Phragments from Phyllis: Savoring all those Kodachrome moments

Eastman Kodak has filed Chapter 11, and anyone associated with a newspaper for more than 10 years is marveling at how far we've come in such a short time.

For many, many years, the mainstay of newspapers was Tri-X Pan, a 400-ASA black-and-white film. When I first started in the business, I worked for a very frugal editor (and that was before Sam Woodring, the master of frugal).

Kay Lawrence recommended early on that I get a device to roll my own film into individual rolls and buy the Tri-X in bulk. I did that, and she was right. I could roll seven-frame rolls or 36-frame rolls, depending on the event I was covering.

But that meant I had to be very careful about what I took pictures of. When you only have seven frames, you don't get many do-overs. And with film, you couldn't always be sure everyone's eyes were open or that it flashed correctly or that you had the settings right.

In addition, you were at the mercy of the developer, who also had some room for error. I took a photography class in which I developed my own film; however, The Star always had Charlie Wright, who did a bang-up job all the time I worked for Sam and Mim. The only problem I ever heard about was once when Charlie was teaching someone else how to work in the darkroom. Sam and Mim had been to a beauty pageant in Puerto Rico. While they were there, the president or prime minister of Puerto Rico was staying in the same hotel. And there was an assassination attempt on his life.

Someone tried to blow up the hotel. Sam took pictures, and he apparently was perhaps the only person in the world - really - who had photos of the aftermath of the bomb. Anyway, once they got home and had the film developed, something went wrong - chemicals added in the wrong sequence or something. The entire roll was ruined - No world-exclusive photos, no Sam Woodring photo seen round-the globe.

But in the last 12 years, we've "come a long way, baby," as they say. Now everyone has a digital camera. Most kids have never seen film or negatives and have a hard time relating. Instead, we can take 100 pictures at an event, knowing that at least one or two will be exactly what we want. We can look back and see if everyone's eyes are open, or if we have to take 100 more.

These days the question is where do those digital images go? I have thousands of pictures of Cade and Payton, most of which are on my computer. But in 10 years, will they be accessible?

I can tell you that photos I took in 1999 on a digital camera and processed through Adobe Photoshop are even now not readily accessible through the newer versions of Photoshop.

At least when we used real film, we got prints out of it - prints that we framed or shared or put in albums - prints that would last for decades.

The additional question is, if Kodak goes away, who's making quality paper to put prints on anymore? While I have shared a few digital frames and hundreds of images with grandparents (actually great-grandparents, I guess), I don't see a huge one of those hanging on my wall - though I guess at some point that may be exactly what we all have instead of a print.

I do still have some of that bulk film, and I have a good quality SLR camera. I guess I could go back to that.