JUNE 2009: Kodak has discontinued the gorgeously-vibrant and ultra-stable Kodachrome (35mm transparency) film, a deletion photographers have been expecting (and a hardy few have been dreading) for years.

We’re big Kodachrome fans here at www.bwphotopro.com. (If that seems odd, well, we love truly great color photography too. And, of course, we champion classic film stocks and hate to see them fall.)

Also, Kodachrome is basically a B&W film to which color dyes are added during complex processing. 

We highly recommend dye-transfer master Guy Stricherz’s wonderful book Americans in Kodachrome (Twin Palms Publisher, 2002), with 92 amazingly vivid and heart-rending vintage Kodachrome snapshots going back to the 1930s, and of course you can read all about Kodachrome, the only film ever to be the subject of a hit song, on the Web.

(This great, unique color transparency film all but died when Kodak stopped processing it some years ago, leaving only one commercial Kodachrome-capable lab worldwide.)

Large format B&W photographer William McEwen recently wrote about Kodachrome

and kindly allowed us to use his piece here:

Thoughts on Kodachrome and color photography.

KODACHROME

One of the legendary photo products of all time is – or, rather, WAS – Kodachrome film.

It’s the latest casualty of the digital age. Kodak announced last week that it will no longer manufacture this film, which has been part of its inventory for almost 75 years.

(Associated Press story here: http://tinyurl.com/ktgamp)

Kodachrome was an amazing film. Vibrant colors that snapped. No other film came close.

I used it as a kid, in my trusted Canon FTb and Canon AE-1 cameras. Many of the pictures in my Blurb book “Girls on Film” were shot on Kodachrome.

Kodachrome had a distinctive smell when you opened the film canister. Aroma or fragrance might be a better word, because it was a positive association. Same thing when you opened the box of slides when they came back from the lab. That special Kodachrome smell. Mmm-mmm!

I moved to large format equipment in the mid-1980s, and had to leave Kodachrome behind, since it was only available in 35mm.

In the late 1980s, Kodak introduced Kodachrome in 120/medium format, which meant I could use it in my Rolleiflex. I probably shot 15 or 20 rolls of this in the next few years. Great looking transparencies with strong color.

Here is a photo I shot on 120 Kodachrome in 1990:

http://www.mcewenphoto.com/Kodachrome.jpg

When the 120 film came out, a professional photo lab in Dallas called The Color Place invested many thousands of dollars in huge machines that could processed 120 Kodachrome. A few years later they discontinued the service and scrapped the machines. Literally. They sold the machines for scrap metal!

COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY

It’s been a long time since I shot color 8x10. I used to sometimes splurge on a 10 sheet box of 8x10 transparency film. It’s expensive.  I would use that 10-sheet box sparingly enough to last a year. It’s probably been almost 10 years since I shot a color sheet of film.

Just the other day, Sheryl said, “I want you to shoot something in color sometime with the 8x10 camera.”

Nice guy that I am, I gleefully said, “OK.”

I didn’t mention to her that 8x10 Ektachrome is $95.99 plus shipping for 10 sheets, and that BWC probably charges about 10 bucks a sheet to process it. That means each click of the shutter will represent a $20 investment.

(No sense in bothering her with these details now. She’ll find all this out when she looks at our Visa bill.)

COLOR V. BLACK AND WHITE

The Associated Press story that I’ve linked above mentions the hit song Kodachrome by Paul Simon, and quotes the lines, “Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away,” and “Everything looks worse in black and white.”

Years later, when Simon performed the song in concert, he changed the line to “Everything looks better in black and white.”

Yes, color is wonderful, especially when examining a rich 8x10 transparency. But black and white is a special world for me, and to me, it is the true realm of photography.

That’s all –

William McEwen

Right: a still-sealed brick of Kodachrome 25, the long-discontinued super-slow, super-fine-grained 25 ISO slide film (25 ISO is the correct film speed; that is not a typo). Kodak has now discontinued the only surviving Kodachrome  film, the (also quite slow) 64 ISO version. Kodachrome has been around since the 1930s, but its highly complex & unique processing procedure doomed this great film.

If you’ve never shot Kodachrome, we suggest you get some and do so, fast, before it’s too late. A famously archival color film stock, your Kodachrome slides may outlast your digital images. (Film stock could be available until Fall 2009 and processing probably only through 2010.)