The world's last processing center for Kodak's Kodachrome film is closing. Read the article here.

Maybe so Bob. But the end of an era implies the beginning of a new. Let's hope that the new (Digital) era takes photography to steroid levels. Still the baby's still crawling and look what's it already has done. Waiting for true stereography from a single image and with out glasses or the stupid lensetic film that gives me headaches. lol

It will happen. Also, Minority Report/ Harry Potter like animated paper. Just more things to look forward too. It we don't kill each other off, the sky's the limit with technologies that are just now beginning to be released.

They mentioned in the article that even the people who worked processing the film rarely used film themselves.

It's just one of those things that's "no longer there."

My stepdad was a professional photographer, for major newspapers, outdoor life and other magazines. he insisted (against my wishes) that I learn photography so did it for several years. If I'm going to be honest I have to admit that I don't miss those days for a second. Messing with the darkroom, the chemicals, the mechanical and chemical processes was a pain. To me, it's good riddance, digital is THE way to go. I've known some people who still use film because it's artsy craftsy and some who just want to seem cool and treat the whole matter as an emperor's new clothes like thing (anyone who doesn't like it is uncool and neanderthal) but I just don't miss any of it. Still I understand the end of an era thing and i agree, it kind of sad.

Nothing wrong with being technically proficient is all aspects - as your father was teaching you. I got a lot of that myself from my own father, who was a machinist and teacher by trade, but had also worked as a carpenter and butcher, among other things.

For those who might be casual users, it's nothing to drop a roll of film off at a store and come back to pick up the finished prints or slides. We don't get the "messy" part.

Hypo, dektol, D76, chemicals you had to mix up, store just the right way or they go bad and they smelled bad and stained your clothes. Those were for BW, Color took other stuff. You had to make completely sure you washed it all off your hands. Then there was unloading the film from the spool and re thread it onto the process container, add chemicals and agitate it for the right amount of time. All of this being done in total darkness, not even a safelight. Then when you print them it's more chemicals, standing halcf bent over for hours dodging and burning manually with a little tool, then to more chemicals ete. And if you made a mistake you lost a whole roll of film. Nope, I don't miss it. I always hated photography, maybe because I was forced to do it but I have been deeply involved with computers since the late 70s and in the 80s and I found that Ii could mix computers with photography I was hooked.

That's probably why I liked photography so much; I didn't have the mess.

Growing up, my whole family had some sort of camera. Mom had her Instamatics, Dad had a wind-up 8mm movie camera (I think it was a Brownie.) I started with an old Brownie still camera, but by the time I graduated high school I had a 35mm Chinon. Four years later I had three 35mms and a collection of lenses and filters for all of them. Then real life caught up to me - now I have a older digital camera that takes VGA-quality pictures, and a cell phone that does a better job!

Kodak is about a stone's throw away from me, in Rochester, NY. Oddly enough, my first camera, which I still possess, was a Bell & Howell 8MM Reel camera, not a Kodak product. I think I also have a Polaroid 100 although most photographers wouldn't consider that a "camera" in the technical sense.

Dad's camera had a turret on the front with three different lenses. Mounted atop the camera was a two-piece flip-up viewfinder. Etched into the plastic of the front piece are three colored rings of different sizes that matched colored rings on the lenses. This was how you could tell what field of view was being captured on film using a particular lens.

Funny story about my dad and his 8mm movie camera. It actually ran pretty quiet; I've got a foot or so at the beginning of every reel where he turns the camera and looks in the lens to see if the shutter is actually moving. Giant close-up of Dad's nose!:rofl

I've still got the camera, projector, the screen and the editor - the editor has a bottle of splicing glue that's probably older than I am.

My mom had an old German camera (Rollei-Werke) that took the most astonishing B&W photos. Most of my earlier childhood photographs were taken with that camera. I'd need to ask her what the exact model was, but I recall it looking like a little black box, with a viewfinder on top, with a crank wheel on the side. I got my artistic genes from my mother, and it's a big reason why I enjoy repairing old B&W photographs.

http://www.cameraquest.com/fhistory.htm my first camera was an old Nikon F like the one on this link. I was the only kid in high school that had a camera worth more than their car.