Interesting Kodachrome fact....

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matt5791
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Interesting Kodachrome fact....

Post by matt5791 »

Something I read on a stills forum posted by a former Kodak employee in Rochester - don't know if it is true or if anything like this has been posted here before, but maybe John could confirm.
People said that Kodak's lack of support for Kodachrome began its slide, but from the inside, I saw the opposite. Remember, they went ahead with a t-grain 400 speed Kodachrome that was never sold due to customer apathy. The dropoff was from the consumer side. So, Kodachrome, which used to be coated at several plants 24/7/365 is now coated at 1 plant, about once each year. That is a huge drop. In addition, the patent on the Kodachrome process has now been abandoned by Kodak to encourage anyone to use it if they wish.
400 speed T-grain Kodachrome sounds interesting.

Also, now the patent has been dropped - quick, build a coating plant and start making K40.....
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Re: Interesting Kodachrome fact....

Post by MovieStuff »

matt5791 wrote:"....Remember, they went ahead with a t-grain 400 speed Kodachrome that was never sold due to customer apathy...."
Because Kodak waited about 20 years too long to offer it. I remember working photo retail just out of high school in the mid 70's and all the pro photographers I knew would have given a knuckle to have high speed Kodachrome or medium format Kodachrome but the word we kept getting from Kodak was "there's no demand for it". The marketing people at Kodak just seemed to be out of synch with its constituency. Sometimes it seems like they still are.
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Re: Interesting Kodachrome fact....

Post by low grade moron »

MovieStuff wrote:
matt5791 wrote:"....Remember, they went ahead with a t-grain 400 speed Kodachrome that was never sold due to customer apathy...."
Because Kodak waited about 20 years too long to offer it. I remember working photo retail just out of high school in the mid 70's and all the pro photographers I knew would have given a knuckle to have high speed Kodachrome or medium format Kodachrome but the word we kept getting from Kodak was "there's no demand for it". The marketing people at Kodak just seemed to be out of synch with its constituency. Sometimes it seems like they still are.
your response contains a number of logical fallacies and muddied thinking.

Because Kodak waited about 20 years too long to offer it.

This presumes that Kodak, a market dependent, research-orientated film manufacturer, "waits" to offer new improved products. It also presumes that they will willingly wait for two decades and sit on superior products they have already developed.

Please offer proof and examples of this happening to support your assertion.

I remember working photo retail just out of high school in the mid 70's and all the pro photographers I knew would have given a knuckle to have high speed Kodachrome or medium format Kodachrome but the word we kept getting from Kodak was "there's no demand for it".

Kodak did not introduce T-grain negative technology until 1982 with VR 1000, after which the other T-grain films followed. No doubt there was perhaps no demand for grainy 400 speed conventional Kodachrome in the mid 1970's when you claim to have experienced this. For this is all that could have been available to offer by Kodak at the time.

The marketing people at Kodak just seemed to be out of synch with its constituency. Sometimes it seems like they still are.

You assume, illogically, that the marketing people had 400 speed T-grain film to market and were therefore out of synch with their market. They did not, and were not, in the 1970's. Kodak's business was booming in that era.

You assume, illogically, that there is some connection beween your fallacious argument that Kodak's marketing people of the 1970's were out of touch with their customers because they were not selling film material which did not exist, and Kodak's current marketing people some 30 years after. Quite likely, all would be retired, and the conditions and market place are in no way remotely similar. No legitimate connection can be made to claim that the marketing department of today is "out of touch" because the marketing department of 30 years ago was not demonstrably out of touch, as they could not sell material which did not exist.
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Re: Interesting Kodachrome fact....

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low grade moron wrote: your response contains a number of logical fallacies and muddied thinking.
Nah.

I worked in association with hundreds of professional photographers back then and they all were very verbal about wanting both high speed Kodachrome as well as medium format Kodachrome. Any time the Kodak rep was in the store, he was virtually ambushed by any of the professional shooters in the store, all making their desires very well known. In fact, the camera retail chain I worked for (Skylark Camera) even set up a multi-store petition that garnered thousands of signatures just from the Houston area alone. Competing camera stores in the area did the same. It is estimated that more than 10,000 signatures were gathered from Houston, Dallas and Austin area photographers, all showing a demand for high speed Kodachrome as well as medium format Kodachrome. A local group spearheading this initiative at the time also contacted photographers in Los Angeles, Denver, Miami as well as New York to get signatures from them for the petition. I believe the final number of signatures topped 40,000. After the smoke cleared, the official letter I was shown from Kodak's marketing group was pleasant but dismissive, stating that they appreciated the suggestion but that their research had shown there to be no demand for either high speed Kodachrome nor medium format Kodachrome.

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Post by matt5791 »

I thought Kodachrome did used to be available in MF? Did they subsequently offer this?
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Re: Interesting Kodachrome fact....

Post by reflex »

low grade moron wrote:your response contains a number of logical fallacies and muddied thinking. This presumes that Kodak, a market dependent, research-orientated film manufacturer, "waits" to offer new improved products. It also presumes that they will willingly wait for two decades and sit on superior products they have already developed.

Please offer proof and examples of this happening to support your assertion...
Could this be The Member Formerly Known As Santo? Gosh. :roll:
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Post by Patrick »

Certainly not the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Actually, I was wondering if Low Grade Moron and M Lord were one and the same person - trying on a different 'character.' He certainly likes to pick arguments.
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Post by MovieStuff »

Patrick wrote:Certainly not the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Actually, I was wondering if Low Grade Moron and M Lord were one and the same person - trying on a different 'character.' He certainly likes to pick arguments.
Well, in this case there's really no argument to pick. Rather than suffering from "logical fallacies and muddied thinking", I'm merely relaying what factually happened about 30 years ago. If anyone chooses not to believe it, it's no skin off my butt.
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Post by christoph »

MovieStuff wrote:Rather than suffering from "logical fallacies and muddied thinking", I'm merely relaying what factually happened..
rats, and here i was already hoping i wasnt the only one with a cracked up mind on this forum ;)
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Post by mattias »

MovieStuff wrote:Rather than suffering from "logical fallacies and muddied thinking", I'm merely relaying what factually happened about 30 years ago.
that's a very common delusion. moses, for example, thought so too. of course he was dried out in a desert and those were times when people actually believed in superstition over science. (wait...)

/matt
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Post by MovieStuff »

mattias wrote:
MovieStuff wrote:Rather than suffering from "logical fallacies and muddied thinking", I'm merely relaying what factually happened about 30 years ago.
that's a very common delusion.....
Not sure I get your point. Are you saying that the what I witnessed 30 years ago was a delusion? That the petition drive did not really exist? That the letter I saw from Kodak was an illusion? 8O

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Post by sciolist »

matt5791 wrote:I thought Kodachrome did used to be available in MF? Did they subsequently offer this?
Yes, it was available briefly. I shot a dozen or so 120 rolls of the stuff.
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High Speed Kodachrome

Post by Jim Carlile »

Moviestuff's right. There was a huge clamor for high speed Kodachrome in the late 70's. Whatever t-max technology was developed, it would have coincided with Kodak's incredibly wierd melange of filmstocks and chemistries that they had available in the 80's. Between the obsolete processes still being used by older fans, and the newer matching chemistry that kodak tried to encourage, it must have been a nightmare for them to keep everything straight-- that could be a reason why they didn't pursue marketing this stock early on.

If you want an easy way to go insane, try keeping track of all the 16mm stocks that were available-- with their own individual lab chemistries (start with E-4, M-4, Eastman, ECO, VFN and all its derivatives, the simultaneous changeover to E-6, not counting the various S-8 permutations of the 16 stocks, like ES and SM...and then continue with the 35 motion picture world, and all the different stocks that old time DP's demanded.) You can see why Kodak clearly went towards the C-41 world for consumers.

But wasn't there a much later 400 asa Kodachrome available as a still film, anyway? I thought I remember seeing it for a few years.
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Re: High Speed Kodachrome

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Jim Carlile wrote:Moviestuff's right. There was a huge clamor for high speed Kodachrome in the late 70's. ...
Holy crap! Jim and I agree on something! 8O

I'm getting all warm and fuzzy inside. That or I'm passing some bad egg nog. Anyway, Merry Christmas, Jim! :D

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P.S.

Post by Jim Carlile »

To answer a later question,

Up until a very few years ago, Kodachrome was available in everything from Regular 8 (special order after about 1988) to 70mm, which I guess would be 120. It was clearly listed in their catalog. I thought it still was (until the announcement)?

I remember this because I thought what a fantasy it would be to shoot 70mm Kodachrome and see it on a big screen. Did anyone ever do this? It seemed to me that it was available in the regular motion picture Bell and Howell perfs, too.
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