He misunderstood it, one photographer Frank Glencairn liked kodachrome, but he made a LUT profile for the Sony FS100 digital camera. To mimick the look.
@Vincent171090 tells me he didn't just take one roll of kodachrome but multiple with different cameras to make sure everything came out. Kinda shitty to lie about that. Then again, he lied about editing his photos, so it shouldn't be a surprise.
It's actually impossible - on this particular camera the film is rolling in reverse. Once inserted into the camera the whole film is rolled onto the empty roll and then rolls back into the cartridge on every shot. Thus, even if you accidentally open your camera's back all of the exposed shots are already into the cartridge.
I photographed friends and family in Kodachrome 64 starting 45 years ago. Now they are all gone but the slides are forever beautiful. It is bittersweet.
I shot a roll of Kodachrome around 1999 of the California coast. I sent it out for processing at the Kodak facility and someone stole the developed photos. Kodak could confirm they received my roll of film but couldn't tell me what happened after that. I really wish I had my photos so I could scan them. I have a degree in photography and some of my photos have been published in magazines. Makes me wonder how they turned out. Wish I could see those images now, what a bummer..
Having shot in film long before digital, this made me quite sad. It's like watching an old friend pass away. I'm glad they finally brought back ektachrome at least.
I've had this saved to my "Watch Later" playlist now since 2014-2015. Only now, whilst going through and cleaning out that list (which had over 1,100 videos!) do I get to watch and appreciate this gem. Thank you for this wonderful experience of your life. I hope that your life has been full of love and fulfillment since this was originally posted.
I too shot many rolls of Kodachrome 25 and 64 as an industrial and fine art photographer after getting out of college. I started shooting it in 1965 in Jr. High School, all through college and up to the time it was discontinued. All my Kodachrome slides are in pristine now as much as they were then. The was nothing better! I'd always wished I had been available to shoot more of it in medium format. I loved the 6x6 and 6x7 formats. Finest film ever made for slides, none better. The warm color tones were absolutely amazing!! I don't really miss shooting film these days, far more options with digital, but film photography was a true art form. I have scanned many of my Kodachromes into digital files for use with Photoshop. Great documentary, many memories!!
Unfortunately the revival attempt failed due to the needed development infrastructure no longer existing. The last lab that processed it closed January 11 2011 after it finished a backorder for development.
Absolutely LOVED this video!! Digital might be sharper, easier to process...but you know what?? you can NEVER beat the characteristics of film!! It's like a painting...oil on canvas...it's the look. God bless this man for paying such a wonderful tribute to such a great and exciting era...well done mate!
It's just another medium. Society is too overindulgent and fad obsessed these days always wanting to replace everything completely with something all the time for a feeling of fake progress. Painters don't give up painting just because pastels exist or sculpting exists, you don't have to be only film or digital either.
@@kishascape with digital cameras produced manufacturers gave the opportunity to make your own painting by adjusting colours by yourself (even if you have no clue how to paint, at least most don't and have no idea what good colours look like) without giving the final brushstrokes with the already perfected colours. With film photography part of art is already provided with coloured film and the science behind it. So you can almost say you can never beat film, but also you can create your own masterpiece with digital colour manipulation that doesn't exist with film yet.
The movie Kodachrome brought me here... if you found this documentary interesting please check out the trailer..Ed Harris is so good in it. He plays a dying world renowned photographer on a road trip with his nurse..Elizabeth Olsen, and estranged son..Jason Sudeikis to Parsons Kansas where the last rolls of kodachrome can be developed. Yes, the movie is predictable and a tear jerker, and heartwarming all at once, but despite itself its a good film all shot on Kodak 35mm. Also if you watch the movie please make sure you watch the complete credits where some excellent pictures were shot.
"as off the cuff as possible" doesn't really make sense to me if you're going to shoot the picture a dozen times with digital first. If you're going to honor it as film, then using digital to preview seems like a weird way to do it.
Totally enjoyed watching this documentary! I have gotten into film photography a few years too late so missed out on the Kodachrome era but understand Kodachrome can be cross processed as a B&W negative and recently I've shot several vintage Kodachrome II, 25 and 40 Super 8 and Double 8 movie films and processed them myself as B&W negatives. I am fascinated with vintage colour film photography and have seen via the web how good Kodachrome slides of the 30s/40s look and how well the colour has kept on them, so I totally agree that Kodachrome was the best colour film ever made!
Kodachrome was an American film made by an iconic American company. That final roll ought to have celebrated American culture. Birthdays, picnics, vacations, graduations, weddings, family life, and iconic American scenics were at the heart of its place in our history. McCurry went to India. He didn’t make those last frames of Kodachrome about the film, he made them all about himself. ‘Afghan Girl’ gone wild. Look at me! Steve McCurry’s treatment of the last roll of Kodachrome film was not a tribute. It was a travesty.
I'll always love Kodachrome. It would have been really cool if he had been able to take a photo of Paul Simon on this final roll since they did take his Kodachrome away!
I don't know what it is, but there is something about slide film, especially Kodachrome, that makes it better than any painting, digital photo, hologram, 4k video, or even most C-41 film (though I love Kodak Ektar 100). Kodachrome was just amazing.
Better than any painting? Do me a favour. Try going to the Prado and standing in front of a Diego Velázquez painting and saying that with a straight face.
Amazing no words can describe the efforts behind these photos and the love with which this last role of kodachrome film was shot. Poetic indeed. Steve is a Superman.
Analog photography has some "magic" in it. I've found my old analog SLR that I've been given to in childhood and shot a film, then gave it to a lab. I was much more amazed with the effect than after photographing in digital.
I started with Ilford pan f and Kodak pan x then went to Adox KB14 with its magical resolution. Then Kodachrome was so good i moved to it. i still mis this film.
+TRan TRung Thanks for pointing it out. I did spot a continuation error there (I'm more into movies and can't help but notice for that stuff). This is a video production and a lot of it is obviously staged or cherry-picked/edited into a new context to make it more dramatic, flowing and interesting (which doesn't mean it's fake at all - there is simply no other way of making a professional production). I have a feeling this man didn't shoot just one roll of Kodachrome 64, but several - just to be 100% on the safe side. I would have as a photographer and I would have asked the photographer if I was the director/producer of the documentary video.
ive had digital for some time, but i recently aquired a nikon 35mm camera and have already picked up some ektarchrome and fuji velvia, for this reason i am glad for digital, as it shows what i should never have left
I loved this. It made me proud to be a photographer,although just learning and very sad that we no longer have such a wonderful medium to use. I too,think there was nothing wrong with using the digital to make sure the shot was the way he wanted it and even then somrthing still could have gone wrong. It was if the Universe put this all together perfectly. Those pictures were magic.
21:32 i made that same decision back in 2017, sold off all my digital cameras and equipment, spent the money on recomissioning my old 1983 Minolta X-700 that my dad gave to me a few months before, and went back to shooting film, mostly slide film. And i don't regret it one bit! i don't get anywhere near the satisfaction and the results i want from digital compared to film.
Why did I get so emotional seeing this? My family, my friends, my past times were documented by this awesome medium. I sucked at shooting film, but boy oh boy, it was so fun. For my family, and my friends. Love to them always in Kodachrome.
There was something special about the delayed gratification of shooting on film and not being able to see the results until days/weeks (even years) after when it was finally processed. I loved the accidental magic that would happen from time to time when you managed to capture that perfect moment, with the perfect lighting/settings and saw it flipping thru your photos for the first time.
KODAK BRING BACK FILM! ALL OF IT. There is a community growing in the film world. New photographers, old photographers, well all love shooting film. PLEASE bring it back, you will be surprised at the reaction you would receive.
Steve, I am so highly appreciative of your photography with film. I also had used Kodachrome ASA 64 for many years during my 20's,30's, and 40's. I am now 64 and look back at my slides and my prints. I am so impressed with the color saturation and stability of these photographs I took. I am only an amature photographer. But I loved shooting with film. Digital is more instantaneous results in the viewing screen on the back of any Digital camera. While the colors are interesting, Kodachrome had better in depth saturation of nuances of color separation. Digital will capture the color but it is muted in comparison by its ability to compress pixels. It is just not the same.
For many years if you shot 35mm and wanted to sell to magazines you shot Kodachrome. Still my favorite and if my hard drive died I still had the original looking as good as ever. This was a fitting tribute to an old friend.
Love this. Love how it goes from wandering around NYC trying to find something interesting, to shooting a portrait of Robert De Niro, to travelling back to India.
+Andy film isn't expensive. Good DSLRs can cost upwards of 1000$, while a decent film SLR camera and lens can be had for 50$. Film itself isn't expensive. A roll of Fujifilm is only 3.50. You can buy 100' ft rolls of Ilford film for only 50$, cutting the cost basically in half. Development can be done at home to save costs. You can scan negatives with a flatbed scanner which everyone has available from public libraries, and high quality scanners can be had for 200$ easily. Cost isn't an issue with film, it's the time/workflow of getting all that done. It takes more work, and more time. But some believe it pays off.
having completely switched to film from digital i find this video very motivational. btw, i think he shot a few rolls (probably different films). the film was originally loaded into an f6 and some photos taken on an f100.
Simply amazing!! last month i buy my first Leica M6 i have used for 3 year canon digital, and i feel this kind of emotion when i shoot with my leica. i want that every frame be special.. Thank Steve!! i like your work..
I decided i wanted to get back in film photography, so I invested in a decent scanner, a professional Nikon SLR and some lenses. And i've got to say this as I am sitting scanning my negatives. wow why didnt I do this before?! The colours of even a cheap consumer film, are more vivid, delicious and describing than what I have seen from any digital camera. Film's got me hooked.
Digital colour is really ugly. It doesn't come close to film. In fact, film is better hands down. The onky thing digital has is it's quicker, but to be that is a downside speaking as an artist.
The one question digital photographers don't ask is how their images are going to be preserved for 60 plus years with all the changes in technology. I just got through having my kodachrome slides taken in the fifties scanned as well as black and white negatives for the early 1900's and they came out great. Some of these can be see on my Flickr site. My early aurora photographs were taken using Kodachrome 200 pushed 2 stops with great results. www.flickr.com/photos/116856615@N07/
The reason almost nobody shoots film these days is because you can emulate the look of film in post production on your raw files. And you're joking that film has a more vivid color than digital, right??? (Maybe 6 years ago when you made that statement this was true). I shot Velvia and Provia and Ektachrome for years and none of those film stocks are better than digital. I really don't know why anyone would spend the time to shoot film (print or transparency), process it, scan it into a digital file to do post production (and then print it lol) when you can just shoot a raw file and do what you want to it in post. Film is largely inferior to digital in terms of image quality: even the mighty Provia only had about 8 stops of dynamic range compared to a digital file's 10-14 stops. And you can make a raw file into a color or mono image, can't do that with film. The problem with digital as I see it is the over-reliance on resolution (more megapixels). Kodachrome had the equivalence of about 8mp of resolution compared to digital, Ektachrome maybe 10mp, Provia 10~12. Nowadays if you don't shoot at least 24mp you're a dinosaur, unworthy to hold a digital camera lol. And the more resolution a photograph has the less it looks like film. The industry has been too focused on image-quality and selling the latest greatest sharpest sensors and lenses. We as photographers should be focusing on quality images, not necessarily image-quality. Did anyone care that Saul Leiter's photograph's were not super sharp? His colors were muted too, but that was "his" look. He made timeless images. No, I'm not contradicting my first paragraph. I'm not advocating a return to color film. Film was messy and time consuming and expensive (digital "film" is cheap). Especially when you can get the look of film on a 12-20mp Canon or a 16mp Fuji SOOC. B&W film is the exception. At least with B&W you can control the entire process from exposure to developing the neg to printing. Shooting and processing B&W film is the essence of true photography IMHO. But for God's sake develop your own film, don't send it to a lab, and print the negatives in a darkroom, don't scan them into a digital file and do post production and printing on your computer. Only wankers do that. Just one old photographer's opinion.
He has such wonderful photos. Though they were shot on real film with a real camera, I hope he shares them all digitally in the future so everyone can enjoy them.
I shot my first roll of it not long ago and love it. it will be one of my favourite color films next to Cinestill 800T that I love using for night shots.
What a sad honor to shoot the last roll of such a legendary film. Think of all the classic images that have been captured on this film over the decades.
Since this was the last roll of Kodachrome he didn't want to "waste" any frames bracketing exposures to ensure a well exposed frame. This is done when shooting chromes (slides) all the time because of its limited exposure range. You shoot the metered exposure then one stop over and one stop under. So, for every shot taken you use three frames of film leaving you only 12 net images from a roll of 36 exposures. The use of the digital camera was used to confirm the correct exposure, that's all.
my reply is 9 years late, but it's never too late to correct people who don't know what they are talking about. I attended one of the best schools of photojournalism, and then attended and graduated from one of the top 3 schools of advertising photography in the world. no professional was ever taught or practiced bracketing as a rule by a legitimate teacher. please don't project your limitations as a photographer onto the entire photographic community.
@@kenh.5903 I've been a professional photographer for many, many years. I also studied photography at university. I am internationally published and have been awarded the most prestigious photographic awards in the US. Just because my comments don't sit well with you doesn't give you license to judge my abilities over a few comments. Come on, get real you are a fraud. "no professional was ever taught or practiced bracketing as a rule by a legitimate teacher." You really sound foolish.
In this era of impermanence and rapid change, people are longing for something physical and long lasting (whether consciously or subconsciously. As a result Film is coming back, (along with things like vinyl/cassettes). I don’t chalk it up to nostalgia either, there’s a look/feel that analog medium has that digital simply can’t replicate. All it takes is one missed Spotify/Netflix monthly payment or hard drive crash to realize we truly own less and less of the things that matter to us like music and memories. I lost about 7 years worth of pictures because they were all taken digitally and stored on a laptop that shit the bed. And yet, my childhood photos, which were taken on film decades earlier and processed are still there to hold and look at. There’s something special about that.
I wonder why no one mentions an operator. Yeah that film is about the photographer and the last production piece of a particular film, but operator is so talented here! His shots are amazing! Composition wise and everything. Just beautiful, its not a mundane task to document such a story.
Like, you just get Robert De Niro to sit for you, as you do - cool. I also love those colours in India, wonderful orange hues and turquoise blues...so many amazing people too.
Obviously every photo was to some extent meticulously vetted but that fact that there's not one bad frame on an entrie roll of film is kind of remarkable, certainly fitting for the last of it's kind too.
No it isn't, it's fitting. Kodachrome was a very warm film stock but not the sharpest (Ektachrome had better fidelity) and this video feels warm and nostalgic, like the film.
I am 72 years old. When I was growing up as a child my father's favorite film for family photos and vacation trips photos was Kodak Kodachrome slide film. He took pictures with a totally manual Kodak Retina IIc camera. Kodak company did bring back Ektachrome slide film. However it looks like Kodachrome film will never be made again.
1986 i bought 10 rolls kodachrome 64 with prepaid processing. $12 per roll. one unshot roll was stolen out of the staff-run security safe at a cheap hotel in athens, leaving me 9 rolls to shoot on my srt-200 w 45mm lens during 6 months in india. i still really enjoy photography, but after i broke my promise to never go digital it has never been as enjoyable as the film photography days.
Back in the late 1970's....Nikkormat FT2. Any Nikkor lens. Sunny day. Polarizer filter. Hot chick with beautiful skin tone. Kodachrome 25 was my absolute, Absolute. ABSOLUTE hands down winner for wanting guaranteed beautiful, sharp, vibrant color (especially flesh tones) as I saw it through the lens. Printing on Cibachome was absolute killer.
I got my first Nikon when I was 13. I picked it out of a small line of cameras. Nikkormat FT3 with a 50mm. Always used kodachrome. Loved the reds. Still have the camera.
Great shame as Fujichrome is still being made and the Chinese are now making chrome film.Kodak what a mistake you should have kept making this great film.There are still some of us who love film and are still shooting it.Great Post!!!
Fantastic project and insightful film. Loved the inner struggle of finding subjects to make every last frame count, of getting started but with what? Awesome story. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing this great Video - Steve is so iconic, as well as Robert deNiro, one of my fave Actors, like Liam Neeson, Al Pacino, etc. It's way emotional, this video.
I found a cool box for $2 at a thrift store full of kodachrome slides from 1960, if it wasnt bc of that I wouldn't known about kodachrome. There so cute and unique , the slides
Life is beyond... Inspiration, creativity, dedication, being in the state of innocence and STILL.... S.. Great Work Sir Steve Mccurry... My salutation to you
