Posts Tagged ‘Kodachrome’
Kodachrome Diptych #4
Monday, January 31st, 2011Kodachrome Diptych #3
Monday, January 24th, 2011
Tires and Hot Rod
Kodachrome Diptych #2
Monday, January 17th, 2011
Car Wash – Grand Prarie
Kodachrome…may you RIP
Sunday, January 9th, 2011Kodachrome. That name stirs up many emotions. Floods the mind with many images. Countless of them that you’ve probably seen at some time and point in your life. Time, Life, National Geographic, all had photographers who shot with the iconic (I don’t even think that that word does justice to the emulsion) Kodak slide film. Paul Simon sang “Please don’t take my Kodachrome away”…but Kodak did, no longer producing the film or the infamously toxic chemical process used to develop it K-14.
A little over 5 years ago, I found myself in a closing Ritz camera store in the Grapevine Mills mall. They were trying to unload everything that they could, including rolls of expired film of all kinds. Black and white, Fuji color, Kodak color print, different slide films, 110 (when’s the last time you’ve seen 110 film??). Digging through the bin, I didn’t see anything that caught my eye….until I saw a couple of boxes of K64, expiration 2003. I grabbed them (there were actually alot more than the two I picked up…why didn’t I buy more rolls is beyond me), and I was off. I knew that it was hard to get Kodachrome processed then (I believe that Dwayne’s and one other place still processed K-14 at that time), and I knew that I would have to make the images count, that I had to use them for something special (so I thought), so I brought them home and threw them in the freezer, to be thawed out for that imaginary occasion in the unknown future.
Those rolls sat unused for 5 years.
When the announcement came from Kodak that they were ending the 75 year production run of the film, and support of the K-14 process, I knew that I couldn’t wait forever, that I had to shoot something with the film. The imaginary special occasion was the experience of using this film, and being one of the last groups of people to have Dwayne’s process it (my film made it there around Dec 10th). I shot one roll of K64 (the other roll I gave to Grant Meeks for him to have fun shooting some Kodachrome) and a roll of K200 that I found laying around(I have no idea when or where I bought it!). I decided to shoot the K64 as an exercise in seeing and shooting with limitations; one body (My trusty and war torn Nikon F3), one lens (one of my favorite Nikkors, the 20 2.8 ais – really a limitation in seeing, shooting with only an ultrawide angle lens).
***The First and Last frame***
Went to A Camera Show ***attn photo-geek alert!***
Monday, February 1st, 2010I’ve been waiting for it seems like forever to go to a camera show, but it’s not like none have come around these parts; they have. I saw that this past September, there was a show in Grapevine. I just always seem to hear about the shows AFTER they’re over. It’s been years since I’ve been to a show, they’re always a good place to pick up little odds and ends that you might have a hard time finding in your local camera shop, and you didn’t want to pay full price from like B&H or Calumet Photo. Plus if you want to get some old film or early digital gear, there’s no better place to get it. I was excited because my favorite place to buy my gear KEH, was going to be in the house – buying gear on the spot and paying you in cash, then and there. So I unloaded a couple of D1-series bodies that I stopped shooting regularly with when I bought my D300, and I said goodbye to my Tokina 12-24. A great lens, I just wasn’t using it enough to justify keeping it. Now that KEH put some cash in my pocket, I’m torn about what I should buy…I know that I’m getting a lens, something in a focal length that I’ll use. I’ve narrowed it down to either the 85 1.8D, or the 20 2.8D….choices, choices.
I came across this one dealer’s table…well he wasn’t really a dealer. He was a collector who was trying to sell off some of the cameras that he had collected throughout the years. He was worried what would have happened to his collection if he passed away, that his kids would sell it at a garage sale, not knowing the value of the items. He had a lot of great stuff, he let me shoot some photos of his items:
He had a lot of old Nikon manuals for lenses and for some of the motor drive models, and I wish I had bought that old Bolex! Everything that he had was in immaculate condition…
He had 3 of those Speed Graphics, 3 of them, all in excellent condition. Check out the box of KodaChrome II movie film by the old Bolexes! And he was telling me how cool I would look with that Nikon 300 2.8 attached to one of my Nikons….I don’t really have any use for glass that long, but I couldn’t disagree with the coolness factor!
Other than the cold hard cash that KEH put in my pocket, the only other thing that I left with was something else that is easy to find at camera shows: old film. I saw a vendor selling rolls of film for $1 a roll, so I bought four rolls of Ektachrome 160T:
***Yeah, you’re seeing that right Expiration date: August 1984. I’m curious to see what kind of results I can get from 26 year old film, see how much color shift I get! Even though those eighties Kodak boxes are awesome as well, I hate the thought of cracking them open to get at that film inside.
Kodachrome….
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009By now everyone knows about Kodak putting the nail into a piece of photographic history by killing off their legendary emulsion Kodachrome earlier this year. And Dwayne’s in Kansas, the only lab in the world that still does the K-14 process (how Kodachrome is developed) announced that they are going to stop developing and processing Kodachrome. I bought two of these rolls of K64 about 5 years ago, (these rolls expired in October 2003) and stuck them in my freezer. Due to a recent move out of my old apartment, I took out all the film that I had frozen (most of it expired). I had forgotten about these rolls, I was saving them for some special occasion or something. And now, with the end of the year rapidly approaching us, I need to take to the streets and shoot something with it, just to say that I shot some Kodachrome. I don’t know exactly what though….
