[rollei_list] Re: Kodachrome
- From: "Richard Knoppow" <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:30:48 -0800
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Sadowski" <dsadowski@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 10:31 AM
Subject: [rollei_list] Re: Kodachrome
They kept Kodachrome on the market for 65 years, and maybe
25 years after
E-6 films were perfected. So, the film hasn't been an
absolute neccesity
for some time.
Meanwhile, the processing was an absolute nightmare. You
had to keep a
chemist on duty full time. Some of the chemistry was
mixed from scratch. A
huge amount of film was necessary to keep things in
control.
One by one, the labs dropped out, until there was only one
left. Still.
Kodak kept it on the market.
Doesn't that count as loyalty?
Kodachrome seems to have been introduced originally as
a stop gap. Kodak had been trying to develop a good color
film for general purpose use for decades. They had
experimented with various types including a lenticular film
(the original Kodacolor) but none were very satisfactory.
To make a multilayer film were the couplers and dyes
stay put is not trivial. Kodak was having trouble with this
and decided that in order to have a film on the market it
had to put the couplers in the developers and rely on a
complex processing technique. AGFA had solved the problem of
sequestering the couplers and had a coupler incorporated
film, Agfacolor, on the market at least experimentally.
Kodak probably knew of the developments at AGFA. Kodak had
existing patents covering controlled penetetrion of
solutions into emulsions and used that method for the first
Kodachrome. Kodachrome was superior in quality to the
original Agfacolor but Agfacolor never got to the US market
anyway. After about a year Kodak discovered a way to
simplify the Kodachrome process a bit and eliminate the need
for the controlled penetration of bleach. At that time they
expanded the formats available, originally only 16mm movie
film. The Kodachrome process was a bit of a tour de force.
There were a couple of other color films without
incorporated couplers, one made by Ilford which used silver
layers that were fogged in first development to seperate the
flashing exposures and another by Kryptar which was based on
expired Kodak patents but didn't last long (I think 3M wound
up with the remains of the company).
Kodak has had to adjust to going from a perfectly
enormous market to a niche market for conventional
photographic products and to shift is capital into other
businesses. Its still in the imaging business but
essentially is now an electronics company and not a chemical
company. While Kodak has suffered from poor management in
the past I think the current problems are mostly from a
changing world.
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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