ROCHESTER, NY (June 22, 2009) – Eastman Kodak announced the news today: Kodachrome, its oldest film and a central player in its portfolio for 74 years, officially retires today.
The company said declining customer demand and the proliferation of digital photography brought an end to its oldest and most iconic film.
Only a handful of labs around the world still process Kodachrome 64 and sales of the film line, once Kodak's leading product, are now less than one percent of its film sales.
Kodachrome was a unique film requiring its own manufacturing process that didn't share common components with Kodak's other films, and therefore in recent years has only been manufactured about once a year. Always well-known to photographers, the film crossed over into popular culture vernacular in 1973 in a song that was a Paul Simon hit, "Kodachrome."
Kodachrome wasn't just for still photography, it was also favored by moviemakers because of its rich colors. In an unusual process for slide film, the "color" was added to the film in processing through a series of dyes rather than having layers of color built into the film's emulsion. Dwayne's Photo, a photography lab in Parsons, KS, has agreed to continue processing Kodachrome through 2010.
In a tribute to its most famous film, Kodak has put a gallery online of some of the more iconic images known to have been shot on the film. The tribute site includes video of National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry talking about his life-long use of the film and his iconic "Afghan Girl" shot on Kodachrome. The gallery is online here.
