Saw this a few days ago. I wonder if they'd be kind enough to give me a tour? I'd love to see all that. Also, it's a bit worrisome with such an aging staff. It seems that Kodak has been addressing that in a previous video posted here. How about Ilford?
On one hand it's lovely to see how loyal the staff and different sets of directors are, the people featured have all been there around 40 years. But sooner or later they will need to train their replacements.
Sadly, I expect that many of the people we met at Kodak that day were laid off shortly afterward.
I noticed that the process at Ilford has been very highly automated. I expect the same is true at Kodak too. And I suppose that, as in other industries, jobs were lost because machines run themselves now. But it's also true, as the gentleman at the beginning of the video said, that Ilford has positioned itself well to support a niche market. In an industry whose products were ubiquitous for more than a century, it's heartening (for me) to think that producing 5,000 rolls of 120 film every day equates to "niche market" status. Film shooting could last quite a while in that sort of niche market.Do not overlook that employement at Ilford too has dramatically shrunk over the last two decades.
I noticed that the process at Ilford has been very highly automated. I expect the same is true at Kodak too. And I suppose that, as in other industries, jobs were lost because machines run themselves now. But it's also true, as the gentleman at the beginning of the video said, that Ilford has positioned itself well to support a niche market. In an industry whose products were ubiquitous for more than a century, it's heartening (for me) to think that producing 5,000 rolls of 120 film every day equates to "niche market" status. Film shooting could last quite a while in that sort of niche market.
I enjoyed the video as well - even if I had to resort at times to the Closed Captioning
I enjoyed the video as well - even if I had to resort at times to the Closed Captioning.
I find myself amazed at how relatively slow and small that confectioning machine for 120 is.
Part of my amazement about that confectioning machine is rooted in those old discussions with Simon Galley where he advised that a similar machine for 220 would cost at least 300,000 pounds.
That is a lot of money for a machine that would almost certainly be used for much less production than that relatively small capacity machine.
5000 rolls per production day being enough to satisfy worldwide demand for all Ilford 120 film. Hmmm.
Well, per shift. She said 6 hours, they could be running multiple shifts per day...
which still makes it a very small number at 10 or 15K per day for worldwide demand. At least with historically low margins on film it's still an awful lot of years before you've covered that capital expenditure.
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