Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Kodachrome Processing Ends this Week

The impending end of Kodachrome processing by the sole lab on the planet still running it's process (still designated K-14 I believe, K-12 was the better predecessor) has generated a little buzz this week. The one story I link to here is by another aging corporation, which was at one time also the Tiffany of it's product, CBS news.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/26/sunday/main7185884.shtml

I'd have to look up the date when I shot my First Roll of Kodachrome. Would be sometime in 1971 when I got my first Nikon Ftn. They never made a medium format size in those days or before, and I was shooting only medium format or Instamatic formats before that camera.

My Last Roll was shot a couple of years ago and I was not pleased with the results. The films manufacturing standards had fallen off and processing wasn't reliable anymore. Not since the days of Kodak's Fairlawn NJ lab have I been totally happy with the film. And actually I was never as pleased with the dye deposit color spectrum rendition since Kodak went from K-12 to K-14 sometime in the mid to late 70's as I was with the earlier process. If I recall correctly, as response to the necessity of cleaning up their chemical processes to meet stricter effluent requirements, they had to change the formulation. With difficulty I'm sure. The result was designated K-14. Why Kodak skipped numbers frequently was always a source of amusement btw. K-13 = bad luck ?

So anyhow, I'm not as sorry to see it go as a lot of bleeding hearts out there are.... Sorry Guys, I just can't concur with you on it's demise. I will concur on the concept of loosing a unique and much heralded process, but it's not a creative step backward. In it's heyday the image capture process and resulting hard copy chrome (slide) you held in your hand, which IS the film which ran through your camera, were nothing short of miraculous. Shooting any positive film gives you that hard copy, but nothing looks quite like a perfectly exposed & perfectly processed Kodachrome from a perfectly manufactured batch of that film.

And oh, one more thing. To fully experience that perfection you must pass light through that film, perfectly, using yet another (perfect) lens, onto a screen .......

Saturday, April 10, 2010

 
A little sumthin I created. Couldn't help myself. lol 29 years ago whilst at Radio City I shot still images of the Dead with heavy cumbersome Nikon gear on grainy color films. The result, A lot of it works, Some wasn't worth the effort. Can't imagine doing this kinda thing back in 1980.