“How film is made” Kodak 1958 factory documentary (part 1 of 2) Click here for part two…

One more dead soldier, Kodak has announced that Kodachrome, arguably the most iconic film ever produced, will be discontinued after 74 years on the market due to declining demand.

Kodachrome was expensive, incredibly difficult to process, only one lab left in the United States was even doing it. It was slow, it took time to shoot, time to process. The fact is, Kodachrome never stood a chance in a world where immediacy is the driving force.

A shame that a new generation will never know what it was like to shoot such an amazing film. There is simply no substitute for the color and quality of Kodachrome 64.

From Kodak’s Website:

“They say all good things in life come to an end. Today we announced that Kodak will retire KODACHROME Film, concluding its 74-year run.

It was a difficult decision, given its rich history. At the end of the day, photographers have told us and showed us they’ve moved on to newer other Kodak films and/or digital. KODACHROME Film currently represents a fraction of one percent of our film sales.”

Read the rest at: http://homepage.1000words.kodak.com/

Kodak has announced a new and improved version of its Tmax-400 film, claiming it to be the sharpest 400 speed film in the world. According to Kodak the emulsion has been altered to minimize light scatter, which reduces sharpness, and a UV layer has been added to medium-format and 35mm rolls to prevent accidental exposure to static inside the camera.

I’ve never been much of a Tmax user myself, but more important is the fact that Kodak has actually made an improvement to one of its black and white films. Granted this is nothing major, a change in the emulsion to improve grain structure and sharpness, but the effort is there none the less. Personally I hope this is not the beginning of a trend by Kodak. Something tells me if they start mucking around with the Tri-x emulsion, they’ll only screw things up.

Regardless, in a photography world dominated by digital, perhaps there is some hope for the purist that craves grain over pixels.

Source: http://www.popphoto.com/photonews/

Just thought that some of you out there still working with film might find this interesting. Maybe disappointing is a better word…

From Wireheadarts.com: “I noticed lately that a few films I was playing with were hard to find — most specifically EPT (Ektachrome 160T) and EPJ (Ektachrome 320T) — and dealers were mentioning that they thought it was discontinued. However, there wasn’t an announcement on Kodak’s site. Finally, I called Kodak and asked them.”

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