Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
This kind of reminds me of when Kodak discontinued making the Retina Reflex, just before SLRs became the 35-mm norm. (The analogy ends with its being a Kodak decision.) But I wonder: are there any uses of transparency film--archival, whatever--that could be used as an argument that this discontinuation ("accounts for less than 1% of Kodak's revenue") may be shortsighted and economic only?
Posted by Mel Ladewig on June 23, 2009 at 12:57 AM
Kodak is definitely making their E-6 film. I shoot mostly film, and when I shoot transparencies, Kodak is my choice 9 times out of 10. E100G, E100GX and E100VS are an excellent suite of films. I tend to prefer Kodak's color negative films as well. The only downside with Kodak film is the limited availability of readyload packets for 4X5 since Polaroid closed. When I run out of readyloads, I will have to shoot Fuji when backpacking.
I think Kodachrome had a number of problems. There is only one lab in the world that can still process it. The process is more demanding than E-6. Its only available in 35mm now. Its just not where Kodak has been investing their energy. I don't think they will really be hurt by the decision to discontinue production. After all, E-6 is also seeing reduction in processing facilities. Color negative is where Kodak is focusing most of their effort because most movies and many television shows are still shot on color negative film.
In addition, the color quality, stability and longevity of E-6 and C-41 products has greatly improved in recent years. Kodak and Fuji have repeatedly released finer grain variants some of their slide films. Fuji released Provia 400X. Kodak has also released new formulations of TMax 400, Portra 400NC and a new Ektar 100 product in the last year. In recent years, E100S/SW was replaced with finer grain E100G/GX and the Portra 160 products saw decreased grain size.
Sorry to see Kodachrome go, but there are still choices. You want to continue to use film? You have to buy it and shoot it. There are some fantastic film choices available on the market today. On the other hand, my local shop has a bunch of Kodachrome on the shelf. I've never shot any, but I might try a few rolls while the getting is good.
I'd say the discontinuance of Kodachrome (a product introduced in 1935) was not only not shortsighted, but long overdue. K64 was a great film in its day, at one time accounting for the vast majority of natural history images, but it became obsolete the day Velvia was introduced in 1990, and within a very few years Velvia and Provia had the major share of the nature photo market. From reading Kodak's announcement, if seems they kept it in production longer than they could justify, probably out of nostalgia for the days when Kodachrome and Kodak itself were market leaders. The bigger question now seems to be whether Kodak itself will survive (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601213&sid=aTboUhX0FSIc).
Posted by David Bostedo on June 23, 2009 at 10:26 AM
"...an argument that this discontinuation ("accounts for less than 1% of Kodak's revenue") may be shortsighted and economic only?"
Rosemarie - Are you asking if there's a reason that they should keep making it even though it's not making them any money? Very rarely would that situation ever exist in a company. Keeping a product going out of loyalty or nostalgia (which they may actually have been doing to some extent) is a recipe for losing money, which is (and should be) by far the main concern of Kodak. I doubt there's any reason to continue making Kodachrome. Plus it's not like all films are discontinued - just this particular hard-to-process film.
I would disagree with Cliff's terse statement that Kodachrome became obsolete the day Velvia was introduced because a significant minority of photographers like this person never liked its unnatural high saturation off hue colors and continued using KR-25 or KR-64. Photo magazines, advertizers, and their paid pros ever banging the saturated film drum eventually dominated choice that average photographers really never made the choice for. Provia was introduced about a decade later and that did obsolete Kodachrome because it had been the only fine grain transparency film with reasonably natural color. EPN-100 used by product photographers until digital came on the scene was always most accurate with colors but Provia was close enough with considerably finer grain. Back when I shot medium format, I used EPN-100 but when it appeared, immediately moved to Provia because of the much better detail possible. Kodak management has made a lot of suspect decisions the last three decades that has been more about satisfying short term Wall Street interests than using what was their superior technical resources to ensure longetivity. I still have several old rolls of KR-35 35mm in my personal museum of old camera junk.
Posted by Cliff Beittel on June 26, 2009 at 10:04 AM
David,
To each his own, of course. But (1) I think people liked Kodachrome specifically because it was the saturation and contrast champ of its time. (2) I don't know that it was any more accurate than Velvia--it emphasized reds, and I believe John Shaw and Galen Rowell both wrote on the problem of Kodachrome making blue flowers purple. Most photographers and editors want photos to look good. That's why they liked Kodachrome and later why they liked Velvia. I still have at least one old Kodachrome image hanging on my walls along with dozens of Fujis, and at least one Ektachrome; until yesterday, I'd never given that a second thought--they all look completely natural.
In terms of Velvia versus Provia, I can't tell which film was used when looking at a slide, and Arthur Morris has written the same. So it's a mystery to me how Provia can have natural color and Velvia unnatural. These days, of course, overcast days can be become yellow and sunny just by moving a slider.
Cliff >>>" I don't know that it was any more accurate than Velvia--it emphasized reds, and I believe John Shaw and Galen Rowell both wrote on the problem of Kodachrome making blue flowers purple."
All films much like all digital sensors are less than perfect and non-linear in rendering hues and their tints and shades through the color spectrum. But lets not start rewriting history. Kodachromes KM- 25 was known to emphasize reds a bit while KR-64 was less so. Were talking minor. Both were reknowned for being relatively neutral with good overall fidelity versus other fims of that day and thus a prime reason such influential groups as National Geographic, interested in reasonable fidelity, made it their standard. Velvia, much like earlier Fuji films is far less hue or saturation accurate. Not even close and publicly proven so many times in early 90s magazine articles simply pointing at color targets as Q60's Fuji states so much in their literature and was obviously a reason they took up the challenge of engineering a fine grain neutral film later which they succeeding in well.
I stand corrected. Reading shows that Kodachrome was actually obsolete about 1985, five years before Velvia. Photographers like Galen Rowell and Art Wolfe were already moving to Fujichrome and Ektachrome. Rowell wrote that he dropped K64 after 1985; for the next five years he continued to use K25 for its archival qualities, but shot the same scenes with Fujichrome or Ektachrome Plus Professional (EPP) for publication. As a consultant to Kodak's professional products division, he begged Kodak to produce a Kodachrome for landscape photographers, a film built not around fleshtones but the much brighter colors of the natural world. He wrote in Outdoor Photographer in 1988 that he dreamed of a new Kodachrome with the palette of EPP and the ultrafine T-grain technology of modern B&W films. "With this addition," he said, "Kodak would unquestionably be king again." Instead, Kodak sat on its hands and Fuji took over much of Kodachrome's market. If Kodak had made a Kodachrome for the majority of nature shooters instead of the minority, if it had listened more closely to its consultants and customers (not just on Kodachrome but generally), it might have avoided its disastrous decline in recent decades.
On the whole question of color accuracy and color targets, Rowell wrote (pre-Velvia): "Neither [Kodachrome or Fujichrome] are color accurate. A studio photographer shooting a clothing catalog with controlled lighting will usually choose Ektachrome 100, which [re]produces hues more closely almost every time. . . . Take Ektachrome 100 out of the studio and into the wilderness, and the results become flat and listless in natural lighting that is less than ideal. . . . High-saturation films that can exaggerate colors in studio situations often render natural landscapes closer to real perceptions." This is because our perceptions adjust for haze, shadow, surface reflections, color casts from blue skies, etc., to make, for example, a Fall maple leaf look bright red no matter what the lighting conditions, while a laboratory-accurate film shows degraded color in other than perfect light. Since lab-accurate films don't always record things the way we see them in the real world, "over"-saturated films can actually be, in terms of our perceptions, more accurate.
Kodachrome shooting a color target is not all that color different than the EPN-100 you refer to as Ektachrome 100. Note I used that film a few years in my 6x7. Both can color wise result in beautiful nicely saturated scenics with good fidelity when properly exposed outdoors in sunshine or standard spectrum lighting those films were made for. Much like Provia today. The trouble with Rowell's argument is he was rather biased as he increasingly bought into not shooting in sunshine that he did so well for many years early in his career and rather to shoot in the kind of flat overcast or early/late day light that Fujichrome and then Velvia were exceptional at. Kodachrome shot in such conditions is rather dull thus his frustration but such ought not be generalized beyond such conditions. I'm a notoriously early day photographer awake as dawn breaks often rambling about taking information shots where I might set up later or records of landscapes. Years ago it was 35mm and this decade have gone through four compact digitals. That light is usually boring in person and records so straight by cameras. Its only "in his mind's eye" that he saw what actually ended up being printed.
"The trouble with Rowell's argument is he was rather biased as he increasingly bought into not shooting in sunshine that he did so well for many years early in his career and rather to shoot in the kind of flat overcast or early/late day light that Fujichrome and then Velvia were exceptional at."
David,
Rowell shot in flat light, and even at night (Moonlight on Concordia, 1975), quite early in his career, but that is hardly unique among photographers. Many subjects don't work with harsh shadows and demand soft or even flat light; digital cameras now allow us to photograph those subjects more easily than ever before. Again, to each his own, but for someone like Rowell or Wolfe or Lanting shooting on assignment, making the most of the light that's given has to be important.
In looking up the date of the Concordia photo in Galen Rowell, A Retrospective, I ran across an interesting quote from Andy Grundberg concerning Rowell and Kodachrome that supports my earlier thought (that people liked Kodachrome because it was the saturation champ of its era) and seems especially fitting now with Kodachrome's demise; Kodak eventually may have failed to keep up with the competition, but producing the world's best color film for five decades is something:
"Rowell, working in color, also [like Adams, Stieglitz, Weston, and others] was able to intensify the visual appeal of his subjects, although he always insisted, like his forefathers, that his aim was only to reproduce what he saw. Foremost, he chose to use Kodachrome film, a transparency (or slide) film that excels in reproducing brilliant colors crisply and cleanly. Some of the colors it produced proved too brilliant and intense for some eyes, since they seemed to exceed the true colors found in nature, but Rowell recognized and appreciated the film's picturesque qualities. He called Kodachrome "the color film of the century. . . . "
Not sure what your art professor is referring to because in a geneal sense its simply incorrect. I'll go with the opinions of Kodak color scientists. For those reasons Kodachrome 64 Q-60 slides at one time in the 90s was a primary tool for calibrating early generation film scanners. If you were too young in those days, please go down to your local major library that has magazine archives for Popular Photography and educate yourself on their annual film comparison articles during the 80s era. I'm packing my Wisner for a backpack trip the next several days, bye!
This is right off the Kodak site link in their pdf on the film just as it has been for decades:
KODACHROME 64 Film features extremely fine grain
and extremely high sharpness. It is an excellent choice for a
wide variety of applications. KODACHROME 200 Film
features fine grain and extremely high sharpness. With its
faster speed, the film is ideal for low-light situations and
photo shoots requiring increased depth of field.
Use these films to produce color transparencies for
projection or viewing with 5000 K illumination. Duplicate
transparencies can be made by direct printing. To make color
prints, you can print transparencies onto color reversal paper.
Or make internegatives for printing onto color negative
paper. You can also scan transparencies for digital printing
and for graphic arts and Photo CD applications.
KODACHROME 64 Film / KR
• Excellent for outdoor, travel, and nature applications
• Extremely sharp
• Extremely fine grain
• Reproduces subtle color naturally
• Archival
Popular Photography exists to sell advertising. Kodak's promotional materials are about as authoritative as Fujifilm's website, which makes this extraordinary claim for Velvia 50: "Precise modulation, vivid color reproduction and excellent image quality make this the outstanding film for nature, fashion, products, interiors, and artwork photography." Before choosing Velvia for fashion and artwork photography, I'd take a look at what the best shooters in those fields are using rather than take Fuji's word for it.
Anyway, good shooting. It's bound to be more productive than debating the color accuracy of a dead film when almost everyone agrees it was the best of its kind for a long time, accurate or not.
Discussion
15 replieshttp://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090622/tc_nm/us_kodak_kodachrome_2
RIP Kodachrome.
Pete D.
Sorry to see it go - end of an era. Wonder if they still make their E-6 film.
I think Kodachrome had a number of problems. There is only one lab in the world that can still process it. The process is more demanding than E-6. Its only available in 35mm now. Its just not where Kodak has been investing their energy. I don't think they will really be hurt by the decision to discontinue production. After all, E-6 is also seeing reduction in processing facilities. Color negative is where Kodak is focusing most of their effort because most movies and many television shows are still shot on color negative film.
In addition, the color quality, stability and longevity of E-6 and C-41 products has greatly improved in recent years. Kodak and Fuji have repeatedly released finer grain variants some of their slide films. Fuji released Provia 400X. Kodak has also released new formulations of TMax 400, Portra 400NC and a new Ektar 100 product in the last year. In recent years, E100S/SW was replaced with finer grain E100G/GX and the Portra 160 products saw decreased grain size.
Sorry to see Kodachrome go, but there are still choices. You want to continue to use film? You have to buy it and shoot it. There are some fantastic film choices available on the market today. On the other hand, my local shop has a bunch of Kodachrome on the shelf. I've never shot any, but I might try a few rolls while the getting is good.
Rosemarie - Are you asking if there's a reason that they should keep making it even though it's not making them any money? Very rarely would that situation ever exist in a company. Keeping a product going out of loyalty or nostalgia (which they may actually have been doing to some extent) is a recipe for losing money, which is (and should be) by far the main concern of Kodak. I doubt there's any reason to continue making Kodachrome. Plus it's not like all films are discontinued - just this particular hard-to-process film.
I wouldn't pretend to argue that Kodachrome is anything other than Kodachrome.
Pete D.
To each his own, of course. But (1) I think people liked Kodachrome specifically because it was the saturation and contrast champ of its time. (2) I don't know that it was any more accurate than Velvia--it emphasized reds, and I believe John Shaw and Galen Rowell both wrote on the problem of Kodachrome making blue flowers purple. Most photographers and editors want photos to look good. That's why they liked Kodachrome and later why they liked Velvia. I still have at least one old Kodachrome image hanging on my walls along with dozens of Fujis, and at least one Ektachrome; until yesterday, I'd never given that a second thought--they all look completely natural.
In terms of Velvia versus Provia, I can't tell which film was used when looking at a slide, and Arthur Morris has written the same. So it's a mystery to me how Provia can have natural color and Velvia unnatural. These days, of course, overcast days can be become yellow and sunny just by moving a slider.
All films much like all digital sensors are less than perfect and non-linear in rendering hues and their tints and shades through the color spectrum. But lets not start rewriting history. Kodachromes KM- 25 was known to emphasize reds a bit while KR-64 was less so. Were talking minor. Both were reknowned for being relatively neutral with good overall fidelity versus other fims of that day and thus a prime reason such influential groups as National Geographic, interested in reasonable fidelity, made it their standard. Velvia, much like earlier Fuji films is far less hue or saturation accurate. Not even close and publicly proven so many times in early 90s magazine articles simply pointing at color targets as Q60's Fuji states so much in their literature and was obviously a reason they took up the challenge of engineering a fine grain neutral film later which they succeeding in well.
I stand corrected. Reading shows that Kodachrome was actually obsolete about 1985, five years before Velvia. Photographers like Galen Rowell and Art Wolfe were already moving to Fujichrome and Ektachrome. Rowell wrote that he dropped K64 after 1985; for the next five years he continued to use K25 for its archival qualities, but shot the same scenes with Fujichrome or Ektachrome Plus Professional (EPP) for publication. As a consultant to Kodak's professional products division, he begged Kodak to produce a Kodachrome for landscape photographers, a film built not around fleshtones but the much brighter colors of the natural world. He wrote in Outdoor Photographer in 1988 that he dreamed of a new Kodachrome with the palette of EPP and the ultrafine T-grain technology of modern B&W films. "With this addition," he said, "Kodak would unquestionably be king again." Instead, Kodak sat on its hands and Fuji took over much of Kodachrome's market. If Kodak had made a Kodachrome for the majority of nature shooters instead of the minority, if it had listened more closely to its consultants and customers (not just on Kodachrome but generally), it might have avoided its disastrous decline in recent decades.
On the whole question of color accuracy and color targets, Rowell wrote (pre-Velvia): "Neither [Kodachrome or Fujichrome] are color accurate. A studio photographer shooting a clothing catalog with controlled lighting will usually choose Ektachrome 100, which [re]produces hues more closely almost every time. . . . Take Ektachrome 100 out of the studio and into the wilderness, and the results become flat and listless in natural lighting that is less than ideal. . . . High-saturation films that can exaggerate colors in studio situations often render natural landscapes closer to real perceptions." This is because our perceptions adjust for haze, shadow, surface reflections, color casts from blue skies, etc., to make, for example, a Fall maple leaf look bright red no matter what the lighting conditions, while a laboratory-accurate film shows degraded color in other than perfect light. Since lab-accurate films don't always record things the way we see them in the real world, "over"-saturated films can actually be, in terms of our perceptions, more accurate.
David,
Rowell shot in flat light, and even at night (Moonlight on Concordia, 1975), quite early in his career, but that is hardly unique among photographers. Many subjects don't work with harsh shadows and demand soft or even flat light; digital cameras now allow us to photograph those subjects more easily than ever before. Again, to each his own, but for someone like Rowell or Wolfe or Lanting shooting on assignment, making the most of the light that's given has to be important.
In looking up the date of the Concordia photo in Galen Rowell, A Retrospective, I ran across an interesting quote from Andy Grundberg concerning Rowell and Kodachrome that supports my earlier thought (that people liked Kodachrome because it was the saturation champ of its era) and seems especially fitting now with Kodachrome's demise; Kodak eventually may have failed to keep up with the competition, but producing the world's best color film for five decades is something:
"Rowell, working in color, also [like Adams, Stieglitz, Weston, and others] was able to intensify the visual appeal of his subjects, although he always insisted, like his forefathers, that his aim was only to reproduce what he saw. Foremost, he chose to use Kodachrome film, a transparency (or slide) film that excels in reproducing brilliant colors crisply and cleanly. Some of the colors it produced proved too brilliant and intense for some eyes, since they seemed to exceed the true colors found in nature, but Rowell recognized and appreciated the film's picturesque qualities. He called Kodachrome "the color film of the century. . . . "
This is right off the Kodak site link in their pdf on the film just as it has been for decades:
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-locale=en_US&pq-path=1095
KODACHROME 64 Film features extremely fine grain
and extremely high sharpness. It is an excellent choice for a
wide variety of applications. KODACHROME 200 Film
features fine grain and extremely high sharpness. With its
faster speed, the film is ideal for low-light situations and
photo shoots requiring increased depth of field.
Use these films to produce color transparencies for
projection or viewing with 5000 K illumination. Duplicate
transparencies can be made by direct printing. To make color
prints, you can print transparencies onto color reversal paper.
Or make internegatives for printing onto color negative
paper. You can also scan transparencies for digital printing
and for graphic arts and Photo CD applications.
KODACHROME 64 Film / KR
• Excellent for outdoor, travel, and nature applications
• Extremely sharp
• Extremely fine grain
• Reproduces subtle color naturally
• Archival
Popular Photography exists to sell advertising. Kodak's promotional materials are about as authoritative as Fujifilm's website, which makes this extraordinary claim for Velvia 50: "Precise modulation, vivid color reproduction and excellent image quality make this the outstanding film for nature, fashion, products, interiors, and artwork photography." Before choosing Velvia for fashion and artwork photography, I'd take a look at what the best shooters in those fields are using rather than take Fuji's word for it.
Anyway, good shooting. It's bound to be more productive than debating the color accuracy of a dead film when almost everyone agrees it was the best of its kind for a long time, accurate or not.