Can China Save Film?

MattKing · Jul 25, 2012

I don't think that a reduction in manufacturing costs will make much of a difference.

Quality control, environmental control and distribution costs are the problems.

Kodak can make film really cheaply - in quantity!

But the costs of distribution and wastage when the film doesn't sell fast enough are what is killing us.

RattyMouse · Jul 25, 2012

MattKing said:
I don't think that a reduction in manufacturing costs will make much of a difference.

Quality control, environmental control and distribution costs are the problems.

Kodak can make film really cheaply - in quantity!

But the costs of distribution and wastage when the film doesn't sell fast enough are what is killing us.

From what I read here, Kodak has waaaay too much production capacity. That means costs are HIGH, not cheap. Kodak cannot downsize their production so they are stuck with enormous costs and so their film is far too expensive to produce.

zsas · Jul 25, 2012

Why some no name Chinese manufacturer when ADOX already meets the criteria, below per their website:

ADOX Fotowerke GmbH Bad Saarow carries on the tradition of the ADOX brand.

We manufacture fibre base papers, 35mm films, rollfilms, sheetfilms, Super 8 moovie films, photochemistry and more.

Our goal is to keep a full range of photochemical products in a small scale manufacturing process allive.
In 2009 we opened up the "worlds smallest photochemical factory" in Bad Saarow.

ADOX Fotowerke GmbH is working under low automatisation with a large degreee of manual work.
This enables us to be very flexible and manufacture many different types of films and papers without much overhead and fixed costs.
Our workflow today is not far away form the original ADOX Dr. C. Schleussner Fotowerke which also used similar machines in their times, but we are now much smaller.

Even after the "digital revolution" ADOX still stands strong for a comprehensive range of classic photographic products.

This is one of the telling comments from Mirko at ADOX:

ADOX Fotoimpex said:
Our small factory can make quantities of a few thousand rolls of film at about 3-5 USD per roll.

Per
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

I just don't see film being saved by Chinese firms when we already have so many in the game (Ilford, Efke, ADOX, Rollei, Foma, Lomo, Kodak (tbd), Lucky, Shanghai, etc, etc...). Think the forest through the trees is happening....there are many others, why the theory that say Lucky/Shanghai will be the new Kodak? I don't think we as film users have much connection with them and that is the magic varriable, a unknown entity has a high barrier to mass success unless it has something to offer the others dont, I am just not seeing it.

Last, I think Rollei just brought out a new color film....

Steve Smith · Jul 25, 2012

It doesn't really matter where it is made. The deciding factor is the number of people who want to buy it.

Steve.

Photo Engineer · Jul 25, 2012

RattyMouse said:
That was a long time ago PE. No place on earth changes as fast or as much as China. When I first arrived in Shanghai in 2006, there were TWO subway lines under the city. Today, there are 14 and more are under construction.

Whatever film situation existed when Kodak pulled out of China, you can bet ever last dollar that today, that situation is totally unrecognizable to those who knew the previous time.

I agree, but have they applied those skills to film manufacturing. That is the question.

I ask here for anyone to comment on their experience with Chinese film, bad or good. So far I have read quite a few bad comments on Chinese films. So, lets hear the comments!

PE

Mainecoonmaniac · Jul 25, 2012

DREW WILEY said:
Ha! I just saw your little rewrite of history, Mr MaineCooncat, presumably a conoisseur of kitties the size of Pleistocene ground sloth species.

How did you know that I'm a connoisseur of kitties?

I did say it wasn't verifiable history Anyway, I think you're correct. It's probably faster and cheaper for home C-41 processing.

I do have to say that you can't make Chinese food at home as well as your local take out joint.

CGW · Jul 25, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
I agree, but have they applied those skills to film manufacturing. That is the question.

I ask here for anyone to comment on their experience with Chinese film, bad or good. So far I have read quite a few bad comments on Chinese films. So, lets hear the comments!

PE

Serious jamming issues with Lucky 120 b&w, especially in Mamiya RB67 backs, less so in Mamiya 645 and Bronica SQ backs. Image quality was OK when I could actually get a roll through a camera.

Mainecoonmaniac · Jul 25, 2012

I remember when Arista EDU (Foma) film had a curling problem. Now it's no longer an issue. I'm sure Chinese film is not quite up to snuff to Kodak nor Ilford, but give them some time.

DREW WILEY · Jul 25, 2012

Gosh - do you folks in Maine know what Chinese food is? "Take out" ??? Yecch. Even that bully of
a horse-sized Cooncat in my backyard wouldn't eat that. (The other cats gang up on him and make
him eat alone anyway - poor outcast!) ...

DREW WILEY · Jul 25, 2012

Back to the topic ... I certainly no expert like Ron is, but I'd imagine that making a high-quality fillm
is every bit as much art as science, and that you can't just hand someone a formula and expect
quality results. In other words, there has to be a tradition of trained personnel, and in this respect,
combined with a much greater technical control needed - if anyone were to get back in the game
with color film per se, it would probably be in the Germany or somewhere else in the heart of the EU.
But why??? I'd much rather spend my money keeping Kodak and Fuji incentified, because they already have high-quality product. The Chinese are certainly proactive in terms of education - you
should see how many grad stundents they sent over here to UCB etc - but that's all related to anticipated high-volume electronics, chemical engineering, medicine, etc. They know what film is,
esp large format. But the Chinese govt isn't going to subsidize a tuition in anything like that. It's a
mfg path that needs continuity with existing experience. And I bet some of the coating and cleanrm
systems already in place are pretty fussy setups that need very specialized maint.

Photo Engineer · Jul 25, 2012

Drew;

You are correct. In fact, if EK ever shut down the film line, it would take years and millions of dollars to restart it with no trained people. Everyone trained would scatter to other jobs.

China is certainly able to do the job that EK does or that Fuji does, but would they want to? IDK. I suspect not.

The patents are out there describing Portra, but can anyone make it? I doubt it. It probably would be better if the Chinese did the R&D on their own material working from scratch so to speak.

They are doing some fine R&D, but whether they want to invest the millions of dollars into what most feel is a dying market, is problematical.

PE

Steve Smith · Jul 25, 2012

DREW WILEY said:
but that's all related to anticipated high-volume electronics, chemical engineering, medicine, etc.

It's not anticipated, it's actually happening.

Steve.

DREW WILEY · Jul 25, 2012

Steve - I'm far more connected to what's actually happening in Chinese mfg than most people. They
are keenly interested in industrial espionage as it applies to defense, weapons-related computer systems, etc., which is actually a giant industry locally here in the Bay Area. Consumer electronics
is also a big hit, and medicine. These are smart people. Corporate resolve at our end is a completely
different story. Most US publicly traded companies and retail chains have exactly one reason to outsource to China - cheap junk and no labor law responsibility. There are certain privately-held
companies who go there simply so they can put up highly automated plants quickly, which in fact
use very little human labor at all, cheap or otherwise. But in terms of metallurgy, basic quality control, etc, most Chinese goods at the moment are awful. The very concept of prototyping or
quality control is almost nonexistent. These simply mass-mfg by copying something, and if something
goes terribly wrong, adjust after the fact, if at all. I can't imagine anyone putting R&D money into
traditional color film over there, unless it was somewhow cinematic.

Steve Smith · Jul 25, 2012

DREW WILEY said:
Steve - I'm far more connected to what's actually happening in Chinese mfg than most people..

Me too. I work for a Chinese manufacturing company: http://www.johnsonelectric.com/en/index.html

EDIT: Actually, it's a bit more complex than that. I work for the British part (Parlex Europe) of an American company (Parlex) owned by Johnson Electric.

Steve.

DREW WILEY · Jul 25, 2012

I don't know how the system in Britain works, but here in the US we seem to have mastered the skills of putting students under a mountain of debt while at the same time training them for nonexistent "jobs of the future" rather than realistic trades. The Chinese govt subsidizes significant
numbers of their best students and sends them to major universities here for higher education, with
an emphasis of physics, chem eng, elec eng, pharm, medicine. These folks are very bright, respect Western values, and certainly aren't Commie lackeys. But due to certain obvious natl security sensitivites, they don't have education access to just anything. But there are huge gaps in the system when it comes to general manufacture - for instance, in steel they're way way behind even the Taiwanese in terms of predictable quality. Things over there are just done far too off the cuff, and if there is serious investment and attention to detail, it's almost certainly going toward high-volume consumer electronics.

Photo Engineer · Jul 25, 2012

Chinese steel is very poor. A family member works at a steel plant and has said that imported Chinese stainless steel is very unpredictable and filled with imperfections.

PE

Steve Smith · Jul 25, 2012

DREW WILEY said:
I don't know how the system in Britain works, but here in the US we seem to have mastered the skills of putting students under a mountain of debt while at the same time training them for nonexistent "jobs of the future" rather than realistic trades.

It's much the same here. When I was leaving school, I was going to go to university but didn't in the end. I would have been able to get a government grant which just about paid for accommodation and the tuition fees would have been paid by the government.

Now our students have to pay for everything and unless they have rich parents, this means taking out a student loan. The only good thing about the loan is that you don't have to pay anything back until you are earning at least 75% of the national average wage. As most students don't walk straight into high paying jobs but are more likely to gain employment where the phrase "do you want fries with that?" is used a lot, many of these loans never get paid off. I think they are written off after twenty five years.

Steve.

RattyMouse · Jul 25, 2012

DREW WILEY said:
But in terms of metallurgy, basic quality control, etc, most Chinese goods at the moment are awful. The very concept of prototyping or
quality control is almost nonexistent.

Absolutely wrong. I work for a company that supplies the manufacturer of Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro cases. They take a solid block of aluminum and machine it into the final laptop case. EVERY single hole (and there are many dozens if not hundreds) on EVERY SINGLE piece is QC'ed. EVERY SINGLE surface is QC'ed for the proper roughness. Parts are rejected OFTEN for failing to meet the specs. Thousands of parts are manufactured every day there.

My line of work takes me into Chinese plants very often, all customers who machine metal. I see NO WORSE QC than I would in the US and VERY OFTEN much better. Certainly the equipment that the Chinese have in their plants is WORDS better than what is used in the US. All their equipment is brand new whereas in most cases in the use the machines being used are older than the operator!

RattyMouse · Jul 25, 2012

DREW WILEY said:
I don't know how the system in Britain works, but here in the US we seem to have mastered the skills of putting students under a mountain of debt while at the same time training them for nonexistent "jobs of the future" rather than realistic trades. The Chinese govt subsidizes significant
numbers of their best students and sends them to major universities here for higher education, with
an emphasis of physics, chem eng, elec eng, pharm, medicine. These folks are very bright, respect Western values, and certainly aren't Commie lackeys. But due to certain obvious natl security sensitivites, they don't have education access to just anything. But there are huge gaps in the system when it comes to general manufacture - for instance, in steel they're way way behind even the Taiwanese in terms of predictable quality. Things over there are just done far too off the cuff, and if there is serious investment and attention to detail, it's almost certainly going toward high-volume consumer electronics.

China is making a massive push forward towards commercial aircraft design and manufacture. Airbus assembles the A319 in Tianjin and China is more than half way towards certifying their first passenger jet. Just opened here in Shanghai is a massive (and I mean massive, the size of several football stadiums) aircraft R & D center.

Steve Smith · Jul 25, 2012

It is common to criticise Chinese manufacture on the basis of seeing very few products and hearsay without realising that you own products which were either made in China or have Chinese made components.

If a Western company decides to save money buy having production moved to China and the quality suffers, this is wholly the fault of the western company as they should have total control of the manufacturing process.

Steve.

zsas · Jul 25, 2012

Ratty - China has sure changed as I type this on my beautifully built Foxconn built iphone, but what does it matter if Lucky and/or Shanghai make color film if say one day Fuji and Kodak get out of the color game? I personally think if Fuji and Kodak exit, Ilford would start up color. But if not maybe Rollei will expand more color. I just don't see any of us swooning at Shanghai or Lucky's film when Rollei and possibly Ilford get in the color game. But we need to suspend disbelief anyway cus Fuji is still going....

Steve Smith · Jul 25, 2012

zsas said:
I personally think if Fuji and Kodak exit, Ilford would start up color.

I think this is a possibility. If I remember correctly, Ilford had help from Fujifilm in the development of their C41 black and white film. I similar collaboration would be possible for colour.

Steve.

ME Super · Jul 25, 2012

DREW WILEY said:
I don't know how the system in Britain works, but here in the US we seem to have mastered the skills of putting students under a mountain of debt while at the same time training them for nonexistent "jobs of the future" rather than realistic trades.

That is slowly changing here in the US. There are organizations (universities, school districts, State and Federal government departments among others) and industry groups who are working together to build integrated systems to allow teachers to target their classes towards useful careers in realistic trades rather than the nonexistent "jobs of the future." Some of these groups are targeting K-12 education, but the office I work at is saying that most of these groups have forgotten the Career and Technical Ed. piece and that they should be focusing on P-20 (Preschool thru Doctorate), and the industry groups we are working with are on board with this as well.

What we're working towards is a more personalized education experience. This already exists in the Special Education (with their Individualized Education Plans for the P-12 group) and Early Intervention (through their Individualized Family Service Plans for 0-3 year olds). We're working to expand this to the mainstream students as well so that teachers can do a better job of teaching, and the students can more easily grasp what is being taught, with the goal of preparing them for a career of their choice.

I could continue to elaborate, but this is horribly OT.

DREW WILEY · Jul 25, 2012

I am a professional buyer servicing the construction trade with tools and equipment. I have a national reputation for this kind of trade. Chinese product is almost always vastly inferior to US, Japanese, and esp German goods - in fact, 90% of the time with a very high failure rate and questionable safety. Maybe in something like aerospace, where they have a perceive a military spinoff, or again electronics (with the same potential as well as rapid commercial payoff) they might
be making better progress. In pharmaceuticals -well, you'd have to be crazy to swallow a pill from
China, though many people unwittingly do. Product piracy if rife. Patent rights are ignored (often with the complete blessing of bigbox US importers). But at our end, high-quality startup machine shops and manufacturers are failing - losing potential customers - because they can't find skilled labor. Kids just want to play computer games and imagine they'll all become Mark Zuckerberg. Those
kinds of jobs are getting outsourced even faster.

DREW WILEY · Jul 25, 2012

ME - try to find a high school anywhere in this state (still the sixth biggest economy in the WORLD)
that even offers shop classes anymore. They were once routine. I'll bet that's the case in plenty of
other states too. Heck, they've got a multi-billion-dollar new football stadium going up across the
Bay at the same time one of the wealthiest communities in the country won't even fund the roof
patching on the local grade school, and when the bathrooms have to be locked because they can't
afford a janitor. And guess who makes the most money at our world-famous university by a factor
of more than three to one: a nobel prize laureate or the football coach?

Can China Save Film?

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