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A southeast Kansas business that is the
last place in the world to process Kodachrome has been inundated
with the elaborately crafted color-reversal film as it prepares to
stop handling it.


      Grant Steinle primarily runs Dwayne's Photo, the business in the
small town of Parsons that his father founded in 1956. He said the
company received "a tsunami of film" after announcing it would
stop processing Kodachrome at the end of 2010.


      The Kansas City Star reported that the stop date for processing
the film has been postponed to Monday or Tuesday at the earliest.


      Business has been so hectic that for a time, processing went on
24 hours a day, seven days a week. Dec. 30 was the deadline for
submitting film, which has arrived from as far away as China, Japan
and Australia.


      "Normally we get 20 to 30 packages a day from FedEx and three
or four bags of mail from the post office," Steinle said. "One
day last week, we got 500 packages from FedEx, 250 from UPS and
probably 18 bags of mail."


      One Arkansas railroad worker who photographed trains recently
picked up 1,580 rolls from Dwayne's. The $15,798 bill was so steep
that he had to tap his father's retirement account to pay it.


      Dwayne's, which once was one of about 25 Kodachrome processers
worldwide, is enjoying the attention.


      Kodachrome enjoyed its mass-market heyday in the 1960s and `70s
before being eclipsed by video and easy-to-process color negative
films, the kind that prints are made from. It garnered its share of
spectacular images, none more iconic than Abraham Zapruder's reel
of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963.


      Kodak gave longtime National Geographic photographer Steve
McCurry the last roll after announcing in 2009 that it was
discontinuing the slide and motion-picture film.


      But the distinction of shooting the last roll to be processed
will go to Dwayne Steinle, the founder of Dwayne's Photo. The
pictures are of him and his 60 employees, wearing yellow T-shirts
and standing outside his business. The backs of their shirts tout
Kodachrome's history. Toward the end, the shirts say, "we
developed the last roll."
      

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Kodak retiring Kodachrome film

A southeast Kansas business that is the
last place in the world to process Kodachrome has been inundated
with the elaborately crafted color-reversal film as it prepares to
stop handling it.


Kodachrome film processing to stop soon

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