Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away ... too late. RIP Kodak's iconic slide film.

Yep, K-14 process film is dead after 74 years. Only one commercial lab still processed it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE55L3CZ20090622?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

Ektachrome isn't dead yet, but I don't know many people who use film anymore. Certainly none in the newspaper business.

This completely blows up a college course I once took (I checked; they're still teaching it) which depended heavily on hand-loaded Kodachrome 35mm film.

 

I used to shoot 'chrome all the time; I thought I was the last guy left doing it when I gave it up about 3 years ago.

Ektachrome's OK, but it fades faster.

 

I used to shoot 1600 b/w film with a sweet 5.0 zoom and flash and man, I got some great football pictures at some places where they must've hung oil lamps for lights.

 

http://www.pantagraph.com/entertainment/arts-and-theatre/article_8e3220f4-9e73-11df-896a-001cc4c03286.html

Find out what pictures were taken with the very last roll of Kodachrome.

 

And yet, for some goddamned reason, Polaroid is bringing back the SX-70.

 

Do James Garner and Mariette Hartley know the SX-70 is coming back??

 

Lee Garner Jr. LIKES!

 

I thought they were bringing back Polaroids all together after that independent company kept it goin?

 

Now that's a good read. And the luddite in me agrees wholeheartedly with this quote, from the end of the story:

While digital cameras work great in the deadline-driven, temporary world of journalism, I think historians in another 30, 40 years are going to be hard pressed to access digital images from the early 2000s. If they haven't been printed out, they will be gone.

For example, let's say I wanted to access some college papers and notes I saved on "floppy disks" 20 years ago? Oh wait ... no computer will load that stuff now.

Call me crazy, but at home, I still use my old 35mm SLR film camera. Maybe someday my kids (who mock me mercilessly now) will thank me for that.

 

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.