Kodak Stops Processing Kodachrome Films
The last rolls of Kodachrome film were processed in a small laboratory in Kansas this week. Dwayne’s Photo is the last place on earth that processed Eastman Kodak’s legendary film. Kodak announced that it was not making any more chemicals needed to process Kodachrome films.
Kodachrome was produced for over 74 years, from 1935 to 2009. It was used for different types of cameras. For many photographers, professionals and amateurs alike, it was the film used for making color images. Kodachrome was valued for its brilliant and natural colors and because film rolls could be used stored for a long time.
For many decades Kodachrome dominated the market. The downfall of the film started in the 1990s when Kodachrome got competition from Fuji. The Japanese company produced a film of similar quality but it was not as expensive. In the early 2000s more and more digital cameras hit the markets. Kodak no longer made any money with Kodachrome films. In June 2009, the company announced that it would not sell any more films and declared that the deadline for processing remaining films would be the end of 2010.
The secret of Kodachrome’s success was the mixture of special chemicals that only Kodak produced. The processing procedure is very complicated, something that you cannot develop on your own in your darkroom.
The iconic film is a product of the post-war generation. When people started going on holidays they took rolls of films with them. When they came home they had their films developed and showed their slides to the whole family.
Many famous images of the past decades were captured on Kodachrome. In 1963 an amateur filmer used Kodachrome to film President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas.
In 1973 Paul Simon produced a hit song called Kodachrome. All that is left of the world’s most famous film roll are his lyrics: They give us those nice bright colors. They give us the greens of summers. Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day.
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Words
- alike = the same
- announce = to say officially
- assassination = to kill a very famous person
- capture = here: make
- chemicals = material used to develop films
- competition = fight, struggle, opposition
- complicated =complex, difficult
- darkroom = special room with only red light, in which film from a camera is made into photographs
- deadline = the time or date by which something ends
- decade = a period of ten years
- declare = to say officially
- develop = here: to make prints or slides out of a film
- dominate = to be number one
- downfall = decline, breakdown
- hit = come on
- iconic = famous, well-known
- image = picture, photo
- laboratory = special room for processing films
- legendary = famous
- lyrics = words of a song text
- mixture = combination
- process = to print a picture or a slide from a film
- produce = make
- remaining = left over
- roll = piece of camera film rolled into the shape of a tube
- secret = something that only few people know about
- similar = almost the same
- store = save, keep
- value = here: to be liked