Kodachrome

[Doctor Strange]

I admit that I am lucky: my retired-pro parents' basement darkroom is still available to me. But only for another year or two at the most (they are in their late 80s and declining very seriously, and I'm sure that we'll be selling their house pretty soon), and then I'll be out of luck too. I have no room in my place for a darkroom... (Certainly not the kind that I'm used to, with a 4x5 Omega enlarger!)

I think film photography will continue for many years, just as photography didn't make painting obsolete. There may be less equipment manufacturers and a much smaller choice of films (at much higher prices), etc., but it will go on. It may be that the Kodachrome process is too complex to be taken up by another lab... but we'll have to see what happens with the European efforts to revive the Polaroid system - it's an interesting test of the new marketplace.

BTW, we had a Mamiya C330 for many years - an oustanding tool. (Before it, we had an original Mamiyaflex C that we bought used from a friend... which convinced us of Mamiya TLR quality. And we ultimately replaced the C330 with an RB-67. [Alas, I have no itention of ever using it - is anybody looking for a good deal on one?])

 

[MrBern]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/technology/companies/23kodak.html

It enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, but in recent years sales have dropped to just a fraction of 1 percent of the company’s total sales of still-picture films.

It was the basis not only for countless family slide shows but also for world-renowned images, including Abraham Zapruder’s 8-millimeter reel of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

The last Kodachrome developing lab will continue til 2010.

 

[Subvet642]

I admit that I am lucky: my retired-pro parents' basement darkroom is still available to me. But only for another year or two at the most (they are in their late 80s and declining very seriously, and I'm sure that we'll be selling their house pretty soon), and then I'll be out of luck too. I have no room in my place for a darkroom... (Certainly not the kind that I'm used to, with a 4x5 Omega enlarger!)

I think film photography will continue for many years, just as photography didn't make painting obsolete. There may be less equipment manufacturers and a much smaller choice of films (at much higher prices), etc., but it will go on. It may be that the Kodachrome process is too complex to be taken up by another lab... but we'll have to see what happens with the European efforts to revive the Polaroid system - it's an interesting test of the new marketplace.

BTW, we had a Mamiya C330 for many years - an oustanding tool. (Before it, we had an original Mamiyaflex C that we bought used from a friend... which convinced us of Mamiya TLR quality. And we ultimately replaced the C330 with an RB-67. [Alas, I have no itention of ever using it - is anybody looking for a good deal on one?])

I think you're right, I think that film will continue for many more years. I love my C 330, and in a perfect world, I would be able to get a digital capture device for it; a mechanical camera is so much faster to work with, less "junk" between you and the subject.