Kodak says it’s bringing back Ektachrome film

Film photography faded so swiftly that some days it can be hard to recall a time before digital photos.

Just two decades ago Eastman Kodak was selling a billion rolls of film a year. Another giant of film was Polaroid - a name that still had enough cultural cache in 2003 that most people knew what hip-hop duo OutKast meant when they sang, 'Shake it like a Polaroid picture.”

But Polaroid stopped making its instant cameras in 2007 and soon stopped making Polaroid film. In 2012, Eastman Kodak - down to selling millions of film rolls - filed for bankruptcy.

The demise of the Rochester, N.Y.-based company has become a popular business school case study.

Kodak was forced to stop production of many of its film brands - including in 2009 the iconic Kodachrome, the world's first successful color film. The sister brand of Ektachrome had become a cultural touchstone, responsible for capturing many family moments in the country's post-war boom. It inspired Paul Simon to implore in song, 'Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away.”

But technology caught up with film. And in 2010, photographers with their last rolls of Kodachrome film made rushed pilgrimages to Parsons, Kan., home to the world's last processor of a once-ubiquitous film brand.

Ektachrome, which first hit store shelves in 1946, is known first as a slide film. It was celebrated for its rich, distinctive look - and for being particular about how it was exposed. Professional shooters, such as those at National Geographic magazine, swore by it.

'It really was the gold standard,” said T.J. Mooney, product business manager for 'film capture” at Kodak Alaris, one of the companies that emerged from Eastman Kodak's bankruptcy.

Then Ektachrome was killed off in 2012 - the last of Kodak's chrome films, just another digital photography casualty.

On Wednesday, Kodak Alaris announced that it was reviving Ektachrome. The 35 mm film will be available later this year.

The website Phoblographer called it 'a super shocking announcement.”

Photographers - pros and amateurs - took to Twitter to express their joy, including, 'My timeline has been filled with so many happy likes and retweets of #KODAK #ektachrome joy”

The company made the announcement at CES, the annual tech fest that in many ways celebrates the very tools that killed off Ektachrome and Kodachrome and so many other films in the first place.

Ektachrome will join a handful of other Kodak films that still exist - Kodak Gold 200, Kodak Ultra Max 400 and a series of professional films, Mooney said.

Kodachrome, however, 'will not be coming back,” Mooney said.

Kodachrome is notoriously difficult to process. 'You almost needed a Ph.D. in chemistry,” Mooney said.