[rollei_list] Re: The End of Kodachrome

More than 20 years ago, Kodak closed their local Kodachrome processing
facility at Prairie Avenue in Chicago.  Then, two local labs tried to
pick up the baton.

On the professional side, Ross Ehlert had a separate facility just for
Kodachrome and offered four-hour turnaround.  This coincided roughly
with the introduction of PKR120.  Ross Ehlert also offered a "push"
service and I believe they went up to 1 1/3 stops.

The thought was to entice professionals to use Kodachrome for shoots
they had been doing with Ektachrome or Fujichrome by offering service
that was somewhat comparable (at the time you could get E-6 turned
around in two hours).

On the amateur side, LaSalle Photo Service also established a
Kodachrome line.  I worked there at the time and shot several rolls of
film that were used for testing.

This was a million dollar investment.  Because of the possibility of
an explosion, LP had to install a blast cap in the building's roof.

The chemicals used in processing Kodachrome were mixed from scratch
and you had to keep a chemist on duty full-time.

Kodak made this effort because Kodachrome was highly profitable.  They
could reclaim the silver during processing.

Unfortunately, both labs failed.  Pros did not switch to shooting
Kodachrome and there wasn't enough of an amateur market to feed the
amateur line.

I don't know what sort of market research Ross-Ehlert did before
opening their line, but I recall it only lasted a few months before
they pulled the plug.

LaSalle carried on a while longer and even won a contract to process
Kodacheome for Wal-Mart but even this did not yield enough film to
keep the chemistry in good shape, much less make any sort of profit.

In this case, I know the owner was sold a bill of goods by Kodak.
They wanted him to open a K-14 line at great expense to him and he
ended up taking a huge financial loss on it.  The lab in general had
other problems but this was one more reason that the LaSalle plant,
once the region's largest indie lab, shut down forever shortly after
the owner died in 1996.

That's really when it became obvious to me that it was only a matter
of time before Kodachrome went the way of the dinosaur, dodo and 116
film.  Add to that the fact that you can shoot Fujichrome Velvia that
serves much the same function as Kodacheome and uses E-6 processing.
---
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