Kodak To Stop Producing Kodachrome film in 2009.

This is a republication from the Wall Street Journal, Monday June 22nd:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124567093975236801.html

Eastman Kodak Co. said Monday it will discontinue its iconic Kodachrome color film this year due to tumbling sales as photographers embrace newer Kodak films or digital-imaging technology.
Kodak introduced the amateur color film in 1935 and it became the first commercially successful color film. But sales are just a fraction of 1% of the company's still-picture film revenue. The company doesn't break out such figures, but the segment in which Kodak's film sales are recorded had first-quarter revenue of $503 million.

Associated Press Photographer Steve McCurry posed for a portrait with a poster of his iconic photo of an Afghan girl. Those numbers and the unique materials needed to make it convinced Kodak to call its most recent manufacturing run the last, said Mary Jane Hellyar, the outgoing president of Kodak's film, photofinishing and entertainment group. "Kodachrome is particularly difficult [to retire] because it really has become kind of an icon,'' Ms. Hellyar said.
It was the basis not only for countless family slideshows on carousel projectors over the years but also for world-renowned images, including Abraham Zapruder's 8 mm reel of President John F. Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

The last rolls of the film will be donated to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, N.Y., which houses the world's largest collection of cameras and related artifacts. In addition, Steve McCurry—known for a 1985 photo of a young Afghan girl peering from the cover of National Geographic magazine—will shoot one of those last rolls and the images will be donated to Eastman House.

"I want to take [the last roll] with me and somehow make every frame count... just as a way to honor the memory and always be able to look back with fond memories at how it capped and ended my shooting Kodachrome,'' Mr. McCurry said last week from Singapore, where he has an exhibition.