A Colorful Past

How Kodachrome gave our lives color and how we lost it

My first camera

Getting my first camera from my parents was an unforgettable experience. Back in the day, my primary school had organized a big happening with a flea market to raise money for famine in Ethiopia. We as pupils of the school had gone to great lengths to make it a great fundraising campaign. I remember all kinds of activities: as the oldest ones on our school our class had to build a plane and helicopter to sell by auction, while other classes had done different things, like building an African village and organizing a flea market.

A lot of people had donated to this flea market and my friend and I were selected for taking care of one of the stalls. On our stall, I had spotted something very interesting: a Kodak pocket camera. Now, I had wanted a camera for myself for some time and there was a big, cheap opportunity!

I asked my friend to reserve it for me while I went to look for my parents to ask them if I could get it. Although the school was not big it took me some time to find them and when I explained to my mother what I wanted, she agreed and I ran back to my friend to share the great news. But, disaster! My friend had bad news for me: the camera was sold already; I was greatly disappointed.

When I later got home that evening my parents told me they had a surprise for me: and yes, it was that pocket camera! You see, the reason I couldn’t find my parents at first was that directly after I left they coincidently arrived at the stall my friend and I was on. My friend told them I was looking for them and why. My mother saw immediately the possibility of a joke here, bought the camera and persuaded my friend not to tell me that she bought it. That is how I got my first camera and I was quite happy with it.

Shooting analog

It worked with Kodak cartridge film (110mm). No need to lay the film in and spool it up: just put the cartridge in and it was ready to shoot. Due to its size, it was quite easy to take with me. But, after a while, I wanted more options and therefore I bought a second-hand Practica SLR with a nice lens in a photo-shop. I liked taking photographs but wasn’t really a fanatic, for instance, I don’t really remember what types of film I was shooting on, film choice was mainly based on my budget. Besides stills, I also liked to shoot slide film. There was something special about sitting around a projector in plain darkness and not knowing what the next picture would be.

When the digital camera’s started to become cheap enough to try them out I bought a simple camera. It had a low resolution and no LCD screen but it convinced me about the advantages of digital camera’s and I haven’t used an analog camera ever since.

However, interest in analog photographing (as it nowadays is called) was still lurking in the background and several times I almost bought again an old analog camera. Yes, digital is handy and great but there is something about analog photography that is different. The advantage of these days is that information is much easier to get by and also that it easier to get hold of camera’s you have never heard of or couldn’t pay for before. Unless it is a Leica of course; you still need pay big money for them!

The story of Kodachrome

So, what is Kodachrome and what is the story behind it?

I think the first time I heard about Kodachrome was through Paul Simon, which music I liked very much in my teens (and still am fond of). Paul wrote a song called Kodachrome in 1973 which was quite popular in its day.

I didn’t really know much about Kodachrome until it was too late: it particular came to my attention when they stopped making it. On TV I saw a documentary by Steve McCurry. We know Steve (yes, you too) from his stunning “Afghan Girl” photo (1984) which indeed was shot on Kodachrome.

The documentary he made for the National Geographic Channel was about shooting his last roll of Kodachrome. He had asked Kodak for the last roll off the assembly line. With this roll, a Kodachrome 64, he went around the world to shoot some great images. The documentary made a great impact on me: the produced images were stunning! It is ironic that you just discover something when it is no longer available.

As far as I know, unfortunately, I have never used Kodachrome and the main reason for that was probably that it was expensive: when you bought a role you also paid for the development. Since I was paying for my hobby with pocket money I liked to go for cheaper options.

Rise and fall

Kodachrome was introduced in 1935 and went through several reincarnations until it stopped in 2010. It was one of the first types of color film. The film was used for both still photographs and for films. It was used, and a favorite, by professionals and amateurs alike.

Kodachrome was generally regarded as one of the best slide films. Compared to other emulsions, it is distinguished by the enormous sharpness (contour sharpness and fine grain), the natural color rendering and the extremely long shelf life of the colors.

One of the reasons you had to pay in advance of the development was that the development of Kodachrome had its own special and complicated process. In time Kodachrome began to lose market share to new films that were easier to develop. Another factor, that affected all film, was the rise of digital photography.

In 2009 Kodak announced that it was discontinuing Kodachrome and started to phase out the processing, closing labs. In the end, there was one single lab that was able to process these films. This was Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas.

And when that lab also announced it would stop handling Kodachrome by the end of the year 2010, a pilgrimage started all over the world to get here to develop their last Kodachrome rolls. Based on these events Netflix released a film in 2018 aptly named: Kodachrome. There has been obviously a lot of passion out there for Kodachrome.

Kodachrome has been manufactured for 74 years and is therefore the oldest surviving brand of color film for still and motion picture cameras. One of the interesting properties of the film was its dark-storage longevity for which it was much appreciated in the archival and professional market.

Vitamine K14

A characteristic of the Kodachrome slide-films are the deep and special colors. Both are the result of the development process of Kodachrome called the K14 process. With ordinary slide-films, the dyes are already present in the film and the illumination ensures the activation of the color. The dyes in the unexposed areas are then removed in the so-called E-6 development process. At Kodachrome, the three primary colors that mix together to form the spectrum are instead added to the film in a very special process during the development process. This approach was unlike any other color film.

This K14 process requires many more steps (well, 14 in fact..) than the more common E-6 development and can actually only be performed stably by specialized laboratories.

In recent years that Kodachrome was available, more and more of these laboratories closed their doors. In 2010 the last laboratory closed in America and Kodachrome could no longer be developed.

Due to the complex process and toxic chemicals used process K14 is nowadays known as “impossible to replicate”.

Does Kodachrome still has a future?

So, what if you have still a roll of Kodachrome and want it to have developed these days? Well, there are 3 ‘kind of’ possibilities:

• Kodak hinted to bring back Kodachrome

This would be the ideal situation and for a short moment, there seemed an opening. The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Kodak, Steve Overman, said in a podcast that Kodak studied the possibility of Kodachrome’s return. Shortly after that the main company hastily defused this and announced licensed digital filters that recreate the Kodachrome effect. Not quite what the analog photographer was hoping for.

It is a bit unlikely that Kodak will bring the exact same process back because the complexity makes it an unviable business. It is far more likely that they investigate an alternative process with the near same result but lesser complexity. Which leads to the following point:

• People are reengineering reinventing the process

Yes, some people try to make the K14 process themselves and are experimenting with the ‘impossibility’ to develop Kodachrome. One of them is Kelly-Shane Fuller, a let we say, a dedicated photographer that has done a lot of investigation into the process and has come up with an alternative solution that produces results. Last year he offered his development services to a small group while giving no guarantees since he is still busy to tackle the subtleties of the process. Let’s hope he succeeds and finalizes it.

Develop it in black and white

If the content of the film is the most important thing and not the colors then there is another solution: you could still develop the film in black-and-white chemicals (like D-76). Because the process doesn’t include any of the dyes, you are left with monochrome images.

The reason that black-and-white development works so well is that this is also the first step in de K14 process: first developing in black-and-white is done and after that, the three primary colors that mix to form the spectrum are added in three development steps rather than built into its layers.

And if digital processing is acceptable: these black-and-white images can be colorized with software like Photoshop. With using (CMYK) layers you can mimic the K14 process in that you can build your own colors.

There are even websites and apps (including one from Google) where you can upload black-and-white images and where they are colorized by an AI. From a practical perspective, this could be a great option!

Fading out

For me, Kodachrome stands for images with a vibrant, fairy-tail like colors. The colors are often described as being realistic but I think that this is not correct; there are a certain hue and certain color translation that makes it great, vibrant and very recognizable but I wouldn’t call it lifelike. It excels in portraits and colorful settings.

It is unlikely that Kodachrome is ever coming back due to various reasons. But say never, never: Kodak has last year brought back a slide-film called Ektachrome after it was canceled in 2012.

It is 2019. I have just bought a new/old analog camera again. If Kodak ever re-releases Kodachrome again I am now ready to try it out!

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