Why Kodachrome faded out
Famous for his photo of a young Afghan girl with stunning green eyes, Steve McCurry has since moved past the Kodachrome film he used to capture the image that graced the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985.
But in a phone interview from Singapore, where he was on assignment, McCurry said "there wasn’t a better form produced on the planet at the time that was better than Kodachrome.”
In addition to its "fresh, wonderful color rendition," the film was fantastic for archiving purposes, he said.
"There’s a longevity to that film which was really unrivaled," he said "I have an archive of 800,000 Kodachrome transparencies which I use on a daily basis in terms of scanning and editing and that sort of thing.”
Declining sales made the film a relic of the past, he said, and Eastman Kodak Co. announced today that it was discontinuing the film after 74 years.
McCurry is nostalgic about the 30 years he used Kodachrome.
“I kind of think of it as an old form now, like somebody you’re never going to see again," he said. "It was a beautiful, wonderful film and I had great success photographing with it. ... But the numbers, the economics just aren’t there. It’s just not viable. It’s a very costly process.”
Like most professional photographers, McCurry has moved on to digital cameras.
"There’s a sense that there are things you can do with digital, a capability that you simply can’t do with film," he said. "There’s much wider range: You can shoot in very, very low light and you can stop action.”
-- Tiffany Hsu
Photo: Steve McCurry with his iconic photograph of the Afghan girl, which he shot on Kodachrome film decades ago. Credit: Mary Altaffer / Associated Press
Kodachrome was a big part of my life aged 17 - 27, when I was pointing my beloved Mamiya Sekor 1000 DTL at everything I saw. Better color, cheaper than all those color prints, easy to store, fun to show slides, and it was fun to push the exposure around for effect. Photographing cloudy sunsets with Kodachrome way underexposed exposed sunsets that were unworldly - very deep browns and purples with rays of red and green streaking toward the camera. The film would find and capture the components of existing light, spectrumize it, so to speak. And Kodachrome was magnificent on a bright day - no amount of light could beat that film down. The emulsion could stand up to anything, give you thick color, deep. Alas, I got a job, girlfriend, spent more time with music, replaced the Mamiya with a ten pound Nikkormat and photography just wasn't all that anymore.
Posted by: caferay | June 23, 2009 at 06:03 PM
As flexible as digital has become, the unspoken truth is no one can predict how accessible digital images taken today will be in the future. Inkjet prints will fade and storage media such as CD, DVD and hard drives will be replaced by newer technologies. Have any images you may want to share with your grandchildren 50 years from now? They better be on film!
Posted by: Bill | June 23, 2009 at 06:38 PM