been looking to ship my Kodachrome south. I have relatives in Winnipeg, and had used Shoppers send out service when visiting. Then, I noticed some K64 on the local drug store shelf. This is a very small place and everyone knows everyone. The drug store owners are friends, so I asked if they could send it out for processing, since they already send out 35mm C-41. There is no mini lab within a 6 hour drive. There was one here about 10 years ago, but it could not be sustained on local business. So, the owner made a phone call and the rest is history - and may soon actually be history. At any rate, their house brands are Rexall. I suspect that most local/community drugstores would have no interest in this, since there are so many mini-labs in the larger Canadian centres (Shoppers, London, Walmart, etc.)

I did a lot of research to find a solution right in my back yard. It is only cost effective because I would have to ship both ways myself, and Canada Post is a bit dear from here.

Actually E-6 and C-41 chemistry can be mixed from scratch at home, but I doubt if many do that now, or would start once the commercial ones are gone. Also, a couple of ingredients may become more difficult to get/ship. Theoretically, so can K-14, but buying and storing the chems is even more of a problem. I believe PE has more or less covered all this in some other threads.

B&W is a different story. There are many things that can be made at home from readily available (except for hazmat, etc.) materials. I suspect, that even though a lot of people mix their own from scratch, especially for non-standard retail items, most people still buy Kodak, Ilford, etc off the shelf. It is just so convenient.

I do all my own E-6 with Kodak kits. It works quite well.

Cheers,
Clarence

 

[Photo Engineer]

Ahhh, yes, mixing Kodachrome chemistry from scratch. That is a really tough job with so many ingredients to contend with. And, the couplers are very hard to come by and expensive. I should have mentioned that.

PE

 

[kodachrome64]

Could one even get the K-14 chemicals? I've seen it mentioned that "availability of chemicals" would be a problem, but is it even possible? I doubt they are on a website anywhere...

 

[Photo Engineer]

Kodak sells cubitainers of Kodachrome chemistry for processing machines, and they sell do-it-yourself chemistry to mix the solutions. The kits include the developers, couplers and proper solvents. The formulas are disclosed in the Kodachrome patent posted elsewhere on APUG.

PE

 

[kodachrome64]

So I just need to hijack one of these shipments...then snag that K-Lab they have over there at Rocky Mountain, and I'll be in business!

 

[AutumnJazz]

I don't even want to know how much that K-Lab would go for.

Ah, well, one could always win the lottery, get it, get the chemicals, and then bother PE until he told one how to use it.

 

[kodachrome64]

I don't even want to know how much that K-Lab would go for.

Ah, well, one could always win the lottery, get it, get the chemicals, and then bother PE until he told one how to use it.

Sounds like a plan!

I think I saw a K-Lab for sale somewhere for about $40K USD. Man I sooo want one! Reading this gives me K-Lab acquisition syndrome! It's so mean for them to even have it on the website. :rolleyes:

Nick

 

[Aurum]

Sounds like a plan!

I think I saw a K-Lab for sale somewhere for about $40K USD. Man I sooo want one! Reading this gives me K-Lab acquisition syndrome! It's so mean for them to even have it on the website. :rolleyes:

Nick

Keep filling in the lottery tickets

 

[accozzaglia]

Well, the PKR64 120 rolls are not yet shot. If/when they are shot is dependent on the possibility/probability of finding a way to process them. I'm of course an optimist here, but I'm sure I've a few years left of keeping my ear to the ground on any hopeful leads before the cosmic rays do their thing. the film is packaged in the Kodak-yellow wrappers but lacked expiry dates. I sense that I have stock from the early-mid '90s. I recall another APUG member a few months ago down in Australia contemplating setting up a K-lab with the express interest of processing medium format. Again, due to cost and freshness volatility of the chemicals -- to say nothing of calibration testing -- this would be a tall order to fill.

CRhymer: Anytime I run into someplace random here, I always scope out the shelves to see if by fluke or dumb luck a couple of rolls of KR64 are stocked. In a city the size of, well, Hogtown, one'd think that some mom-n-pop shop might have ordered a batch. For now, the best route for me to do is eBay bulk buying followed by Shoppers or Black's. I could also keep Rexall/Pharma Plus in mind, but it all comes down to pricing (and getting to know your friendly local lab tech on a first name basis, as I have with mine at Shoppers!).

Also, I should add that I can only imagine the higher costs of Canada Post in the NWT! On one upswing, you're living in a region that disproportionately few people will ever get to experience. One of these days, I must go there, the Yukon, or Nunavut -- if not for the midnight daylight and aurora borealis, then a reality check to remind myself (and to tell others here) that Toronto winters really aren't that bad. I've even learnt a bit of Inuktitut, thus giving me a chance to dust off what I remember.

 

[kevinbell]

Kodachrome & Ektachrome and the Glory Days

I'd like to get a little personal on how I feel about who I am as a photographer. I've always been "into" it since I was a little kid in the late 70's and had an instamatic. My father had the phototography "bug" back in the mid to late 60's and through the 70's. He and my mom just always had basic instamatics and nothing special really. They had used the Kodak Instamatic 104 126 format camera and the Kodak M22 super 8mm movie camera. The thing is by the time I got "old enough" to understand it well enough to shoot on something decent my dad had got busy with other things. I used to look at catalogs as a kid and teen in the 1980's and always wished for an SLR system but that never happened. I didn't get anything nice until the 2000's and it was used. Then I got my first "real" camera that was "brand new" .....you know "my" camera which is my Olympus E-500 in 2007. I wanted a Canon but the Oly was what I could afford. My point is though i'm an analog guy and few understand me. I recently went back to school to get a degree in another field (radio and tv broadcasting) and took some photography courses. They had totally scrapped the dark room and went all digital, hence me buying the Oly. That really depressed me as I had hoped to learn dark room after all these years! I want to learn classic B&W but really for myself more on how to develop E-6 myself. A college across town offered a full photography program and they still have their dark room stuff but I wanted to major broadcasting so I stayed at my college. I just wished they hadn't junked their darkroom. At my college they continually made fun of me and thought I was dumb because i'd rather carry around a 32 year old AE-1 (yes it's an original 1976, I checked the date code and its a low serial number) with film than I did the digital. It's just who I am. I'm 34 and not old but I tend to lean towards the days of kodak slides, analog tape, etc. It's just what I grew up knowing. We didn't run out and get the newest thing all the time, we never had the money. Guys all the time I look at those old cameras, vintage film, vintage camera and film ad's and things on ebay. I also look at old slides people made back in the 60's and 70s and think to myself what a wondeful time it must have been to live through that era. All the choices in Kodachrome and Ektachrome Kodak offered back in those days. Yes the new stuff is probably better now but theres few choices. All cameras look like toys to me these days. I put that old Canon up against my modern digital SLR and that new one looks like a toy compared to my old cameras. It's depressing for someone who loves the old stuff to hear these stories that film will die and companies slashing product lines. I'd love to feel what it must have felt like in say 1971 to carry a brand spanking new Canon Ftb out to somewhere like Yellowstone National Park and take some Kodachrome 25 slides. It could be anywhere back in those days. My point is digital and this "new fangled" stuff just doesn't appeal to me. I like the way film looks, I love the way it feels to load a camera, I love the way the shutter sounds, and I really love the way it feels to load up carousels with new slides and give slide shows. Those of you guys that lived the 60's and 70's with all the fancy cameras and film truly had something special. I find it always interesting to talk to folks like that and hear about their stories of the country back then and of course the stories and slides from guys that served in Vietnam. Seems like a lot of guys bought nice cameras during that war overseas. At any rate this is a rambling post but it was full of emotion on how I feel about film, cameras, and slides and the glory days that I missed. I'm just glad that now I have some old cameras and am able to shoot some slides. I just wonder how long they'll be around. I think for me going to all digital would just extinguish something inside me and I don't know that i'd look at the hobby the same. To me these days it looks as though Kodak is more consumer oriented and less professional oriented as they used to be. I have yet to see a "pro" digital camera or even SLR offering of theirs! ) I guess they never really had a "pro" camera but at least they used to offer a fine selection of film. It appears that Fuji has more choices than Kodak these days. One last thing. I hope some of you guys that lived the era I was talking about do respond, would love to hear some of your stories of kodachrome/ektachrome and the old days. Another thing....has anyone used Elite Chrome and how does it compare to Ektachrome? I can't tell much difference in fact Kodak now calls Elite Chrome "Professional" which is odd. I ordered a roll and it said "Professional" on the side of it. Ok i'm done rambling a while! Stories stories!!

-Kevin

 

[kevinbell]

story

dang I didnt know it was that long! hope no one thought it was a "dumb" post.

-Kevin

 

[kevinbell]

Ektachrome equivalent

Since we have this thread running. Which Ektachrome is all over the closest to Kodachrome? I know it's differnt but which Ekta renders the image the closest to Kodachrome? I know that sone mentioned that Ektachrome is as stable now as Kodachrome, just wondered which was closest? I'm guessing Ektachrome 64?

 

[dmr]

My guess that either Fuji Astia or Sensia would be closer to the color "look and feel" of Kodachrome than any of the current Ekta/Elitechrome films.

However, not exactly, and others may disagree.

 

[Soeren]

My guess that either Fuji Astia or Sensia would be closer to the color "look and feel" of Kodachrome than any of the current Ekta/Elitechrome films.

However, not exactly, and others may disagree.

Yep
I remember Kodachrome colors as quite saturated whereas Sensia and Astia are more subtle/neutral. but then again its been a long time since I last shot kodachrome and my favourite slidefilm today is Elitechrome 100 EC
(much better than Ektachrome 100 VS)
Kind regards

 

[kevinbell]

Sensia and Ekta

Yeah I definitely would not agree with Sensia being like Kodachrome. Sensia is way too cool for my tastes. In a direct comparison i've been able to get much better color with Ekta and Elite than I have Sensia. Don't get me wrong i've done some good stuff with Sensia 100 BUT it's not as saturated or "warm" as my recent batch of Ektachrome. Ektachrome really does well at the beach in the bright sun. It does well indoors with flash as well although a couple of mine from the beach came back a lil underexposed! ( I tell you what it was, it was my Canon 177A flash, I figured out halfway through the trip that the batteries were weak. I quickly dropped by walmart for some fresh batteries and problem solved. Good thing I noticed it quick and didn't take many indoor shots. The flash was flashing but it was weak. Now it's bright. Now back to Sensia. With Sensia I can NEVER get indoors right. It always overexposes for some reason with the Canon 177A flash. I know because i've even set the camera to full program and it still did it. It just washes peoples faces out. Reminds me of the way digital sometimes blows out the whites too much.

-Kevin

 

[Photo Engineer]

dang I didnt know it was that long! hope no one thought it was a "dumb" post.

-Kevin

Kevin;

It was not 'dumb'. (your word choice, not mine)

However, I would like to point out that Kodak made the very first professional digital SLR and the first full frame sensor. In fact, much of the technology in use today in digital is Kodak or Kodak inspired.

In any event, being first was not being best or least expensive. The original Kodak DSLR ran about $25,000 and was first used at the Olympic games in Atlanta. IBM set up an OS/2 server to handle the transmission of the digital images. But, Kodak died in the market. Too expensive and too slow to save pictures among other things.

They had two bodies. One was built on a Nikon frame and the other was built on a Canon frame.

Kodachrome gets its unique dyes by having a very unique dye set, but with this dye set it is very difficult to get a good neutral. Neutrals tend to be either magenta or cyan.

PE

 

[kevinbell]

Another related question

Is there any difference in processing Ektachrome in Fuji Chemicals or vice versa? I know Fuji and Ektachrome are both E-6 but is there any difference? Benefit? Drawbacks for not using Kodak Chemicals or is it all exact same? In other words I wonder if one companies chemicals are richer/leaner than the others??

-Kevin