Goodbye Kodachrome

"Mama don't take my Kodachrome away..." - Paul Simon - 1973

I'm not sure who was trying to take Paul's film away back then. I think it was something about his film being confiscated by the police in some unfriendly foreign country. But now, after 74 years, it is Kodak itself that is taking it away, ending production of their iconic slide film. The film of press photographers, artists, astronauts, film producers, ad agencies, and your uncle on his trip to the Grand Canyon. Yes, there are competitive products, but most photographers worth their salt, (and me) valued the color quality of Kodachrome over those other brands. It was always "truer".

I started to get serious about my hobby of photography about the same time Paul wrote his song, and once you're serious, you start to have dreams of something being published some day. If you wanted any chance at that, you had to be ready to supply the publication with a "positive" film like Kodachrome. Initially, that was why I switched over from negative film, but just like your uncle, I also loved to set up the projector and see my work on the "big screen". I cured several friends and relatives of their insomnia with those lovely slide shows. They were great!

And now, I'm to blame as much as anyone for it's demise. I have made the claim that digital photography may be one of the greatest technological advances of our time. A few years ago, even as a serious film hobbyist, I had no qualms at all about making the jump to digital. I've never looked back.

I still have two cameras upstairs loaded with Kodachrome. Many national labs have already said that they'll process the film until sometime in 2010. When I finally go through those couple of rolls I'll be done with my supply of the same film that Zapruder used when he caught Kennedy's assassination, or that Buzz Aldrin used to photograph his crew mate Armstrong on the moon

Photography is a powerful tool, and if you think of all the images captured on Kodachrome since
1935, and all the events it has chronicled, then this is the end of an era I think.