Photograph: Kodak

Kodak first announced the rebirth of Ektachrome way back in January at CES. Along with Kodak Alaris—who will distribute the 35mm Kodak Professional Ektachrome film for stills shooters—the company said it would bring back Ektachrome by the end of 2017... and then promptly stopped talking about it.

Merely if you were worried that Kodak had given upward on the thought, fear non: in a new episode of the Kodakery podcast, a few of Kodak'south higher ups (including Marketing and Product Manager Diane Carroll-Yacoby) updated the world on the progress of the Ektachrome reboot, how they're making information technology, and what testing even so stand betwixt your hands and a fresh 36-shot roll of the stuff.

You can listen to the unabridged Kodakery podcast update below:

The first one-half of the podcast is mostly a photography and history lesson: discussing the origins of Ektachrome, its 'characteristics' (read: limitations), and how Kodak has managed to bring it back to life after discontinuing it in 2013. But if you desire to get into the "how and when" of the matter, you'll want to skip to the 22 infinitesimal mark.

That'due south where we get to learn most how difficult it is to bring back a film similar Ektachrome—which is fabricated upwardly of eighty ingredients, some of them no longer available to buy—and how Kodak is making the economics of Ektachrome piece of work by creating it in smaller, more sustainable batches.

You'll want to heed to the word to actually get the details of how the pic is made, but here are a few of the most interesting tidbits virtually the revival process (for us anyhow):

  • Kodak has managed to either find or industry all eighty ingredients required to brand Ektachrome.
  • Much of the procedure so far has involved retooling the formula so it will work on the machines available to them, because they no longer take all of the equipment they had when Ektachrome was beingness developed previously.
  • They've already produced some 'airplane pilot coatings' that they are testing to ensure they're ready to mass produce Ektachrome that's up to snuff.
  • When they're ready to get, they will exist making rolls using a coater that produces the film on sheets that are 4 feet wide and 6,000 feet long. The offset of these 'wide' rolls will be produced earlier the end of 2017, and will exist used for internal testing.
  • Kodak will be making a single (4ft x 6,000ft) curlicue for the offset production run, so they don't have to hold on to too much inventory at one fourth dimension.
  • Kodak Ektachrome'due south market release is planned for 2018.

Eastman Kodak itself will produce all of the flick and plans to distribute the Super 8 cinema version of Ektachrome, while Kodak Alaris will distribute the 35mm slide pic for stills shooters. For now, we still don't know exactly when Ektachrome is coming back in 2018, but as before long every bit we practice, nosotros'll let yous know so y'all tin mark your calendars.