Kodachrome

Friends, allow me to be both bearer of bad news and mourner for a while. Last week, Kodak announced the end of production for Kodachrome after 74 years.

For those of you unfamiliar with the phenomenon that is Kodachrome, allow me to give you a bit of history. Kodachrome was the first commercially successful color transparency (slide) film, and for 50 years dominated the color transparency market. It is an additive process, meaning after exposure the film is basically black and white, and color is added to the negative during processing. Of course this color addition has advantages and drawbacks. The color is extremely permanent, and if handled correctly, will not shift or fade over time. Also, the color palette is vibrant, and always the same. The negative is that processing additive transparency films is incredibly complex and expensive.

Despite these drawbacks, Koachrome was the film that shaped America’s perception of color on film. I can instantly identify an image made with the film, and you probably could to, as the color palette is highly identifiable. I loved the reds and the blues Kodachrome gave, rich tones. And, you never had to worry that you would get color loss or shift, as you might with other films. Here’s a great example of the colors in Kodachrome:







































So what happened to the “king of transparency films?” Well, first, Fuji Films introduced their Velvia transparency films, seen as a cheaper, more readily available alternative to Kodachrome. Because of this initial drop, it was no longer economically feasible for Kodak to maintain as many Kodachrome processing labs as it once did, and so slowly began to phase the labs out. This process continued until now there is one lab left that processes the film in the world.

So, farewell, my good friend Kodachrome. I will still get a nostalgic twinge in my throat when I look at ‘chromes on my granddad’s light table.