Wednesday, June 24, 2009

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-trouvĂ©s art piece out of the boxes & rolls.

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




1 comment:

  1. Totally agree. My favorite Kodachrome slides are a few rolls I took circa 1984. I camped out an entire afternoon 12 noon to dusk on the observation deck of Empire State building and took shots facing all four directions every 15 minutes. Kodachrome was perfect to track the light changes and get the time-elapsed effect I wanted.

    They were my favorites even before 9/11 and the missing Twin Towers. Now they mean even more. Especially on Kodachrome.

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