For Kodachrome Fans, Road Ends at Photo Lab in Kansas

[groovedaddy]

(I will miss Kodachrome dearly! gd)
PARSONS, Kan. — An unlikely pilgrimage is under way to Dwayne’s Photo, a small family business that has through luck and persistence become the last processor in the world of Kodachrome, the first successful color film and still the most beloved.

That celebrated 75-year run from mainstream to niche photography is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday when the last processing machine is shut down here to be sold for scrap.

In the last weeks, dozens of visitors and thousands of overnight packages have raced here, transforming this small prairie-bound city not far from the Oklahoma border for a brief time into a center of nostalgia for the days when photographs appeared not in the sterile frame of a computer screen or in a pack of flimsy prints from the local drugstore but in the warm glow of a projector pulling an image from a carousel of vivid slides.

In the span of minutes this week, two such visitors arrived. The first was a railroad worker who had driven from Arkansas to pick up 1,580 rolls of film that he had just paid $15,798 to develop. The second was an artist who had driven directly here after flying from London to Wichita, Kan., on her first trip to the United States to turn in three rolls of film and shoot five more before the processing deadline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us/30film.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Quite possibly the only film type to have a song written about it

[frazzled]

2. Here ya go: Central Park concert, 1981

Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away! (Turn up the sound: it's old footage, and they look so young!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXZTBu_3ioI

[dodger501]

3. He had a Nikon camera

Just like I do (D700).
Sometimes I photoshop images with a Kodachrome filter, always like the way it looks.
Here is an example:

http://dodgerdigital.smugmug.com/Events/After-The-Snow/14930765_CTVKw#1114671065_cryZn

[frazzled]

4. Beautiful! Such nice bright colors! And you might want one of these

Only $12.95, while supplies last at http://www.dwaynesphoto.com/

[dodger501]

5. I got it!

Ordered mine, thanks!

[eridani]

6. Would Kodak let the patent go so that a hobbyist minority could use the stuff? n/t

[groovedaddy]

7. I'm sure they'd sell it, if the price was right. n.t

[jmowreader]

8. OMG you do NOT know what you are asking!

The complexity of making the film, much less processing it, is high enough that a "hobbyist minority" couldn't do it.

And frankly, if I was going to pick one process Kodak killed that a hobbyist minority would want to do, the Dye Transfer process for making color prints is the one.

[awoke_in_2003]

9. digital photography...

may never catch up to Kodachromes quality.