What I Won't Miss About Kodachrome

I sent twelve rolls of Kodachrome off to Dwayne's for processing; Dwayne's, of course, is the only place in the world that can still process Kodachrome, so there's no real choice in the matter.

Much of the returned film is badly scratched, mostly horizontal scratches running length-wise along the film, with other scratches thrown in for good measure. Infrared cleaning in the scanning process is troublesome with Kodachrome and often does more damage than it cures.

In a sky area like this (where the scratches are most visible) it's relatively easy to clean up in Photoshop. In areas with actual detail, it's a real pain. If I'm going to spend a half hour processing each image, I might as well be shooting digital.

One thing I won't miss when Kodachrome is gone: not being able to do my own processing.

Comments

[Rob]

So the scratches are essentially something mechanical in their processing? (Like, there's a burr in there somewhere ...?) That has got to be tremendously annoying given that there's only one place to process the film now.

I went through my boxes of pictures not too long ago ... it was amazing how I used to routinely go through rolls and rolls of film every summer. I think I have a roll probably still sitting in the camera from (gulp) the 90s. Who knows where that is, though ...

[Jeremy]

It's hard to say what the exact cause is -- the processing involves machines, but Kodachrome processing has always been something done far away in mysterious ways, so I'm not really that familiar with the mechanics of it. And they don't always scratch the film, in fact this batch is the first really bad one I've seen.

Kodachrome goes away entirely at the end of this year, though, and that's that. Other film can be processed anywhere, but "anywhere" includes at home, so I do it myself. Then if I scratch the film I have no one else to blame. :)

[Lawrence Ripsher]

Interesting to read. I never shot Kodachrome (haven't only recently got into film) so can't vouch for loving or missing it. I am starting to become quite enamored with Ektachrome E100 VS though. A little like Velvia but less mental on the skin tones.

Here's a shot i saw recently from a friend (well, his dad). http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommyoshima/4790310171/ - Tommy was singing the praises of the durability of Kodachrome in this particular case.