Steam & Excursion > Hard To Believe - Today is the END for Kodachorme

In my 45+ years of rail photogrpahy I have taken over 68,000 slides, all on Kodachrome. It is bittersweet that today is the very last day that this legendary film will be processed.

Goodbye old friend.

Martin

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My last roll of Kodachrome was lost in the post somewhere between here (Farnham, England) and the then European processing lab in Switzerland back in 2003 - gutted! That ended my Kodachrome days. First roll was in 1961...
The best slide film for lasting in good condition over the years in my view.
John McIvor
www.svsfilm.com

We knew her well - Kodachrome film and mailers. How many rolls of Kodachrome continue lost in the UP Postal Service - we'll never know. Love live digital - I've said farewell to lost images account the dreaded post office "black hole".

My Kodachrome slides had held up well - helps that I'm not in the higher humidity Eastern states anymore.

I am currently scanning Kodachrome slides that my father took in the late 40's, and the color in most of them is as good as if it were taken yesterday. Too bad it's gone.
Bill Pyper
Salem, OR

Indeed, the film is stable. Here's a 1/2 frame 35mm slide my father took in Times Square, New Yawk, NY when he was a 16 year old in 1942. Amazing color after 68 years!

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Will there be available a way to download old digital pics 10 years from now??
I wonder because technology changes so fast.

I owned a large collection taken by someone in the early 50s and had make professional grade negs from the slides and sold prints from them but evenually the market became saturated. The only thing was over time they did darken a little. There also was some kind of fungus on some of them but I was able to clean them up with a Kodak film cleaner and it didn't hurt the emulsion one bit. I sold the collection a few years ago to a photo dealer who is still selling prints from them.

Sent my last roll in December 27 Priority Mail the day of New York City's Big Blizzard 2010. Mostly Christmas stuff...except the last shot was NJT 'lectrics in the snow. Goodbye K-chrome.

BobP Wrote:
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> Will there be available a way to download old
> digital pics 10 years from now??
> I wonder because technology changes so fast.


The file formats are probably stable enough, especially if you stick with JPG, TIFF, and DNG. Media is another matter. Remember the Sony Mavica? It used 3-1/2 inch floppy disks. Getting hard to find a reader for those. Data CD has been much longer lasting in terms of compatibility, but CD-R longevity is iffy at best. You need to be carefull selecting CD-Rs with the right dyes, store them properly, etc. Media of choice today is the external hard disk, which has it's own set of vulnerabilities. But, as long as you keep updating the storage media, there's no reason the JPGs of 10 years ago won't be readable 100 years from now.

All the best in the New Year,

- Arved