Film from Italy -- Ferrania starting production 2014

[Sal Santamaura]

OK, they're not competing with digital for your purchases. But they are for the purchases of most other people in the known universe.

You are logged into APUG not DPUG...

A fact of which I'm well aware. Of what relevance is it to my post that you quoted?

 

[wblynch]

Do you think Ferrania will be better than Kodak Gold or Fujifilm consumer color films?

I can buy those all day for less than $4 a roll. Less than $3 a roll most days.

I shoot film for fun and though I do use Portra and Ektar and the Fujifilm Pro series, I don't see that they are worth 2 or 3 times the price of the consumer versions.

If you tell Ferrania that you will tolerate $15 film that's where they will START.

And if you want to keep people shooting film and hope to bring new people in you'd better be smart about the price.

You can pay $15 if you wish but I won't.

 

[Xmas]

A fact of which I'm well aware. Of what relevance is it to my post that you quoted?

I apologize thought you might be unaware.

 

[Roger Cole]

Do you think Ferrania will be better than Kodak Gold or Fujifilm consumer color films?

I can buy those all day for less than $4 a roll. Less than $3 a roll most days.

I shoot film for fun and though I do use Portra and Ektar and the Fujifilm Pro series, I don't see that they are worth 2 or 3 times the price of the consumer versions.

If you tell Ferrania that you will tolerate $15 film that's where they will START.

And if you want to keep people shooting film and hope to bring new people in you'd better be smart about the price.

You can pay $15 if you wish but I won't.

It'll be a damned sight better than any Kodak "Gold" or otherwise, consumer or otherwise, E6 film you can buy from current production. We ARE talking about E6 here. Other than the Maco/Rollei stuff (may or may not give yellow tint...) the cheapest from B&H is already $9.95, only slightly cheaper direct from Asia.

The $15 plus I pay is for Provia 400X, and remaining stock of a discontinued film at that. Show me another E6 film of 400 speed and equal quality and I will compare costs. Otherwise, if you want 400 speed E6 (I do) that's what it costs. Pay it or don't, but there is no cheaper alternative.

So no I won't pay $15 for a 100 speed film, unless it has some extraordinary quality, since I can get Provia (or Velvia if it met my tastes but generally it doesn't) for much less. But for a 400 speed E6 film of good quality I would, and would be glad such a film was available again.

If they branch out into color neg no, I won't pay that, unless it is extraordinary and in some way beats the pants off Ektar 100 and Portra 160/400 (which I highly doubt.) But if it did, I'd consider it.

 

[Xmas]

Do you think Ferrania will be better than Kodak Gold or Fujifilm consumer color films?

I can buy those all day for less than $4 a roll. Less than $3 a roll most days.

I shoot film for fun and though I do use Portra and Ektar and the Fujifilm Pro series, I don't see that they are worth 2 or 3 times the price of the consumer versions.

If you tell Ferrania that you will tolerate $15 film that's where they will START.

And if you want to keep people shooting film and hope to bring new people in you'd better be smart about the price.

You can pay $15 if you wish but I won't.

You need to replace your 'all day' by 'this year'.
If you don't 'pay the piper' you likely won't have any colour next year, apart from forward buying you do now. You are lucky that the It tax payer is funding so far.
Don't worry about me I use mono already.

It may be like the last days of Kchrome unless you can home process and forward buy E6 kits. Cause infra structure will fold with Fuji and Kodak.

Or they may not make it to market at all.

No commercial org listens to web gossip.

 

[Nzoomed]

Ive also asked them in the survey if they are able to produce a slide film that can be developed in regular C41 chemistry, if such a thing is possible it will mean that it will make it possible to process in any c41 lab.
If they can pull that off it would be awesome!

 

[Roger Cole]

Ive also asked them in the survey if they are able to produce a slide film that can be developed in regular C41 chemistry, if such a thing is possible it will mean that it will make it possible to process in any c41 lab.
If they can pull that off it would be awesome!

Um, no. Not unless you just want to cross process to negative, which you can of course do now. Reversal processing requires, well, reversal - either a chemical fogging or re-exposure to light as in the older E4 and prior processes.

 

[Roger Cole]

You need to replace your 'all day' by 'this year'.
If you don't 'pay the piper' you likely won't have any colour next year, apart from forward buying you do now. You are lucky that the It tax payer is funding so far.
Don't worry about me I use mono already.

It may be like the last days of Kchrome unless you can home process and forward buy E6 kits. Cause infra structure will fold with Fuji and Kodak.

Or they may not make it to market at all.

No commercial org listens to web gossip.

Well that is a point - when I said they didn't need to market chems I meant right now. If they are going to single handedly save E6 they may at that need to work out something with a chemical company like Tetanal, Champion, Unicolor etc.

 

[MattKing]

Ive also asked them in the survey if they are able to produce a slide film that can be developed in regular C41 chemistry, if such a thing is possible it will mean that it will make it possible to process in any c41 lab.
If they can pull that off it would be awesome!

It exists, and is called ECN process. This is what the motion picture industry uses (at least the stuff still shot and printed on to film).

You shoot a negative material, that is designed to be printed onto another negative material, to create a positive transparency for projection. The original negative is lower in contrast than C41 negatives, and its colour response is matched to the projection material, rather than to printing paper.

The two stage process actually has greater potential for colour accuracy than E6 or C41.

 

[Dr Croubie]

It exists, and is called ECN process. This is what the motion picture industry uses (at least the stuff still shot and printed on to film).

You shoot a negative material, that is designed to be printed onto another negative material, to create a positive transparency for projection. The original negative is lower in contrast than C41 negatives, and its colour response is matched to the projection material, rather than to printing paper.

The two stage process actually has greater potential for colour accuracy than E6 or C41.

True, it may be more accurate and get more detailed and accurate colours and latitude and whatever else.
But I, as a regular home-user, am hardly going to be able to do such a two-stage process, it would require at least a) twice the film, b) twice the chemicals, and c) some sort of kit for duplicating the images, be it by contact-printing in a dedicated device or a macro-dupliating setup.
The proportion of people who shoot E6 to project as slides is ever dropping, most these days would just use it for the funky colours and scan it I'd guess. If you go from there to a 2-stage double-cost process just to project, then only the very very hardcore will remain doing what they can to make projections.
The rest will just shoot the negs, be it C41 or ECN, and scan them...

 

[Roger Cole]

I shoot slide film for projection (and only that reason) but I wouldn't bother trying to do that either. I'd shoot some digital for digital projection and shoot some black and white transparencies either DR5 or home processed.

 

[wblynch]

Did Ferrania say they will produce an iso 400 slide film?

 

[Roger Cole]

No Socrates, they didn't. But they didn't say they'd produce a C41 film either. That didn't stop you from comparing their potential E6 offering to the price of consumer Kodak Gold. Stepping up the speed two stops is more likely than a completely different type of film. And you also said you wouldn't pay even ten dollars and only "maybe" six for E6. Well you can't get E6 for six bucks now, and barely for ten.

Bottom line for me is that if a new 100 speed E6 film comes to market anywhere between zero and fifteen dollars a roll I will try it then use more or not based on its merits, not its price.

 

[wblynch]

Well there you go then.

 

[Nzoomed]

It exists, and is called ECN process. This is what the motion picture industry uses (at least the stuff still shot and printed on to film).

You shoot a negative material, that is designed to be printed onto another negative material, to create a positive transparency for projection. The original negative is lower in contrast than C41 negatives, and its colour response is matched to the projection material, rather than to printing paper.

The two stage process actually has greater potential for colour accuracy than E6 or C41.

Yes that does exist, but i was referring to a positive film that can be processed in C41 chemistry without the crazy hues you get when cross processing E6 in C41, i dont know what obstacles there would be to achieve this, as obviously you would have to work within the limits of the chemistry. We know that you can still process E6 in C41 and get colour, so the couplers are obviously developing, the key is to make couplers in a film that behave like they are processed in E6 chemicals, when in fact its C41. But im no chemist, i dont know what differences there is in negative film compared to positive. i guess PE will know more about this. No doubt it would have already been done if possible.

 

[railwayman3]

It's not so much a case of the C41 and E6 films being totally different, it's the difference between negative and reversal processing. Reversal requires two stages of development, one to produce a negative image, the second to develop the remaining undeveloped halides to produce a positive image (and for the couplers to produce the colours).

Ordinary B&W negative film can be processed in a similar two-stage process to give a monochrome transparency on the original camera film.

 

[ME Super]

No Socrates, they didn't. But they didn't say they'd produce a C41 film either. That didn't stop you from comparing their potential E6 offering to the price of consumer Kodak Gold. Stepping up the speed two stops is more likely than a completely different type of film. And you also said you wouldn't pay even ten dollars and only "maybe" six for E6. Well you can't get E6 for six bucks now, and barely for ten.

Bottom line for me is that if a new 100 speed E6 film comes to market anywhere between zero and fifteen dollars a roll I will try it then use more or not based on its merits, not its price.

Actually they did say they were going to produce a C41 film. There's only one 100-speed C41 emulsion currently manufactured by the big two - Kodak Ektar 100. Adox has the Color Implosion film (a 100-speed, very experimental, very grainy film by Adox's own description), but other than that there are no 100 speed C41 films being manufactured. Film Ferrania said in their very first news post on their site: "We think it is better to start revamping the very last produced emulsions. The first two that we will make are a color negative film derived from Ferrania Solaris FG-100 Plus (only for still photographs) and a professional color reversal film derived from Scotch Chrome 100."

As to your comment on price, I'd like it to be cheaper but $15/roll isn't too terrible. I'm paying around $10-11 a roll now for E6. Of course if they're more expensive than Fuji, it needs to be a higher quality film than Fuji's offerings, and lemme tell ya, that's gonna be a hard act to follow.

 

[railwayman3]

I still prefer to use a 100-speed C-41 film for general use; I think this dates back to the 1980's when 400 film could be a bit grainy, and 200 seemed neither one-thing-nor-another, lacking the fine grain of 100 and the extra 1-stop of speed not really being much of a benefit in difficult light.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

As to your comment on price, I'd like it to be cheaper but $15/roll isn't too terrible. I'm paying around $10-11 a roll now for E6. Of course if they're more expensive than Fuji, it needs to be a higher quality film than Fuji's offerings, and lemme tell ya, that's gonna be a hard act to follow.

I think we need to manage our expectations a little at the beginning. There is a tendency to think that the customer is still king and is always still right no matter what. But expecting Ferrania to initially give us better E-6 than Fuji, and/or at a lower price point, and possibly in a gazillion formats, and a new color negative film right away as well, might be asking for the impossible.

If we hold them to such a standard right out of the gate, they may never reach critical mass and just be forced to throw in the towel. Then what do we do a year later when Fuji shuts down all color film manufacturing?

Better I think to be a little more patient. And be willing to initially pay what is required to keep them moving forward as a viable long-term option to Fuji. Part of the definition of extinct includes the principle of a very long time.

I also worry about Adox in this same respect. Everyone wants cheap, cheap, cheap. Mirko has written here on several occasions bemoaning the fact that some of his plans for future films are on hold because no one wants to pay what is required to bring them to market. Sometimes I wonder how long he can keep going as well.

Be careful what you ask for...

Ken

 

[StoneNYC]

Yes that does exist, but i was referring to a positive film that can be processed in C41 chemistry without the crazy hues you get when cross processing E6 in C41, i dont know what obstacles there would be to achieve this, as obviously you would have to work within the limits of the chemistry. We know that you can still process E6 in C41 and get colour, so the couplers are obviously developing, the key is to make couplers in a film that behave like they are processed in E6 chemicals, when in fact its C41. But im no chemist, i dont know what differences there is in negative film compared to positive. i guess PE will know more about this. No doubt it would have already been done if possible.

*facepalm*

 

[StoneNYC]

Actually they did say they were going to produce a C41 film. There's only one 100-speed C41 emulsion currently manufactured by the big two - Kodak Ektar 100. Adox has the Color Implosion film (a 100-speed, very experimental, very grainy film by Adox's own description), but other than that there are no 100 speed C41 films being manufactured. Film Ferrania said in their very first news post on their site: "We think it is better to start revamping the very last produced emulsions. The first two that we will make are a color negative film derived from Ferrania Solaris FG-100 Plus (only for still photographs) and a professional color reversal film derived from Scotch Chrome 100."

As to your comment on price, I'd like it to be cheaper but $15/roll isn't too terrible. I'm paying around $10-11 a roll now for E6. Of course if they're more expensive than Fuji, it needs to be a higher quality film than Fuji's offerings, and lemme tell ya, that's gonna be a hard act to follow.

I think he/she meant a 400 speed C-41 when they said that.

 

[pbromaghin]

Did Ferrania say they will produce an iso 400 slide film?

Well, the film they are re-creating was originally sold in iso 100, 640 and 800/3200.

 

[Rudeofus]

But expecting Ferrania to initially give us better E-6 than Fuji, and/or at a lower price point, and possibly in a gazillion formats, and a new color negative film right away as well, might be asking for the impossible.

If you produce a new color negative emulsion, people will only look at grain and speed, and maybe talk about accurate colors, but that's very different with color slide film. I really miss Fuji Astia, and if Ferrania comes out with a film with similar color palette, I won't ask questions about grain, and would happily accept ISO 50 if it must be that way.

Also, if Ferrania can indeed deploy a small scale coating line, they will be able to offer all kinds of formats. This is very difficult for both Fuji and Kodak at the moment. And if Ferrania are likely to have coarser grained emulsions than Fuji and Kodak, it may be a wise move to offer their film primarily for larger formats where grain is a non issue.

 

[wblynch]

Remember, Ferrania went out of business because they couldn't compete against Fuji and Kodak with their last films. These are the films that are coming back.

I appreciated Ferrania films and especially that they were the last provider of 126 cartridge film. This is my biggest hope, that they will bring back 126.

Kodak still has enough of their color negative films from the days when Ferrania was still strong. Fuji has most of their color negative films and a good portion of the transparencies.

And Kodak dropped all their transparency films because people wouldn't buy them even at $6 a roll. Elitechrome, an amazing film, went begging for buyers at $3.50 a roll!

Ferrania's best could not match Kodak and Fuji's least films then so it is unlikely that they will be superior upon return.

Ferrania can come back and make a lot of money and provide a lot of good film but they had better make good measure of the general market.

And I bet not one of you here will pay $15 for a roll of Ferrania film - more than once.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

..expecting Ferrania to initially give us better E-6 than Fuji...

Better than? How about even close to "as good as?"

...asking for the impossible...

Oh dear, let's hope it's better than what's come out of The Impossible Project.