Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
Let me know when Kodachrome becomes available as well as anyone who can process it; or maybe even when Kodak returns. All color pictures of my kids were shot on Kodachrome as well as 10 years of travel in Europe. Those pictures as well all the B&W pictures of my kids shot on 35mm and 120 are just so much better than the pictures of my grandchildren taken with Smartphones by their parents. It seems to me a single crated picture is worth a hundred or even a thousand snapped away machine gun style on free electrons for viewing on the Internet or on a smartphone screen.
Some photo specialty shops with full photo labs can still process them, but it's expensive and somewhat messy...
because chemicals with silver compounds have to be disposed of a certain way, and the machines used to process a roll eventually do wear out. Parts to fix those machines are also expensive, if they are even available. The specialty camera business is also suffering due to online sales from places like B&H Photo, Best Buy and Amazon. This, in turn, causes small specialty businesses like the one I worked for to cut costs where they can. Film sales, and film processing are usually one of the first things to go. Between the six stores that the company owned when I worked for them, there were only two locations that could process B&W film. I believe it went down to one before I found another job. So on top of the cost processing, the stores also had to ship containers of exposed film between stores just to have them processed and printed.
I have a close friend who has started to process his own 35mm film at home. It's a labor intensive, slow process though. He has to do it in one of their guest bathrooms that has no windows, using a red light headlamp. That and he can't really justify the cost to do it that often, chemicals are still expensive. He and his wife also run a wedding/newborn photography business, for which they use their Canon full frame gear and lenses.