Here's some really bad news for photographers
May 2001
Here it is, you might want to sit down for this:
Kodachrome 25 is being discontinued. That's right, Kodachrome 25, the finest film manufactured in the USA., is being discontinued. Kodachrome 25 is the
sharpest, richest color film made by Kodak for the public. Kodachrome was the first color film available back in 1935 in slower versions. Kodachrome 25 was released in 1975, and the professional version was released in 1983. (Living in a rural area I never even knew about K-25 Professional) For me, shooting 35 mm, a small format, K-25 has been indispensable. I found long ago that when enlarging photos from 35 mm beyond about 16 x 20 inches, only the sharpest film available would not show annoying film grain. Kodachrome enables a photographer with a small format (35mm) to achieve medium format results.
K-25 also has the richest and most true color of any Kodak film. K-25 excelled at having a wide latitude, that's the ability to show detail in areas of an image that are too dark or light, like having a higher dynamic range
in an audio recording. This makes over and underexposure less likely. And I'm pretty sure the Kodachromes are significantly more archival than other films. For example, while most films will have 20% color fade in just 20
years, Kodachrome fades something like 10 % in 30 years.
Apparently, as professional photographers are the minority, sales of K-25 have not been high enough. Most people taking pictures only make small prints, and need them
right away. Or perhaps these people just don't know how much better their pictures would look if they used a better film, or, that they can easily make prints from slides, and that slides are easier to handle and more
convenient to store.
To understand how sharp K-25 is, we can compare it to the picture of the box below, which is 300 x 363 pixels. If this picture were enlarged to 100 inches wide, each pixel would be about 1/3 inch square.
This would look terrible until you got so far away that the box looked no larger than it does here. A photograph taken with K-25 through a high quality lens on 35 mm film, has approximately the equivalent of 12,000
x 8,000 pixels. A 100 inch enlargement would have pixels about 1/120 inch square, and would look good even on close inspection. You would be able to read the smallest print on the box. K-25 is three times as sharp as the finest digital cameras and scanners costing under $10,000. To look at it another way, even if you only make 3 x 5 inch prints, you might like to print just one persons face in a crowd. With Kodachrome, you can print a small part of a picture and it will still be sharp. With K-25 your pictures will have much less graininess. Graininess and poor color is why color photos in the newspaper don't look as good as color photos in a fine art book, or color photograph.
I make my gallery quality prints on Cibachrome paper for several reasons. For one, Cibachrome has much better color than the Kodak papers. I have had 20 x 30 inch prints on both papers of the same picture side by side for
comparison. Subtle colors sometimes disappear on the Kodak papers, turning to black. The colors are much more vivid on Cibachrome. Also, Cibachrome is much more archival than the Kodak papers, with performance similar to what I
said above about Kodachrome. Also, Cibachrome is a direct positive paper, making prints directly from slides without an internegative. This results in the best possible quality and makes it a perfect combination with K-25.
The Professional Kodachromes and Kodachrome in larger formats (and probably movie film) were discontinued about a year ago.
I have been purchasing and freezing a several years supply of this great film since I heard the bad
news about two weeks ago. They will still process it as long as K-64 and K-200 are still being made
What can you do about this dilemma ? Call Kodak and ask them not to discontinue your favorite film.
Here is a link to data sheets on Kodachrome:
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/e55/e55.shtml#05
There is one option other than switching to a larger format. Fuji has a film which may be as good as Kodachrome 25, FUJICHROME Velvia RVP for Professionals
. Some people say this film is better than K-25, others say it's color is not as good. I'll be trying some soon, before purchasing much more K-25. Here's a link to a data sheet on this film:
http://home.fujifilm.com/products/datasheet/
If you have compared this film to K-25, or any other high resolution
color film you would recommend, please tell me what you think.
I remember for about a decade paying $3.15 per roll for this film, and about the same to process it. Now I have been paying between $6.73 and $10.20 per roll, and $6.76 for processing.
All these years I had been hoping Kodak would come out with an even higher resolution film then K-25. Kodak tells me K-25 is already near the resolving limit of the finest lenses. I'm not sure this is true. For now, K-64 will be the finest Kodak film. I will miss K-25.
