Last Updated on 07/07/2018 by Mark Beckenbach
Back in January 2017, Kodak announced they would bring back Ektachrome, But it has been over a year and a half and it still isn’t here!
Kodak was riding high and making big waves back in January of 2017 when the super brand announced they would be bringing back one of their most beloved films, Ektachrome. The analog photography community was buzzing, the analog revolution was growing, the film was making a comeback, and Kodak was making a comeback. But that was a year and a half ago, and updates have been very few and far between, with one coming back in November, and slightly more recently with some test shots.
So, the question that we have for Kodak is this, where the heck is Ektachrome and what is taking so long?
Seriously, for better or worse at this point, we are beginning to wonder if this return of Ektachrome is ever going to happen. Herein lies the problem with companies making announcements long before the product is going to be available; excitement flares up because people crave what they can not have, and then things start to die down. Once the product is finally made available no one cares anymore because the excitement is gone and attention has moved on to other things.
As of the last update that we have seen, Kodak says they are still working on the new Ektachrome 100 formula. We understand that this will be a process; film R&D isn’t like riding a bike. Just because Kodak was a master of film back in the day doesn’t mean they can dust off the old plans and get things working again. But the company should have known this would take time, and they should have waited to make an announcement on the return of Ektachrome until they had a clearer picture of when they would be able to bring it to us.
The world today is an impatient place, we have Sony seemingly cranking out an RX100 series camera every 6 weeks (joking, obviously… but really) and it seems like it all moves too fast for its own good. However, for better or worse, it has trained us to expect that when announcements are made for products, that their arrival will be within the foreseeable future. I mean there are Kickstarter projects that are developed, funded and delivered in less time than Kodak has taken to get their act together here with Ektachrome.
We like what we saw with the Ektachrome sneak peeks earlier this year, but at some point, bite-size bits of information and teaser images aren’t going to cut it Kodak. We need to know what is going on with Ektachrome and we need to know when we are going to be able to get our hands on it, or we are simply going to stop caring. Which, let’s face it…is not what you guys need right now.