The writing on the wall

Oh, no—another American icon is biting the dust. Eastman Kodak is discontinuing Kodachrome.

Kodachrome is a wonderful slide film—if you were shooting anything with warm tones, from fall foliage to kids’ birthday parties, Kodachrome gave you an edge. (If you were going after blue-green landscapes, you went for Ektachrome, a lesson I learned the hard way. But at least I learned it early.)

I’ve shot hundreds of rolls of this luscious stuff. I went through at least 20 in a single two-week trip to the battlefields of France. Another 10-15 at Renaissance Pleasure Fayres over the years. I started shooting it on my old Nikon rangefinder—where I had to use an external light meter to set the shutter & aperture. (If you wonder where the title & URL for this blog originated, just think about it.) Those photos have held up well through the years, too.

I loved looking at the slides through the viewer or on a light table—just for the colors. It’s entirely different from viewing thumbnails on a monitor. There’s something big time about sorting slides on a light table that I miss. Over time, I’ve whittled down my collection to a mere handful, but the ones left are definitely old friends, & they haven’t faded in the least.

I’ll confess that I have played my own part in Kodachrome’s demise. About the time I moved to the UK & I realized processing slides was going to be a pain, I switched to color negative film. & to Fuji, because I liked the depth of colors better than the Kodak products.

(Also, Fuji 35mm canisters are great for pill bottles—unlike the black & grey Kodak ones, they’re translucent, so you can tell if you’ve got the ibuprofen or the Zyrtec in a particular container.)

Then when it became damned near impossible to find it in the ASA 100 speed film (giving you room to slow the shutter & get some motion effects), I started eying digital cameras. So while I used to schlep through Europe with three cameras (one for color, one for B&W & one for quick snaps), I now just have a digital point-&-shoot & a digital SLR. I joined the Dark Side.

During this last move, I hauled the plastic bag of film from one refrigerator crisper box to another. I suppose I should have some sort of Viking funeral for the stuff. (What I’ll do with the six or so film 35mm cameras, I don’t know. I haven’t reached the point where I can bear to part with any of them because of the partnership we’ve had ever since I was in high school.) Perhaps I should just make some sort of objets-trouvés art piece out of the boxes & rolls.

But it’s the end of an era, so join Paul & me in a chorus: