Today is the day Kodak finally put down its hat, surrender from color reversal film for good, ending a 77 years heritage.
I started photography early and went thru a long list of cameras in the pre-digital time, and it is always a choice of either Kodak or Fujichrome in those days, with rare exceptions of Agfa or Ilford or Polaroid, which are all long gone before Kodak. Some said what really killed Kodak film was not digital but Fujichrome – after the success of E-6 friendly Velvia. Velvia is perhaps the monumental product that signified Kodak has reached and over its peak. Kodak did go on developing successfully in digital, but only for a limited time before again missed in its development direction.
This is an image I took in Inle Lake, Myanmar in February, 2011, which I just recently cam back to look at them, saying the true nature about digital photography – one tends to shoot more than he really wanted, but with no regret, but the mountains of digital files may sometimes never got paid the same attention, as film was.
Anyway, while look through the Capture One folder I built the night after the shots and never got looked back again until today, this image shot with Canon 1DsIII with EF 24-105/4L IS strikes me a strong resembles of colors from Kodachrom, so I develop it as it is without caring to digitally correct the white balance.
One of the strongest forte of digital photography is its accuracy, that one can develop the raw file with close to reality white balance, and most often, can be overdriven by many novice photographers, like the millions of image surfing the web today. Kodachrome’s appeal is not that it is the most accurate film, may be not even the sharpest, but it does not matter, because it delivers a character of its own.
Today, with the digital technology, everyone should just do like shooting his own Kodachrome, makes a character of his own work.
Bangkok, 2012
