Kodachrome (the film)

[twobjshelbys]

I'm on a film scanning mission. I bought a Nikon Coolscan 9000 last spring. I experimented with it to convince myself it worked and recognizing the magnitude of my task, put it away. Not it's winter and can't drive the cars so I'm going to start scanning. I bought a new Lenovo Thinkpad W510 (the W series is the root of the "new digital darkroom" with color calibrator and wicked dislay). Nikon software for the scanner is not supported on Windows 7 and I found two candidates. If you've got an older scanner that stopped working with Windows 7 try VueScan. Chances are 99% it supports the old beast. Silverfast is also a contender but it's very expensive, and the whiz-bang technology they use for scanning Kodachrome only works on the Mac...

To get the best out of the 9000 you need to calibrate it (regardless of what software you use). This is done with a so-called IT-8 target - a color and grey scale image that looks like the color picker for your monitor. This is especially true for Kodachrome. Which brings me to the reason for this topic...

Kodak stopped making Kodachrome in 2009 and believes the last of it was off the shelves near the end of 2009.

Processing Kodachrome will end at the end of 2010... So if you have a roll of Kodachrome in your junk drawer, send it lickety split to:

Dwayne's Photo Service
415 S. 32nd Street
Parsons, KS 67357
(620) 421-3940
Toll Free: 1-800-522-3940
Fax: (620) 421-3174

or forever hold your peace.

Kodachrome processing was incredibly complex, involved something like 30 steps and was never made available outside of blessed Kodak labs. The temperature and timing and the noxious chemicals were deemed too complex, time consuming and dangerous for home use (something about your city's wastewater treatment department would hate you for). I processed Ektachorme in the darkroom but Kodachrome was sent to Kodak.

Even Kodak admits that none of their current films can match Kodachrome.