Kodachrome falls to digital revolution

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Sorry, Paul Simon, Kodak is taking your Kodachrome away.

The Eastman Kodak Co. announced Monday it’s retiring its oldest film stock because of declining customer demand in an increasingly digital age.

The world’s first commercially successful color film, immortalized in song by Simon, spent 74 years in Kodak’s portfolio. It enjoyed its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s but in recent years has nudged closer to obscurity: Sales of Kodachrome are now just a fraction of 1 percent of the company’s total sales of still-picture films, and only one commercial lab in the world still processes it.

Those numbers and the materials needed to make it convinced Kodak to call its most recent manufacturing run the last, said Mary Jane Hellyar, the outgoing president of Kodak’s Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group.

“Kodachrome is particularly difficult (to retire) because it really has become kind of an icon,” she said.

The company gets about 70 percent of its revenue from its digital business, but plans to stay in the film business “as far into the future as possible,” Hellyar said. She pointed to the seven professional still films and several motion picture films introduced in the past few years and to a strategy that emphasizes efficiency.

Simon sang about it in 1973 in the aptly titled “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,” he sang. “… So Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away.”

Kodachrome was favored by still and motion picture photographers for its rich but realistic tones, vibrant colors and durability.

It was the basis not only for family slideshows on carousel projectors but also for world-renowned images, including Abraham Zapruder’s 8 mm reel of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.