Mark Lynn photo

For one rail photographer Kodachrome goes out with a bang

By David Lustig

Published: January 10, 2011

CLARKSDALE, Ark. — Jim De Nike loves his Kodachrome. So much so that
as long as he could afford it, it was the only film put into his
Canon F1. When he couldn’t afford to both buy and process it, starting
about July 1999, De Nike made the decision to carefully freeze the film
and store it until the day he could.

By December 2003, his garage freezer held 1,578 rolls of Kodachrome 25
and 64. When the cost of the film and processors began escalating,
De Nike reluctantly switched to Fujifilm’s Provia.

“I didn’t like Kodachrome 64 that much,” the 53-year old De Nike
says, “and I was really annoyed when 25 went away. I recently looked
at my Dad’s Kodachromes he took in Europe in the ’50s and they were
as vivid as ever.”

A Union Pacific signal foreman who travels through the system working
on Positive Train Control upgrades, De Nike hired out in 1980 with
the Missouri Pacific in Houston.

In June 2009, Kodak announced it would be phasing out Kodachrome. De Nike
realized that its processing would soon follow. When Dwayne’s Photo
Service in Parsons, Kans., the last remaining lab handling Kodachrome,
announced a Dec. 31, 2010, deadline, he knew he had to make his move.

In October 2010, he drove from his home in Arkansas to Parsons, about
250 miles, with 50 rolls of Kodachrome. Dwayne’s processed the entire
batch in one day.

“I wondered about the color,” De Nike says. “I had a loupe with me. I
went out to the car and put a slide to the sun. The picture looked great,
the best color I’ve seen.”


It was then he knew he had to take the plunge and process his remaining
1,528 rolls. After notifying Dwayne’s that he was coming, and with money
scrounged up from family funds, in December De Nike again pointed his 2001
Grand Am toward Dwayne’s.

On December 28th, just a few days before the end of Kodachrome processing
forever, De Nike picked up 11 3-foot by 2-foot by two-foot boxes of finished
slides. The cost: $15,867.

“I’ve got history in my hands,” he explains. “I’ve got steam photos and the
Union Pacific [1996 Olympic] torch train. I’ve got a lot of stuff that has
since been scrapped, or been repainted, or sold. It’s a whole new world since
I started taking photos. We’re all going to be historians when it’s said and done.”

De Nike says that if Kodak had not stopped manufacturing the chemicals
necessary to develop Kodachrome, the 1,578 rolls would probably still
be in his freezer.

“I was just hoping for better days,” he says. “Perhaps winning the lottery
to get them processed.”

But De Nike may have to start hoping he’ll win the lottery anyhow. He
already has a year’s worth of unprocessed Fuji slide film stored in his
freezer, along with one roll of pristine unexposed Kodachrome 25 he has
as a memento.

Knowing what he knows now, would he freeze all that film again, knowing
that someday he’d have to pay for its processing?

“I’d spend all the money again in a heartbeat,” he says.