Anybody buying Kodak B&W films nowadays?

[Alan Edward Klein]

And 50% of the buyers don't even have a record player. Or at least that's what a headline said a month or two ago...

There's a huge market of vintage and new record players. Of course, some investors might buy records and never use them, putting them away to resell later at appreciated prices.

 

[_T_]

Thanks for both lists. I agree that if you stretch "film manufacturing" to a wider definition, the list can approach and probably even exceed 10. The definition would then have to include things like "may or may still not be manufacturing film that's not intended for photographic purposes, but used for it by some", "marketing film they don't actually manufacture", "are a trade name but not a legal entity as such that manufacture photographic film". And perhaps some other variants.

To name a few:
* ORWO: is not really one discernable legal entity; unclear who does the actual manufacturing, although some people in the German industry evidently know
* Lomo: does not manufacture film.
* Rollei: idem; is not a manufacturer
* Arista: same thing
* Kentmere: same

But alright, even if you were to compile a correct list, it would still exceed 5, but end before you'd reach 10. Calling that 'loads' is a bit of a stretch.

How many manufacturers were actually coating film before the digital revolution say in 1999?

 

[Craig]

How many manufacturers were actually coating film before the digital revolution say in 1999?

I can think of the following off the top of my head:
Kodak
Ilford
Fuji
Konica
Agfa

Depending on how you count it, Polaroid.

 

[MCB18]

I can think of the following off the top of my head:
Kodak
Ilford
Fuji
Konica
Agfa

Depending on how you count it, Polaroid.

Poloroid is purely a finishing company now. They outsource both the positive and negative films. You can see this on the “In an Instant” factory tour.

I have a theory that these materials are actually manufactured by Fuji, but I have no basis for this. It would make some sense though.

 

[koraks]

How many manufacturers were actually coating film before the digital revolution say in 1999?

A little more than the list @Craig gave; think of Efke, Svema, Tasma, Lucky and probably a few others.
What's also noteworthy is that for instance Fuji were coating in two and probably three major production plants (I assume they had a film coating line in the US as well at some point), while they're down to one skeleton operation now in Japan. Agfa I think were similar in that they probably coated in Belgium as well as Germany.

One of the reasons I find this relevant is that it illustrates how in particular knowledge and competence have disappeared. It seems to me that the film manufacturing industry has already dropped below its critical mass, particularly concerning color.

 

[lamerko]

Fuji isn't dead yet - they've announced that they're resuming production of their films, albeit at an inflated price. And it's not about the repackaged Kodak in the US, which could eventually disappear or rebrand. True, there is uncertainty about external procurement, but it is still good news.

 

[koraks]

they've announced that they're resuming production of their films

No, they announced that they are resuming ordering for their films in Japan.

 

[lamerko]

No, they announced that they are resuming ordering for their films in Japan.

To sell, you must produce. It's about their product line - they says they're re-ordering previously SUSPENDED movies. Unfortunately, the increase will be drastic - up to 88%, I guess mostly for reversible films. And yes, it is about their domestic market, but I guess in case of saturation, they will start external orders.

 

[koraks]

To sell, you must produce.

Or purchase. Or sell from stock.

We know they have been selling Kodak-manufactured C41 after axing virtually all of their own C41 products.

We don't know how large their production batches for E6 film are and if they might have been selling cold-stored pre-produced material for quite some time. It would not surprise me one bit production runs for their E6 films happen only once a year or so, at best. Moreover, we've seen the same pattern of price increases leading up to outright discontinuation with their other film products in the past.

All considered, there may be many things going on and we just don't know what's actually happening. One scenario is that they're ramping all film production back up after a lengthy downward spiral followed by a brief hiatus. Another scenario is that they're effectively pulling out of all film production and what we're seeing now are some final twitches. And there are some scenarios in-between that are in my opinion the most likely.

I'm saying this not because I somehow 'want' Fuji to cease film production, or because I'm a naysayer etc. I'm saying it because I've seen people interpret information in very funny and overly optimistic ways for years and I want to emphasize that the vast majority of those interpretations are simply unsupported. The 'they have resumed manufacturing' interpretation is a very good one. It's been quite a while since Fuji has said anything about film manufacturing as such. Even when they went on that supposed hiatus, the press releases only mentioned that they stopped taking orders.

The recent press release is great news if you (1) operate from Japan and (2) are placing orders directly with Fuji. For the rest of us, it means preciously little.

 

[Agulliver]

And 50% of the buyers don't even have a record player. Or at least that's what a headline said a month or two ago...

I believe that is an out of date observation. 10 years ago it might well have been true, but today is sloppy "journalism". There certainly was a trend for people to buy vinyl records in order to have something to handle and perhaps put on display. Now they're played. Not always on sufficiently good equipment, but they're played. The same may not be true of the smaller but extant rise in sales of cassette tapes, they are mostly not being played by the young folk buying them. A bit of a shame because the few new releases that I've bought have been well duplicated. While I cannot buy film or cassettes at my local supermarket, there is a reasonable choice of LPs there. And it's been quite some years since I needed to "worry" about weather an anticipated new release from a favourite artist would be available on vinyl or not.

as for the cost of records Vs CDs....just look at the process to manufacture each item. A CD costs a few pennies to manufacture. A vinyl record actually costs a few dollarpounds. The vinyl will also in most cases be specially mastered for the format, sometimes by an expert mastering engineer

I don't know why Kodak's B&W film is significantly more expensive than Ilford's....except that the B&W film is Ilford's main product and a bit of a minority one for Kodak. What I don't do is envisage a fat executive in a large chair stroking a long-haired, white cat and dreaming up the next Kodak price increase. It's as "cheap" as it can reasonably be. We know their profit margins ain't big on film.

 

[albireo]

I believe that is an out of date observation. 10 years ago it might well have been true, but today is sloppy "journalism". There certainly was a trend for people to buy vinyl records in order to have something to handle and perhaps put on display. Now they're played. Not always on sufficiently good equipment, but they're played.

I have several records and I play them to death on my Rega Planar 3 with a Denon moving coil cartridge into Danish-made Dynaudio speakers. Nothing fancy, but the setup wows me every time. Great British design on those Rega turntables. The records I have and love to play sound significantly better than their CD counterparts (which I also own and play) because the mastering is different. Most modern CDs, especially popular music remasters (rock, jazz), are brickwalled to death. Some people might be aware of the so called 'Loudness war'

Loudness war - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Now the key here is that LPs are (almost always) immune to the above due to inherent limitations in the medium (groove profile/depth etc). For my taste, a well mastered LP will sound orders of magnitude better (better = better dynamic range) than a poorly mastered CD of the same material. To listen to a classic rock LP mastered with respect having spent years only knowing the sh**y CD compressed CD remaster is a true revelation.

Of course, a well mastered CD will sound amazing, but they're increasingly rare, as the signal encoded is often stretched to death (compressed) to reach decent sound pressure even on portable devices with poor amplification and/or high impedance headphones. Mobile music listening probably killed good music mastering.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I believe that is an out of date observation. 10 years ago it might well have been true, but today is sloppy "journalism". There certainly was a trend for people to buy vinyl records in order to have something to handle and perhaps put on display. Now they're played. Not always on sufficiently good equipment, but they're played. The same may not be true of the smaller but extant rise in sales of cassette tapes, they are mostly not being played by the young folk buying them. A bit of a shame because the few new releases that I've bought have been well duplicated. While I cannot buy film or cassettes at my local supermarket, there is a reasonable choice of LPs there. And it's been quite some years since I needed to "worry" about weather an anticipated new release from a favourite artist would be available on vinyl or not.

as for the cost of records Vs CDs....just look at the process to manufacture each item. A CD costs a few pennies to manufacture. A vinyl record actually costs a few dollarpounds. The vinyl will also in most cases be specially mastered for the format, sometimes by an expert mastering engineer

I don't know why Kodak's B&W film is significantly more expensive than Ilford's....except that the B&W film is Ilford's main product and a bit of a minority one for Kodak. What I don't do is envisage a fat executive in a large chair stroking a long-haired, white cat and dreaming up the next Kodak price increase. It's as "cheap" as it can reasonably be. We know their profit margins ain't big on film.

When I make my photo slideshows and add background music, I buy individual songs from Amazon. They run about $1 for each song to download. Of course, you can download entire albums as well. I believe it's also perfectly legal to backup your download onto your own DVD. Or you buy the DVD to be shipped in the mail.

 

[Agulliver]

Don't forget Ferrania in the beforetimes, possibly the single biggest producer of amateur C41 films in the world at the time....but often overlooked because most of their production was sold under other names.

Worth noting that someome recently pointed out that only four companies ever really mastered production of C41 colour film
Kodak, Agfa, Fuji and Konica. While Ferrania made tons of the stuff and I did like Ferrania Solaris 200, the 400 and 800 were below par in terms of grain and colour saturation compared to the "big 4".

But yes there were smaller, Eastern European and Chinese companies such as Forte, Efke, Lucky doing film before "the great crash". So really it wasn't very many companies who were doing it by the 1990s, and only four (or five) ever got the hang of C41.

@albireo I totally agree regarding vinyl. For a well mastered and manufactured LP compared to the CD of the same material the difference is like day and night. The only digital format that ever came close was DVD-Audio (24-bit, 192kHz sampling rate at best). I firmly believe the red book CD is just not capable of capturing music adequately. By suitable equipment really I mean anything a step above those Crosley style things on sale in supermarkets with the red ceramic cartridge. They damage records over time and sound poor to begin with. My turntable at home is a 32 year old Systemdek. It's predecessor was a generic 80s plastic thing which was sold under the Memorex brand, and actually sounds OK. It now lives in my office at work. I knew the tide had turned when my cousin's kid, some 15 years ago, saw some of my record collection and said "Oh vinyl, did you know they sound better than CDs"....I work in a school and the teenagers all know what vinyl records are, but other than instax the film bug hasn't caught on.

 

[Don_ih]

as for the cost of records Vs CDs....just look at the process to manufacture each item. A CD costs a few pennies to manufacture.

Sort of. Like everything else, once the demand for CDs drops to an unsustainable level, they will cost more to manufacture. It really doesn't look like it has much time left on the market, since no one uses them for computers, anymore (most computers do not have a cd or dvd drive, now) and streaming services and mp3 downloads have killed physical music sales.

Soon, CDs will be harder to get than peel-apart Polaroid film.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Don't forget Ferrania in the beforetimes, possibly the single biggest producer of amateur C41 films in the world at the time....but often overlooked because most of their production was sold under other names.

Worth noting that someome recently pointed out that only four companies ever really mastered production of C41 colour film
Kodak, Agfa, Fuji and Konica. While Ferrania made tons of the stuff and I did like Ferrania Solaris 200, the 400 and 800 were below par in terms of grain and colour saturation compared to the "big 4".

But yes there were smaller, Eastern European and Chinese companies such as Forte, Efke, Lucky doing film before "the great crash". So really it wasn't very many companies who were doing it by the 1990s, and only four (or five) ever got the hang of C41.

@albireo I totally agree regarding vinyl. For a well mastered and manufactured LP compared to the CD of the same material the difference is like day and night. The only digital format that ever came close was DVD-Audio (24-bit, 192kHz sampling rate at best). I firmly believe the red book CD is just not capable of capturing music adequately. By suitable equipment really I mean anything a step above those Crosley style things on sale in supermarkets with the red ceramic cartridge. They damage records over time and sound poor to begin with. My turntable at home is a 32 year old Systemdek. It's predecessor was a generic 80s plastic thing which was sold under the Memorex brand, and actually sounds OK. It now lives in my office at work. I knew the tide had turned when my cousin's kid, some 15 years ago, saw some of my record collection and said "Oh vinyl, did you know they sound better than CDs"....I work in a school and the teenagers all know what vinyl records are, but other than instax the film bug hasn't caught on.

I just checked a couple of my DVD that I copied into my computer. The properties says on most 128kbps.

 

[Agulliver]

@Alan Edward Klein 128kbps refers to the bit rate rather than sample rate I was mentioning. 128kbps is a pretty low resolution, highly compressed MP3 most likely.

Red book CD is 16-bit, 44.1kHz sampling rate uncompressed and around 1400kbps. DVD-A at full resolution, 24-bit, 192kHz can be up to 9Mbps but typically was half that.

Of course we all know the ultimate music format is analogue reel to reel tape. But none of this is directly relatable to film, letalone Kodak B&W film nd whether people are buying it. Though in a world where people are paying 400 dollarpounds for a pre-recorded reel of tape, people will buy Kodak B&W film. Just not so many of them.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The properties for downloads from Amazon seem to provide greater bit rates. Here's a bunch that are much higher than what's normal on an purchased DVD shown on my last post.

 

[Don_ih]

@Alan Edward Klein when you copied your cd using your computer, your software encoded the music at that bitrate (128). Amazon provides higher bitrate encodings. It hardly matters, though. In my case, my hearing isn't good enough to discern the very slight difference between the lowest encoded mp3 and the same some straight off a cd.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

@Alan Edward Klein 128kbps refers to the bit rate rather than sample rate I was mentioning. 128kbps is a pretty low resolution, highly compressed MP3 most likely.

Red book CD is 16-bit, 44.1kHz sampling rate uncompressed and around 1400kbps. DVD-A at full resolution, 24-bit, 192kHz can be up to 9Mbps but typically was half that.

Of course we all know the ultimate music format is analogue reel to reel tape. But none of this is directly relatable to film, letalone Kodak B&W film nd whether people are buying it. Though in a world where people are paying 400 dollarpounds for a pre-recorded reel of tape, people will buy Kodak B&W film. Just not so many of them.

What is Red Book? Is that the master that they make the DVD's and downloads MP3 from that are sold to the public? What listener gets more than these standard lower rates and does it make a difference really from a hearing standpoint?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

@Alan Edward Klein when you copied your cd using your computer, your software encoded the music at that bitrate (128). Amazon provides higher bitrate encodings. It hardly matters, though. In my case, my hearing isn't good enough to discern the very slight difference between the lowest encoded mp3 and the same some straight off a cd.

I have huge tinnitus so I'm in the same boat as you. When I got my new 75" TV, I was going to install a fancy sound system like Atmos. Then I realized why bother with my hearing. So I wound up getting a sound bar that has a boost button to increase voice levels so I can hear the actors speaking better. So much for buying 7 speakers. I bought a 4x5 camera system instead. My eyes are a lot better than my ears.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Sort of. Like everything else, once the demand for CDs drops to an unsustainable level, they will cost more to manufacture. It really doesn't look like it has much time left on the market, since no one uses them for computers, anymore (most computers do not have a cd or dvd drive, now) and streaming services and mp3 downloads have killed physical music sales.
View attachment 342609

Soon, CDs will be harder to get than peel-apart Polaroid film.

I bought a Dell desktop last year that standardly is not sold with a DVD player/recorder. However, you can add it internally it to the tower when you order as I did for around $40 more. I have loads of photos backup on DVD's as well as old videos. I still have DVD and Blu-ray players attached to my 4K TV.

I used to created DVD's of home videos and slide shows using Adobe Premiere Elements. But now with the higher bit rate for 4K movies, I dump the shows onto a memory card connected to the TV USB jack to play rather than using DVDs which can't handle the higher bit rate efficiently. Of course, DVDs allow menu options for home video shows that aren't allowed when using memory cards.

 

[Prest_400]

Of course we all know the ultimate music format is analogue reel to reel tape. But none of this is directly relatable to film, letalone Kodak B&W film nd whether people are buying it. Though in a world where people are paying 400 dollarpounds for a pre-recorded reel of tape, people will buy Kodak B&W film. Just not so many of them.

Well, it is also coated and similar to film in a way. It would be interesting to listen to a low generation master tape. For music I am quite happy with digital formats but one has to do a lot of checks as to get a non brickwalled master.
For convenience and work hours it's a lot of streaming however. Contemporary pop music isn't the best listening experience but it is fun and for that serves its purpose.

I'm putting out a small order for B&W materials. Mostly developer. I am having a period that after 1.5 years of postcovid socialization I have barely been in the darkroom, and even have stocks of unexposed B&W that I bought in early 2021... That was yesterday!!

I mostly check 120 film and realised that from 2020, Ilford prices have had quite a sizeable increase. Maco had FP4/HP5 at 4.8€ in 2020 when bought in bulk, now it's 7.60€.

 

[abruzzi]

What is Red Book?

Redbook is the CD audio format. Remember audio CDs predated data CDs by quite a few years. Redbook audio CDs have no concept of file systems or files--that came later with ISO9660. It is very simple, uncompressed 16bit, 44.1khz digital audio, with a few additional features for tracks and indexes.

 

[TomR55]

@Alan Edward Klein 128kbps refers to the bit rate rather than sample rate I was mentioning. 128kbps is a pretty low resolution, highly compressed MP3 most likely.

Red book CD is 16-bit, 44.1kHz sampling rate uncompressed and around 1400kbps. DVD-A at full resolution, 24-bit, 192kHz can be up to 9Mbps but typically was half that.

Of course we all know the ultimate music format is analogue reel to reel tape. But none of this is directly relatable to film, letalone Kodak B&W film nd whether people are buying it. Though in a world where people are paying 400 dollarpounds for a pre-recorded reel of tape, people will buy Kodak B&W film. Just not so many of them.

... Did I read this correctly? Is that 1/4, 1/2, or 1, 2 inch tape? Standard reels? Damn! I should have kept those reels of Ampex 456!!

 

[Agulliver]

... Did I read this correctly? Is that 1/4, 1/2, or 1, 2 inch tape? Standard reels? Damn! I should have kept those reels of Ampex 456!!

A brand new audiophile professionally recorded/duplicated quarter inch two track or four track will set you back up to £400. You can usually specify 2 or 4 tracks, and 7/5ips or 15ips. New blank tape is somewhat cheaper but you can still drop £80 on a 10.5 inch reel of RTM LPR35 which is based on a well known BASF formula. A bit less for tape coated by the folk who used to coat Zonal tape (now sold as Capture). There's also ATR in America coating new RTR tape. But a bit like film, it's now down to likely just three companies remaining. There's still a market for a few home users such as myself, and some studios offer analogue tape or use "analogue only" studios as a selling point.

FWIW the magnetic tape manufacturers have similar issues to photo film manufacturers....getting hold of the chemicals needed. Chemical supply problems even affect little old me in my school laboratories, prices have doubled or more and lead times that were once a few days can be a few months now. And that's for commonly used stuff. It's little wonder film and tape manufacturing has been hit. They're both niche areas with little leverage with the suppliers compared to their big customers....in a market where everything has increased in price and lead times are unpredictable.