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Digital pictures can be stunning, to be sure......but I agree with the article’s point. There is a certain........sterility?.........to many digital images. I liken it to the difference between CD’s and vinyl records: same music, and yes it’s very clear......but there’s a ‘warmth’ missing with CD’s.
Make sense at all?
I still use it in my Nikon manual focus SLR’s. Its still the best slide film ever made and it will be a tragedy if it goes away.
Digital images, while certainly convenient, have no soul.
I just purchased 20 rolls of Kodachrome for my trip to the Philippines. I hope Kodak doesn’t discontinue this. It’s really the best transparency film out there. Thoughout my 20 years of photography, my favorite images are in Kodachrome. It captures the light of the late afternoon sun like no other.
I stopped using Kodachrome in the early 80s when the new generation of Fujichrome hit the market. Fujichrome 50 had the same grain and sharpness as Kodachrome 25, much better colour rendition (especially fleshtones), cost less and could be processed anywhere.
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So Mama dont take my Kodachrome away
0101010101010101010101010101010
Has no soul.
It seems to be a common result of technology advancement. Think of the automobile whose 'soul' was lost with the now common computer components, the Golden Age of the airlines lost when passenger jets replaced the four-engine prop, or the death of the home-cooked meal after the introduction of TV dinners, fast food and the microwave.
There are good things and bad things about new technology, and we all have the right to stick with the old. If enough stuck with it, the new would never gain traction and the old would flourish. If enough don't, the manufacturers can't justify the expense involved in making it and it dies.
Sadly, much like the major award in A Christmas Story, maybe the old is best laid to rest beside the garage as we hum Taps.
There’s a program, probably a Photoshop plug-in, that simulates all kinds of different film types and brands. I think Kodachrome and Fuji Velvia are included. I haven’t got it yet; I’m still working on figuring out how the damn digital camera works...
The "real" original Kodachrome 10 was replaced by Kodachrome 25 in the early 70s, and big-name Life Magazine aces did the same thing. I got about 25 rolls at a big discount and stored them in the freezer for a year or so until they were all used up. My earliest Kodachrome 10 slides from 1951, shot with an Argus C-3 (the GI's PX special at about $30) are still sharp after 57 years.
The only thing though is that the very best digital SLR’s from Canon and Nikon have just about reached the same sharpness level as slide film (though they won’t compare to larger frame medium-format film for a while). I’ve seen the image results from Canon’s new EOS 5D Mark II with its 21-megapixel full-frame sensor and the sharpness of detail leaves nothing to be desired.
In my childhood, B&W film was still easy to find; by about 1980 (at least around here), it had become something mostly found in shops frequented by pro photographers. Signs at the one-hour processing places said, no same-day for B&W. High-end digital cameras are going to take over, but of course there will be those who still use ‘em, just as there are antique cars, sailboats, and 25 year old computers being used by hobbyists (grin).
When I was in Viet Nam I shot several dozen rolls of Kodachrome film and had it all processed into slides. That very same film is now fading and nearly worthless. Mostly the only color left is red. I had them scanned recently before even the red goes away. It’s too bad I didn’t use a nice black-and-white film, at least that would still be clear and sharp.
I love the digital formats. I did read an article recently that tells me where digital is heading. The sharpness and resolution of typical consumer photographic film is limited by the grain size of the slver emulsion on the film and that (for the grade used by the majority of consumers) is equivalent to a 19.6 Megapixel image.
We are almost there with the camers available today.
I use Fuji pro. I don’t like what it does to blue though.
Maybe some company will continue making film, but I’d expect prices to go up as demand falls.
Now they just photoshop (and yes even National Geographic cuts and pastes and moves animals and monuments around).