It is 36 years since Paul Simon sang “Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away”. Now Kodak has finally done it.

The Eastman Kodak Company announced yesterday that the camera film, immortalised by Simon’s 1973 hit Kodachrome, was being taken off the market after a run of 74 years.

The once ubiquitous film, loved by generations of both professional and amateur photographers is the latest victim of the digital revolution, and now accounts for just 1 per cent of Kodak’s film sales.

“It was a difficult decision to retire it, given its rich history. However, the majority of today’s photographers have voiced their preference to capture images with newer technology, both film and digital,” said Mary Jane Hellyar, Kodak’s president of film, photofinishing and entertainment.

Kodachrome was born in 1935 after a process invented by two musicians, Leopold Godowsky Jr and Leopold Mannes, a violinist and a pianist known as “God and Man” who were passionately interested in photography as a hobby.

The film was first sold as 16mm movie film but was soon made available in other formats including 35mm.

Kodachrome has the rare distinction of being the only commercial film to have a state park named after it.

The National Geographic Society exploring a spectacular section of Utah dubbed it “Kodachrome Flat” after the brand of film that they used to photograph it. The area was renamed when it was designated a state park in 1962 for fear of a trademark infringement but Kodak gave its permission and the park is now called Kodachrome Basin.

The vivid colours of Kodachrome have captured some of the most famous wildlife imagery as well as many of the world’s best-known news photographs.

Abraham Zapruder’s 8mm reel of President John Kennedy’s 1963 assassination was shot on Kodachrome.

Steve McCurry used the film for his heart-rending portrait of a young Afghan girl with haunting eyes, which won worldwide acclaim when it was published on the cover of National Geographic Magazine in 1985.

Dwayne’s Photo, in Parsons, Kansas, has agreed to continue processing Kodachrome throughout 2010, Kodak said.

Kodak will donate the last rolls of Kodachrome to the George Eastman House photography museum at its headquarters in Rochester, New York.

Mr McCurry, who photographed the Afghan girl, will shoot one of those final rolls and donate the images to the museum.

A SHADE ABOVE DIGITAL QUALITY

Kodachrome has been around for years and was always by far and away the highest quality colour film you could get. Only in recent times have some newer products become finer-grained (Paul Close writes).

Kodachrome had a natural way of recording colour. It was incredibly fine-grained and for many years was the best way of getting maximum quality — the resolution was fantastic.

The top digital cameras would now probably supersede and give better quality when measured mathematically, but aesthetically Kodachrome had something you just can’t reproduce digitally.

It had unbelievable sharpness and smoothness, and accurate colour rendition. Can you think of anything else that was invented in 1935 that is still being used today?

The author is a professional photographer from Hampshire

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