For Kodachrome Fans, Road Ends at Photo Lab in Kansas
By A. G. SULZBERGER
New York Times
December 29, 2010
PARSONS, Kan. -- An unlikely pilgrimage is under way to Dwayne's Photo, a small family business that has, through luck and persistence, become the
last processor in the world of Kodachrome, the first successful color film and still the most beloved.
That celebrated 75-year run from mainstream to niche photography is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday when the last processing machine is
shut down here to be sold for scrap.
In the last weeks, dozens of visitors and thousands of overnight packages have raced here, transforming this small prairie-bound city not far from the
Oklahoma border for a brief time into a center of nostalgia for the days when photographs appeared not in the sterile frame of a computer screen or
in a pack of flimsy prints from the local drugstore, but in the warm glow of a projector pulling an image from a carousel of vivid slides.
In the span of minutes this week, two such visitors arrived. The first was a railroad worker who had driven from Arkansas to pick up 1580 rolls of film
that he had just paid $15,798 to develop. The second was an artist who had driven directly here after flying from London to Wichita, Kan., on her first
trip to the United States to turn in three rolls of film and shoot five more before the processing deadline.
The artist, Aliceson Carter, 42, was incredulous as she watched the railroad worker, Jim DeNike, 53, loading a dozen boxes that contained nearly 50,000
slides into his old maroon Pontiac. He explained that every picture inside was of railroad trains and that he had borrowed money from his father's
retirement account to pay for developing them.
"That's crazy to me," Ms. Carter said. Then she snapped a picture of Mr. DeNike on one of her last rolls.
Demanding both to shoot and process, Kodachrome rewarded generations of skilled users with a richness of color and a unique treatment of light that
many photographers described as incomparable even as they shifted to digital cameras. "Makes you think all the world's a sunny day," Paul Simon sang in
his 1973 hit, "Kodachrome", which carried the plea "Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away."
As news media around the world have heralded Thursday's end of an era, rolls of the discontinued film that had been hoarded in freezers and tucked away
in closets, sometimes for decades, have flooded Dwayne's Photo, arriving from six continents.
"It's more than a film, it's a pop culture icon," said Todd Gustavson, a curator from the George Eastman House, a photography museum in Rochester in
the former residence of the Kodak founder. "If you were in the postwar baby boom, it was the color film, no doubt about it."
Among the recent visitors was Steve McCurry, a photographer whose work has appeared for decades in "National Geographic", including his well-known
cover portrait, shot in Kodachrome, of an Afghan girl that highlights what he describes as the "sublime quality" of the film. When Kodak stopped
producing the film last year, the company gave him the last roll, which he hand-delivered to Parsons. "I wasn't going to take any chances," he explained.
At the peak, there were about 25 labs worldwide that processed Kodachrome, but the last Kodak-run facility in the United States closed several years
ago, then the one in Japan, and then the one in Switzerland. Since then, all that was left has been Dwayne's Photo. Last year, Kodak stopped producing
the chemicals needed to develop the film, providing the business with enough to continue processing through the end of 2010. And last week, right on
schedule, the lab opened up the last canister of blue dye.
Kodak declined to comment for this article.
The status of lone survivor is a point of pride for Dwayne Steinle, who remembers being warned more than once by a Kodak representative after he
opened the business more than a half-century ago that the area was too sparsely populated for the studio to succeed. It has survived in part
because Mr. Steinle and his son, Grant, focused on lower-volume specialties -- like black-and-white and print-to-print developing, and, inthe early 90s, the
processing of Kodachrome.
Still, the toll of the widespread switch to digital photography has been painful for Dwayne's, much as it has for Kodak. In the last decade, the
number of employees has been cut to about 60 from 200 and digital sales now account for nearly half of revenue. Most of the staff and even the owners
acknowledge that they primarily use digital cameras. "That's what we see as the future of the business," said Grant Steinle, who runs the business now.
The passing of Kodachrome has been much noted, from the CBS News program, "Sunday Morning" to "The Irish Times", but it is noteworthy in no small part
for how long it survived. Created in 1935, Kodachrome was an instant hit as the first film to effectively render color.
Even when it stopped being the default film for chronicling everyday life -- thanks in part to the move to prints from slides -- it continued to be the
film of choice for many hobbyists and medical professionals. Dr. Bharat Nathwani, 65, a Los Angeles pathologist, lamented that he still had 400
unused rolls. "I might hold it, God willing that Kodak sees its lack of wisdom."
This week, the employees at Dwayne's worked at a frenetic pace, keeping a processing machine that has typically operated just a few hours a day
working around the clock (one of the many notes on the lab wall reads, "I took this to a drugstore and they didn't even know what it was").
"We really didn't expect it to be this crazy," said Lanie George, who manages the Kodachrome processing department.
One of the toughest decisions was how to deal with the dozens of requests from amateurs and professionals alike to provide the last roll to be processed.
In the end, it was determined that a roll belonging to Dwayne Steinle, the owner, would be last. It took three tries to find a camera that worked. And
over the course of the week, he fired off shots of his house, his family, and downtown Parsons. The last frame is already planned for Thursday, a
picture of all the employees standing in front of Dwayne's wearing shirts with the epitaph, "The best slide and movie film in history is now
officially retired. Kodachrome: 1935-2010."
Who knows, but who is going to supply camera bodies when the old ones wear out. I´ve seen some people with analogue bodies held together with duct tape lately.
Does this mean that in the last "analog" outpost in the north of the Netherlands (LW), the dinosaur spotters, have to move over to the digital era as well. It's a pitty, then we have the discussions no longer about what is better e.g. no more.
Just teasing. But a happy new year to you all.
Jutter wrote:Does this mean that in the last "analog" outpost in the north of the Netherlands (LW), the dinosaur spotters, have to move over to the digital era as well. It's a pitty, then we have the discussions no longer about what is better e.g. no more.
Just teasing. But a happy new year to you all.
Jutter.
Happy new year to you as well!
About the said dinosaurs, I have heard three options being discussed:
1. Use another film. Pretty ridculous, as this was "not done" earlier on. Besides, what if your bodies wear out?
2. Switch to digital. Hardly an option for many, as they publicly shunned this as well.
3. Stop altogether. But why turn your back to something you like?
Hans Rolink wrote:Besides, what if your bodies wear out?
I still have two good old analog Canon F1n bodies standing here (as well as the Canon A1 I used as a spotter loooooong time ago) and I am afraid that my own body might wear out sooner than those F1's.....
Polecat wrote:I've still got some good-to-go F-90X bodies lying around....will last for years to come..
But well used too, I guess. Our mutual friend's F90X finally gave up the ghost some years back rather unexpectedly.
Besides, I could restart slide shooting any time myself as well, with two F70's in the attic. However, I won't. Dynamic shots as done with digital are simply not possible with a measly 50 ASA for a finely grained film. Add to that the fact that the slide is the end product. No cropping, no corrections of whatever....
Hans Rolink wrote:About the said dinosaurs, I have heard three options being discussed:
1. Use another film. Pretty ridculous, as this was "not done" earlier on. Besides, what if your bodies wear out?
2. Switch to digital. Hardly an option for many, as they publicly shunned this as well.
3. Stop altogether. But why turn your back to something you like?
Let's see...
Hans.
Hi Hans,
The way I see it, those Dinosaurs have a different hobby that what most of us might expect: Collecting slides. True, all slides must show aircraft in them, and Kodachrome has been the standard for almost half a century, but collecting slides is their core business. And now that Kodachrome is history, a new standard has been chosen (Fuji Provia 100F) and slide collecting will continue as before.
Regarding analog camera's, these cameras can be picked up at Marktplaats for a nickle and a dime and virtually as new. So no need to worry about thet.
Cheers,
iwan
Fox2 - for everything about low flying in Wales........and more !!
Hans Rolink wrote:the fact that the slide is the end product. No cropping, no corrections of whatever....
Exactly that is one of my reasons to keep shooting slides - if the conditions make it rewarding, the subject fits (and I remembered to bring along the slide shooting gear ). To me, little is as rewarding in photography as getting it right when you fire the shutter. I kissed KR goodbye many years ago in favour of Provia and Velvia, and I absolutely love the possibilities of digital, but slides are far from over for me.
Obviously, having a quality camera shop nearby with good developer service (reliable, processed within the week, reasonably priced) is a key factor in this. Funny thing: the shop with similar service I used to bring my films to before, at some point in time drastically encreased processing cost and time. I was along the customers who left... Shortly after that, their business collapsed and the shop was closed.
allemaal leuk en aardig die andere films, feit is dat de houdbaarheid van Kodachrome al sinds 1937 bewezen is, en of de nieuwere diafilms dat opok realiseren is in elk geval nog maar de vraag...
Och, voor de eerste paar decennia na ontwikkeling is het inmiddels wel bewezen. En ik heb liever natuurlijke kleuren die twintig jaar goed blijven dan een groenzweem die vijftig jaar goed blijft. Kwestie van smaak
Overigens vind ik KR25 nog steeds misschien wel de beste diafilm ooit.
is inderdaad voor een deel smaak, die onderkoelde kleuren ipv dat schreeuwende... Ik hou er zelf wél van, en kan ook enorm genieten van 40 jaar oude dia's die nog crispy kleurtjes hebben waar andere films helemaal vervaagd en grofkorrelig zijn geworden..
Groot voordeel is natuurlijk wel dat je tegenwoordig dia's kunt digitaliseren, en die files vervagen niet en krijgen geen ook geen dia-vretertjes schimmel...
De K25 roept inderdaad alleen maar hele prettige herinneringen op, de 64 was al duidelijk een achteruitgang ja..
). To me, little is as rewarding in photography as getting it right when you fire the shutter. I kissed KR goodbye many years ago in favour of Provia and Velvia, and I absolutely love the possibilities of digital, but slides are far from over for me. 
