Spent most of yesterday scanning some pretty ancient slides, old and in poor condition is a rotten combination. Thankfully our scanners have some built-in tools that help, notably Digital ICE which is fantastic at removing major dust and scratches. As I chugged through the pile my little heart sank every time I came across a Kodachrome because Digital ICE sadly doesn’t work on this type of film. Scanning 35mm slide, you come across a lot of Kodachrome.
Having a love / hate relationship with the film didn’t stop me feeling a pang of remorse when I read in The Times this morning that after a production run of 74 years Kodak are withdrawing Kodachrome. It seems Kodachrome dates back to 1935 and originally appeared as 16mm movie film but then made the transition to 35mm slide stock. Over 100 million rolls of Kodachrome are said to have been made, and in America a state park has been named after it. The Zapruder film of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 was shot on Kodachrome too. Somewhat oddly it seems to have been loved as much by professional photographers as by hobbyists. It must be one of the few truly global brand identities ranking alongside that of Kodak.
The Times quotes a 35mm slide as having 20 megapixels of data but they don’t give the source of that, interesting to me as that’s one of the highest figures I’ve seen for 35mm data capacity. Alongside the article is a glowing tribute to the quality, colours and warmth of Kodachrome, positioning it as the vinyl record equivalent of photography.
Paul Simon’s song “Kodachrome” made it to number 2 in the US pop charts in 1973, a song I still have on my iPod and often pops up on the radio. Apparently Dwayne’s Photo of Parsons, Kansas will process Kodachrome until 2010, at which point it’s a final goodbye to what must have been the world’s favourite film.
