EPISODE 33 DESCRIPTION In the first part of this mini series looking back on the history of the Kodak Photo CD System, we look at the hype leading up to its release in the years 1990 and 1991.
I have a few of these around the house. I used to work at a lab in Rochester when I was in school and we did a lot of these. I also had a friend who worked on this project at Kodak.
"Photo CD"? By the time this technology came around, I had a job that kept me away from Photography. I didn't even think about putting (digital) photos on CD until the 2010s. (I haven't gone back to chemically-based analog Photography.)
Crikey. I remember selling these... on release, they were much too expensive, and no one stocked them. Within 18 months, they were being sold for under £200 - we stocked them then. An easy sell, but as we all know, it didn't catch on. Shame really, it was actually a nice machine...
2/26/24 I remember well when the Disc camera came out the second time, around. I think Kodak way back in the early 1900s had a preloaded film camera that would give you circular photo prints, the camera came preloaded with film allowing many photos to be taken than sending in the camera in to have prints made and the camera reloaded with new film and sent back. Now back to the Kodak disc camera which had film stored like a view master on a round disc so you could shoot in color, even though they were easy to use cameras the image were not very good to the negative size resulting in grainy image, plus you had more people using 135mm film programed cameras that were easier to use, plus Polaroid was very popular in BW and Color prints offering instant gratification. I never liked the image quality and even with the CD disc in today's dollars it was quite expensive.
I recently screwed myself on this confusing mess of a format. I recently picked up a Sega Saturn, and I learned there was a Kodak Photo CD Viewer software for it. I figured that is really cool and definitely something I would’ve made big use of back in the 90’s, if I had a Saturn back then. So I bought it, and intended to use it with the large stack of photo CDs I still had from actually getting my film processed and scanned back then. Little did I know - Kodak “Photo CD” was a totally different format! What I had were Kodak CDs, as given to me by the lab when I got my film developed, and they had photos on them, but they were not “Kodak Photo CDs” - so totally incompatible with this viewer software. Go figure!
I’m old enough to remember these, at the time I didn’t have a CD player or CD Rom and never thought I shot enough photos back then to make it worth it. I didn’t get into scanning my first film negatives until 1998 and it was a slow and tedious job back then.
I’m born «at the right time» and know how nostalgia can be pathetic! CD-ROM was to prove to be the transitional period of the times. Actually, it was great that everyone could decide for themselves how data should be handled further. #thecdromgeneration
The background music makes it very strenuous to listen to your narration! It is not the style! It is it's closeness to the voice in terms of accustic qualities. You narration is really pleasant to listen to and can stand on its own! I assume the music is meant to add a certain atmosphere and to immrse the viwer into period aesthetics. With that in mind an observation: I find that videos which use music only as intros for paragraphsor sections, i.e. are either muted after a sentence or two, or "dialed down", still keep me "in the vibe".There are medical aspects behind this, which would make this comment (even...) longer. But I am happy to elaborate, should you be interested.
