Thursday 22 October 2009

Kodachrome










Summer 2009, Kodak announces that they have discontinued production of Kodachrome film. The scramble was on to get the remaining stock, knowing that the deadline for exposing and processing is december 2010. (there are only two labs in the world which can process Kodachrome and they will be de-commissioned at the end of 2010)

I managed to get 5 rolls of film from shops in Cheltenham (the price includes processing, so the end product is a box of 35mm slides: individual frames of film in cardboard mounts)

This is a selection from the first film I exposed. The camera is a Contax RTS II, the lenses are a Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.4, and Zeiss Distagon 35mm f2.8



I entered a photography competition, and won!

It was in order to promote the west-end of Cheltenham. I had already taken an interest in the High Street as a subject with it's variety of alleys and historical features, so I decided to have a go.

I looked at the diversity of shops, take-aways, restaurants, pubs etc and entered a photo which highlighted that feature. I expected the winner to be some photoshopped novelty. Imagine my surprise at seeing my picture, taken on film, full-frame, no editing, not even tweaking, displayed as winner!