Survey - Kodachrome Revival Price Point?

Ken Nadvornick said:

How funny. Last summer I attended a car show with a sizable contingent of Model As and a few Model Ts. I'm not a car enthusiast. But it was fun to see all of the beautifully restored examples.

The funny part is that I found out that some of those guys had already spent more on their Model As and Ts than they would have buying a Ferrari. I didn't understand it. But then, my understanding wasn't important to them. They saw it as the best money they had ever spent.

Go figure...



Ken

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There was a point to why I used that as an example. Yes, there are some who will pay anything for there passion. But if you were going to go to Ford and say 'here is a 500 signature petition asking you to reintroduce the model T and less then a tenth of us will actually buy one', you would get laughed out of the building.

Kodachrome is dead baby. It ain't coming back.

hoffy said:

Kodachrome is dead baby. It ain't coming back.

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Time will tell, won't it?



Ken

BradS said:

not interested in Kodachrome at any price (and, yeah, I have used it, both ASA25 and ASA64).

Would much rather see Ektachrome E100G made available in 4x5 again.

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Totally agree. I'd rather have a good choice of E6 films from Kodak and Fuji in all formats. The last Kodachrome I shot was in the early 1980's.

Ian

Ken Nadvornick said:

How funny. Last summer I attended a car show with a sizable contingent of Model As and a few Model Ts. I'm not a car enthusiast. But it was fun to see all of the beautifully restored examples.

The funny part is that I found out that some of those guys had already spent more on their Model As and Ts than they would have buying a Ferrari. I didn't understand it. But then, my understanding wasn't important to them. They saw it as the best money they had ever spent.

Go figure...



Ken

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When I was in high school, my neighbor across the street owned 30+ Model A's. Most were parts junkers, but he had 5 that he drove - a 2-door, 4-door (fancy as all get out), a rumble-seat coupe, a pickup, and a 1-ton truck. He had one battery. His yard was fascinating and included a '67 Impala, a '53 Packard Clipper straight 8 with a cracked block sitting up on blocks, a '59 Chevy Apache and a '53 F100 that made me drool. I got to drive the 2-door after hundreds of hours of holding tools and lighting Pall Malls so the smoke could drift up around his head while he adjusted the gas line to the carburetor. He smoked 3 packs a day and I never saw him inhale. Ashes fell behind his teeth. The counter top at his dad's bar was lined with burn marks where he forgot he had set his Pall Malls while he fried burgers. Local men went to his brother's wedding only because he was the best man and they could see him without his hunting hat.

Terry Moen, RIP.

pbromaghin said:

When I was in high school...

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Very cool story...

Can you ID and date (there was a url link here which no longer exists) (in the foreground)? I'm guessing a '61 or '62 Chevy? I would have asked the owner, but he drove away before I got a chance. As I said, I'm not a car (or truck) enthusiast.

Ken

I am/was a great Kodachrome enthusiast, and would be willing to pay a premium over E6 film, but, OTOH, not a "silly" price. Maybe the analogy is that I admire the restored Model T Fords, and understand the enthusiasts who pay more than a Ferrari to own one, but wouldn't do so myself.

If Kodachrome reappeared, I wonder how difficult it would be to reproduce the color spectrum and characteristics to match the "original"....which would, surely, be the whole point of the issue.

In the real world, I'll muddle through with E6, and worry about how long we have with that.

hoffy said:

There was a point to why I used that as an example. Yes, there are some who will pay anything for there passion. But if you were going to go to Ford and say 'here is a 500 signature petition asking you to reintroduce the model T and less then a tenth of us will actually buy one', you would get laughed out of the building.

Kodachrome is dead baby. It ain't coming back.

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Great example. Well said.

While the high-voltage spark enthusiasts are busy in the cellar, trying to resurrect an old corpse, the beautiful E6 is bleeding to death, alone on the front lawn.

I want to amaze people with projected slides for years to come. If there is to be any colour transparency material at all in the future, we would do better focussing resources and support on adapting to 'small scale' batch production (as done successfully and profitably by Harman, for some of their more esoteric emulsions) while the necessary practical knowledge is still available.

Right now this can mean E-mailling the Dead Link Removed, express enthusiasm, reassure the bean-counters, find alternatives to their hardware problems, suggest pre-paid batch production (as used, successfully, for the Harman ULF orders for example) - but do something realistic.

My Grandfather used to shoot Kodachrome. When I get a chance, I'll ask his urn how much he's willing to pay.

I shot my last roll of 64 in 1983, and for good reason. If a roll cost $1.87 and about $3.75 to process, I might consider using it again. But, I doubt it.

What people say they will buy in market research surveys and what they will actually buy Steve when the product is put on the the market are two different things ( read The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard ) so I hope you aren't going to base any important business decisions on this survey.
All these internet posts by people bemoaning the demise of Kodachrome if they had to "put their money where their mouth is" and pay what the current commercial cost would be would be a different story.

benjiboy said:

What people say they will buy in market research surveys and what they will actually buy Steve when the product is put on the the market are two different things ( read The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard ) so I hope you aren't going to base any important business decisions on this survey.
All these internet posts by people bemoaning the demise of Kodachrome if they had to "put their money where their mouth is" and pay what the current commercial cost would be would be a different story.

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I agree. One thing missing from the survey is how many rolls (at whatever price you selected) would you estimate you would use per year. Even then, don't believe it.

hoffy said:

And, in next weeks poll.....if Ford re-released the model T, would you buy it and for how much....

#floggingdeaddonkies
#worsethreadever

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Model T? Personally, nothing. But if I could get a brand new copy of that 1969 Camaro Z28 my brother in law used to own... Granted some people would have exactly the opposite answers for those two cars.

But the comparison to Kodachrome makes more sense than it might at first appear. E6 surpassed Kodachrome in most ways except for having a unique look (and in dark storage fading.) Likewise, that 69 Z28 is inferior to any number of performance cars one can buy today, and inferior in most ways (except raw speed) to pretty much ANY car one can buy new today. Ok, no smart remarks about all electric vehicle range or acceleration of a Smart Car...you know what I mean. Modern cars are more comfortable, more efficient (even those that are also faster,) environmentally cleaner, far safer and far more reliable. But that 69 Z is just, well, cool. You either grok that or you don't, and if you don't, that's ok. I don't understand why people care about college football either but hoards of folks are nearly rabid about it.

Some of us would pay a little more than E6 for Kodachrome, at least some of the time. Some would pay a LOT more. I'm in the "I'd pay a little more some of the time" category, at least unless the revival included a significantly faster Kodachrome that wasn't as bad as K200 was. I find 100 too slow much of the time and that's 2/3s of a stop faster than 64. Give me a 200 or 400 Kodachrome that is no grainier and just as sharp as Provia 400X and I'd pay a fair amount. But that's not entirely fair either since 400X is already discontinued and remaining stocks are pretty darned expensive already.

Ian Grant said:

Totally agree. I'd rather have a good choice of E6 films from Kodak and Fuji in all formats. The last Kodachrome I shot was in the early 1980's.

Ian

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Gotta agree with that. And the odds of getting E100G back, or Astia back, while not good, are a lot better than getting Kodachrome back. Actually my choice (dead horse is tired of being flogged, I'm sure) for resurrecting a dead slide flim would be Provia 400X followed closely by Astia then E100G with the latter two being pretty close. But Fuji actually HAS brought back discontinued films and I (slightly) preferred Astia to E100G so given my druthers I'd take that.

the flawed part of this poll is that it does not suggest how many rolls at x-dollars/ roll a person would be willing to buy
i dont think one or two rolls will help much with a revival ...

I could do a second poll to ask a total annual Kodachrome budget. These polls are somewhat limited in the questions are restricted to a single question and a maximum of ten answers.

Roger Cole said:

Model T? Personally, nothing. But if I could get a brand new copy of that 1969 Camaro Z28

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+1, though I feel the '67 was "sexier" (the '69 is "meaner").
You could build a "new" 69 Camaro. I believe nearly everything is currently available reproduced. I love 1st and early 2nd generation Camaros

Or maybe a '70 Buick GSX Stage 1 (which compares quite favorably to modern muscle in raw speed - let alone torque at low RPM).

I wish we talked about resurrecting Ilfochrome even half as much as we talk about Kodachrome.

Truzi said:

+1, though I feel the '67 was "sexier" (the '69 is "meaner").
You could build a "new" 69 Camaro. I believe nearly everything is currently available reproduced. I love 1st and early 2nd generation Camaros

Or maybe a '70 Buick GSX Stage 1 (which compares quite favorably to modern muscle in raw speed - let alone torque at low RPM).

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I still have my 1968 Camaro Convertible we bought in February 1974 when I was 17. Just gave it it's 3rd engine and Powerglide rebuild last year.

I wish we talked about resurrecting Plus-X even half as much as we talk about Kodachrome.

BrianShaw said:

I wish we talked about resurrecting Plus-X even half as much as we talk about Kodachrome.

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in 4x5.

I'd go for Verichrome Pan.

Tom1956 said:

I'd go for Verichrome Pan.

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Not my first choice, but that would be fine too!

BrianShaw said:

I wish we talked about resurrecting Plus-X even half as much as we talk about Kodachrome.

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BrianShaw said:

in 4x5.

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Tom1956 said:

I'd go for Verichrome Pan.

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In spite of the same vocal group here who passionately dislike Kodachrome, this really IS what we are talking about in the bigger picture. The "common thread" that ties the whole discussion together is the already demonstrated ability of today's successful film manufacturers to scale down their minimum production volumes to levels that match today's market demands. Several real examples of both companies and products have already been given.

The key take-away from this is that if EK can do as the other successful manufacturers have done and find a way to successfully scale back their production environment, then your above film requests may become worthy of a second look.

This was the crux of the remarks reportedly made by EK's Ms. Pasterczyk. All of the emotional chest-thumping here aside, if her remarks were accurately reported, then the film side of EK is already aware of what needs to be done and may, in fact, already be doing the R&D to try to make it happen.

And if that's true—and successful—then your above requests could move from the extinct category back into the hmm-let's-kick-it-around category. Still no guarantees in that hypothetical. But at least no longer "totally dead".

Kodachrome in such a scenario thus becomes only one of many new kick-it-around possibilities that might also include returning some E-6, or Plus-X, or other products. Who knows? Maybe even a few b&w printing papers.

Realistically, I would also think that this would be the preferred KA selling environment. Flexibility in both numbers of product offerings, as well as volumes of those products produced. My reasonable guess is that they would not want to be tied to the same massive over-manufacturing cycles that doomed EK in a severely contracted market, lest they end up in the same bankruptcy boat, sitting there with a bunch of hungry retirees.

I expect most of the resident thumpers here will respond to this with their usual snide "it's dead, Jim" self-entertaining replies. I don't think they realize that if they are arguing against these kinds of possibilities, they may very well also be arguing against the very survival of KA in the long run. C-41 may be viable right now, but what about when MP production ends at EK?

But for the rest, give it some serious thought. It's not an unreasonable way to look to the future. And it's already working for other suppliers.

As far as the poll goes, at this moment I see 61 replies. Of those, 23 would be willing to open their wallets and 38 would not. That's pretty amazing. Remember now, we're talking boutique markets here. Not the mainline production of 30 years ago. Small, occasional production runs of Kodachrome, with processing capabilities tailored to match that.

Truthfully, I was prepared to be amazed if only 10-15% expressed an interest. If hypothetically scaled up, that's still a huge number worldwide. But 23/61 is 37.7%. Better than 1 out of every 3 respondents. I suspect that would make for far more than just a boutique market presence. In fact, slice it in half (or even one-third) for those who might actually pull the trigger, and who knows? It might be worth considering.

Ken