Kodachrome

From Just Solve the File Format Problem
Revision as of 21:27, 16 March 2013 by Dan Tobias (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search
File Format
Name Kodachrome
Ontology
Released 1935


Kodachrome was the brand name of a particular film technology released by Kodak in 1935 (after years of experimentation going back as far as the 1920s), and discontinued in 2009. The most popular and well-known format of this film was 35 mm slides, but it was used for other sorts of film, both still and motion-picture. Kodachrome was very popular in its time, and was memorialized in song. Alas, like Paul Simon's mom, Kodak did eventually take Kodachrome away. The film ended production in 2009, and on December 30, 2010, the last photo lab in the world with the capacity to develop Kodachrome (requiring special processes and chemicals not found in normal photo labs) ceased this service. There are reportedly ways of developing Kodachrome in black-and-white only that can be performed in normal photo labs, but as Simon sang, "Eveything looks worse in black-and-white."

The developing process for Kodachrome was known as K-14, and attempts by "photo geeks" to homebrew it after official support ended have failed due to its highly specialized nature; it requires complex and hard-to-maintain equipment for which parts are no longer manufactured, and specialized chemicals also no longer manufactured. So you're out of luck if you ever want to try to develop it in its full-color form.

Technical info

History of Kodachrome

Other links

Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Toolbox