Hasta La Gadget!

What do you know about Dwayne’s Photo Service of Parsons, Kansas? It is the place where the very last roll of the Kodachrome was processed.

Kodachrome, the slide-film that inspired songs, was discontinued by Kodak last year at 74 years of age. The color emulsion was a victim of its own weird processing requirements, which didn’t use the usual E6 chemistry designed for transparency film, and therefore wasn’t worth supporting in the age of digital.

The last roll was shot by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry, who shot the 36 exposures in New York (actually, the last three shots were exposed in Parsons before dropping off the film at Dwayne’s). The pictures will be part of a National Geographic piece in the near future.

McCurry’s film may have been the official last roll off the production line, but Dwayne’s will still process any Kodachrome that you might have until December 10th this year. And then it will shut down, forever. People may still shoot analog, but with the death of Kodachrome comes the spiritual death of film.

Last Kodachrome roll processed in Parsons [Wichita Eagle via Retro Thing]

Photo: Fay Ratta/Flickr

See Also:

• Mama, They Took My Kodachrome Away
• Film
• Five Ways Digital Cameras Beat Film

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Just last week I wished for a pulsing strobe-light application for the iPhone 4’s LED lamp: “I’m hoping that somebody makes a strobing photo and video app that allows for some cool, stuttering image effects,” I wrote, breathless and giddy with the possibilities of making people look like herky-jerky robots as they moved in the dark.

This week, my incessant prayers have been answered by a 15-year-old boy. That boy is John H. Meyer, a developer who has made Strobe Pro, a soon-to-be-available app which will fire the iPhone’s rear-facing flash in staccato bursts. See it in action in this video:

Pretty slick stuff, you’ll probably agree. You might also agree that Meyer has an impressively deep voice for a teenager.

The real utility in this app will probably show itself in combination with a proper camera. As you will have noticed in the video, the iPhone’s camera has trouble keeping up with the flashing lights, but if you were to fire a burst of flashes as a subject moves through the dark in front of the open shutter of your SLR, you’d get a sequence of images not unlike a nocturnal version of Eadweard Muybridge’s famous motion-stopping photos.

Strobe Pro is awaiting App-store approval.

Real Strobe Light for iPhone 4 [YouTube. Thanks, John!]