Kodachrome last remaining film roll developed in Kansas

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Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:51 pm

Quote:

Taken from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12095771

The final roll of Kodachrome film, a widely-lauded quality colour film, is to be developed in Kansas on Thursday.

Kodak announced it was discontinuing the iconic film in 2009, after competition from digital cameras caused a large sales decline.

Kodachrome is difficult to process, requiring expert handlers, and Dwayne's Photo in Kansas is the sole remaining developer.

The last film to be developed was shot by the owner, Dwayne Steinle.

Kodachrome film is renowned for its exceptional rendering of colour, vivid images and archival longevity. For many years, it was the preferred brand for print media.

Created in 1935, it was the first commercial film to successfully shoot in colour.

Kodachrome was also used for motion pictures.

Dwayne's Photo has been inundated with requests for developing, many from photographers who had been hoarding the coveted film for years.

One customer picked up 1,580 rolls of film used solely to shoot railroad engines. The nearly 50,000 slides cost $15,798 (£10,200) to develop.

BBC photo editor Phil Coomes has been documenting his own final days with Kodachrome, as well as collecting reader photographs on his BBC blog.

Afghan Girl

One of Kodachrome's most famous admirers is National Geographic's Steve McCurry, the photojournalist who captured the world's attention with a haunting 1984 cover photograph of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee girl with stunning green eyes.

Ms Gula, whose identity remained unknown for many years, did not see the image until a documentary film crew located her in 2003.

Although Mr Steinle developed his own Kodachrome roll last, Kodak gave the final roll it produced to Mr McCurry.

With just 36 frames to use, he travelled to India to photograph a tribe on the verge of extinction.

Mr McCurry also shot images of New York, Kansas and actor Robert DeNiro in a journey filmed as a documentary by National Geographic.

He hand-delivered the last roll to Dwayne's Photo earlier this year.

"I wasn't going to take any chances," he told the New York Times.

The National Geographic film is likely to air in spring 2011.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 8:03 pm

I think of all the things my kids will never know exsisted and I'm positive film cameras will be one. They are 2 and 3 and will never believe we had to take pictures drive to a drug store drop off the film and then wait to get them developed. Then you just have to hope everyone was smiling and you did not have your finger over the lens.

Of course my parents probably have a couple albums of pictures most developed at K-mart and not the nicest quality. We have about 95GB of pics and videos of our kids at last back up.

Technology is great unless you make film.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

A sad day.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 8:10 pm

Well I also remember the days of roll films, since I was born in the 1980s. So yea I also remember the Polaroid cameras too.

Also Kodak themselves were the first (if I'm not mistaken) to go into digitizing pictures in the first place, A.K.A Kodak Picture/Photo CD although Kodak discontinued that years ago since it never had much adoption, plus it was a proprietary format anyways.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 8:17 pm

It is sad, but think...how much hair the lads will pull when you say, "This photo was not taken using Kodachrome Film was it? I told you only Kodachrome carrys the level of scanability my firm/charity needs in your scanned photographs!"

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 8:39 pm

Yeah just like audio samples must be submitted on eight tracks and video on 8mm film.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:01 pm

This was my very first camera -- Brownie Kodak Holiday Flash. I was always negligent in getting film developed. I had some that were 3 yrs old and when developed on Kodak paper still turned out.....now the ones that were 5 yrs old were kind of blurry and vague.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:07 pm

I'm clearing out draws full of cables collected over the years from various bits of electronic equipment I no longer have and found my old SLR film camera.

An Olympus OM20, not used for the last ten years since digital came in, still in pristine condition. I don't know what to do with it. I can't bring myself to bung it, but a search on the web shows it has virtually no value. Crying or Very sad

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:10 pm

^^^ Another 50 years it will be declared an antique and may be pawned at the Pawn Stars Shop in Las Vagas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawn_Stars

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:11 pm

^^ that show is awesome.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:13 pm

^^ Great! All I have to do now is live till I'm 100 so I can cash in. Which, according to today's news is likely to happen. Laughing

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:13 pm

^^^ it has redeeming value in the antics of Chumlee a/k/a Chum Lee

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

I just checked, my old Pentax K-1000 still has some film in it, I wonder what's on it. The last I remember using it was many years ago (15+) taking a time exposure of star trails. /nerd

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:33 pm

^^ I was curious till that last part.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

^^You're out of the nerd club.

Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 9:45 pm

Ok I will go back to the Staw Wars thread I guess I am downgraded to a geek.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

nerd>geek

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 12:33 am

Morgain Le Fay wrote:

Another 50 years it will be declared an antique and may be pawned at the Pawn Stars Shop in Las Vagas.

Don't count on it.... I still have the Polaroid camera my parents bought (at huge expense) in 1957. It has the accessory leather case, flash attachment including angle bracket, books, and even an unopened package of film (which expired in 1959). I thought this little time capsule of lost history must be worth something to a collector. Fortunately, before listing it on eBay I took a look to see what others might have sold for. They're as common as fleas and just about as valuable......

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 12:36 am

^^^ True. Now if it can be proved that some famous personage used it with appropriate documentation to that effect, it might climb in value. Wink

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 12:47 am

What, my parents weren't famous enough??

Laughing

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:20 am

You all are old. Laughing

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:26 am

^^^ well, that just made my day (even if it is true!) Laughing

*** BANNED *** Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 2049

That's it . . . it's all over . . .

Quote:

Momma don't take my kodachrome away.

Remember when Paul dumped Art?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SExsuRIGAlg

In just 10 years from now everything will be done . . . finito . . . kaputsky.

For those who have intimate knowledge of the Seventies and even back to the Sixties, the end times are acomin'. And I do NOT mean that religious bullshit that wackos spout.

Think about it . . . when Keith and Mick start using walkers it will have to end.

This is Paul Simon now. He is almost 70 years old - he was born during the Second World War FFS.

Have you noticed how quickly things are changing. It's scary.

BTW - I have everything Paul Simon ever recorded . . . ever . . . I mean I have it all . . .

This is the best song he ever wrote . . . CLICK

Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:38 am

^^ Oh Lordy, I have intimate knowledge of the 50's. Confused

insults and more · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:55 am

I had a Pentax K-1000 too. Very fun camera, perfect if you enjoy tweaking things.

I remember when dodging and burning were things you did in the darkroom with a wire and ball of cotton. I remember when you had to squick a nub over a polaroid picture as it developed to keep it from curling.

I remember listening to the B-52's on 8-track as a child.

I remember my first computer, a Tandy 1000 with no hard-drive and 5.25" floppies which really were floppy.

Yet... I am under 30. This should make you older folks rather apprehensive.

Nostalgia is creeping backwards, you see. 400 years ago there was damned little change in the average person's lifetime. Only a few hundred years ago could you begin to see the elderly wax nostalgic about things change removed from their lives.

In my generation, we saw the death of the 8-track, cassette, CD, floppy, George Carlin, and Hunter S. Thompson. All before the age of about 25.

Bravo, expect your kids to start waxing nostalgic by the age of 10.

ETA:

In the time of Socrates people were complaining about the introduction of writing, how the next generation would have their memories ruined by such a shortcut.

Shortly after the Gutenberg movable type printing press, a scribe (one of the monks who spent decades manually copying manuscripts) wrote a book, De Laude Scriborum, in which he defended the scribing tradition and attacked the medium of printed books. Ironically, he couldn't produce anywhere near enough books by handwriting... so he had it mass-produced on a Gutenberg press.

Did you know that the Library of Congress stores audio in the form of Edison wax cylinders?

Check out, if you want to become depressed, the lifetime of storage media as they advance. You can still play, with some effort, the very first wax audio recordings humans made here. Yet document formats from only a decade ago are well nigh impenetrable. An LP can last decades. A CD-RW may last a few years (and the audio codec cannot be guaranteed to survive much longer). Even a SSD has a mean time between failure of about only 20 years.

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