Color Negative Processing Future???

DREW WILEY · Jan 9, 2012

Nonsense. If there are no volume labs there will be no incentive for anyone to keep making c41
chemisty. Overall hobby use is miniscule in the big picture. But given the importance of ra4 paper in
commercial applications, I would doubt that all professional color neg film would simply disappear.
There are quite a few pro photographers out there who can't afford to constantly upgrade MF digital
gear, and who just aren't content with DSLR color quality at the moment. Sheet film is really in a
different category from roll film because it's generally coated on a different base. So the survival of
one format category doesn't automatically ensure the survival of another. Time will tell. But Fuji is
certainly technically capable of keeping all this alive is Kodak tanks.

PeteZ8 · Jan 9, 2012

DREW WILEY said:
Nonsense. If there are no volume labs there will be no incentive for anyone to keep making c41
chemisty. Overall hobby use is miniscule in the big picture. But given the importance of ra4 paper in
commercial applications, I would doubt that all professional color neg film would simply disappear.
There are quite a few pro photographers out there who can't afford to constantly upgrade MF digital
gear, and who just aren't content with DSLR color quality at the moment. Sheet film is really in a
different category from roll film because it's generally coated on a different base. So the survival of
one format category doesn't automatically ensure the survival of another. Time will tell. But Fuji is
certainly technically capable of keeping all this alive is Kodak tanks.

Why wouldn't there be demand to produce chemistry? The Jobo and similar 3 bath kits are made specially for the hobby industry! Realistically, if C-41 chemicals cease to be manufactured by all of the film producers (Kodak, Fuji, etc) that would invariably mean that they are also no longer producing film, and most likely, they would cease film production some time before ceasing chemical production to allow for the demand of existing film stock to be used up. So the real problem wouldn't be lack of chemistry, it would be lack of film! But I'm not too concerned about that. In manufacturing terms, making C-41 film is not a particularly complex process. It would not be difficult for a smaller, more agile company to step in and fill the niche. It's been proven already with Ilford, and more recently Impossible.

Rudeofus · Jan 10, 2012

PeteZ8 said:
Why wouldn't there be demand to produce chemistry? The Jobo and similar 3 bath kits are made specially for the hobby industry!

There are some hard to make chemicals which are used for color photography but probably nowhere else, think about CD3 and CD4. While CD3 is also used in the RA4 process (jay for slide shooters! ), I'd be a bit worried about CD4 (for C41). Jobo certainly doesn't make either chemical, and Rollei doesn't even mix the kit themselves, they use Fuji soup.

PeteZ8 said:
Realistically, if C-41 chemicals cease to be manufactured by all of the film producers (Kodak, Fuji, etc) that would invariably mean that they are also no longer producing film, and most likely, they would cease film production some time before ceasing chemical production to allow for the demand of existing film stock to be used up. So the real problem wouldn't be lack of chemistry, it would be lack of film! But I'm not too concerned about that. In manufacturing terms, making C-41 film is not a particularly complex process. It would not be difficult for a smaller, more agile company to step in and fill the niche. It's been proven already with Ilford, and more recently Impossible.

I would be personally interested how long one could possibly store some of the "critical" chemicals going into C41/E6/RA4. Also don't forget, that while Ilford does indeed make a C41 compatible film, they do not make a C41 colour film. The complexity of handling three balanced colour layers could well be much higher than what goes into XP2.

What makes me hopeful about C41 processing is that it is more or less decoupled from movie film, so any declines in movie film sales should not directly affect C41 chemistry. So the manufacture of C41 chems does indeed seem viable at small scales.

DREW WILEY · Jan 10, 2012

Let me put it this way: Jobo itself has been out of business awhile due do dramatically decreased demand for hobby or home darkroom applications. Small batch consumption of film development chemicals are probably less than 2% of the overall volume of C41 or E6, and I think even that would
be an unrealistically high estimate. Making these kinds of chemicals require a substantial investment,
and we small-volume users are just purchasing a tiny amount of the leftovers. This certainly doesn't
make me pessimistic. I'm gambling that C41 will be commercially available for a number of years.
It's not something proprietary to Kodak. But nobody is going to keep a product on the market just for
fun.

DREW WILEY · Jan 10, 2012

I should have repeated what I've stated before. The very popular RA4 papers like Crystal Archive are
basically bigamist. They're married to both digital output involving scanning, and to traditional enlargement. The momentem of this seems solid for now, so it would really be counterproductive if
either C41 or E6 dropped off the map. You need one of both. Direct capture digital is more often going straight to inkjet if it is printed at all. All you high-end digital printers like Lambda, Lightjet, and
Chromira probably print far more scaneed film images than direct digital capture. I think it is very
very premature to start talking about the extinction of C41 or E6, simply because RA4 itself seems
very healthy.

Photo Engineer · Jan 10, 2012

Drew;

Where did you get the 2% figure? That seems awfully low to me.

PE

DREW WILEY · Jan 10, 2012

I don't have any hard data, Ron. But given the sheer gallonage in typical distribution options, nearly
all of it would seem to be dedicated to advanced replenishable systems. The remaining C41 lab here
probably uses more chem per week than all the home users in the country put together in a year.
But of course it's a bit hard to draw the line when certain pros are still using small automated tabletop devices, and exactly how to classify them. As a comparsion, even my 30x40 drum uses only
a little more than a pint of solution at a time of RA4, while the labs typically kept 200 hundred gallons
mixed at a time each of certain replenishable solutions. It's a rare camera store nowadays that keeps
any color chemistry on hand, versus say, even a minilab supplier shipping to commercial users. But I
do understand very well how distribution actually works, and that a single volume user will get attention much faster than all the little users combined, if they get factored into the picture at all.

Photo Engineer · Jan 10, 2012

Many big kits are repackaged and relabeled, is why I wondered. Also, several companies make their own in small kits such as we see here on APUG. So, maybe the small kit market is bigger than we think but "disguised".

PE

DREW WILEY · Jan 10, 2012

If anyone is going to keep small kits in distribution it will be Freestyle. I'm largely estimating the pattern from what is analogously happening with RA4. The local camera shop has stacks and stacks
of Crystal Archive on hand, but generally only one tiny kit of Kodak RA/RT just as a favor to just one
customer (me). All the chemistry going to endusers of the paper itself comes directly from volume
sources. In other words, nearly all the RA4 paper itself is going to replenishable large machines.
Maybe a handful of Fujimoto tabletop processors are still in use locally too. So even the mid-volume
users of RA4 are not buying hobby chemistry kits. The commercial labs, of course, buy their papers
direct from Fuji or Kodak, so don't even factor into this smaller picture at all. And the demand for
home use E6 or C41 is way smaller than RA4. Even in the heyday of Jobo etc, you'd be lucky to find
fresh chemistry from a non-industrial supplier. It's a way bigger problem now. I don't bother with C41There are still Hope dip n' dunk operations going stron here, both for c41 and e6.

Grainy · Jan 10, 2012

RA4 is healthy an in no risk ath the moment since the market is still huge, and maybe even increasing again. A lot of people are tired of time consuming and expensive printing at home. I would personally never consider to spend hours (or days) to print hundreds or thousands of family snapshots at home when I can spend 10 minutes in the shop instead. The "You press the button we do the rest" slogan is for sure valid also in digital since many people just want to take the picture and go to a consumer lab to get them printed, especially when it's family&holiday snapshots. Just because people have a stove at home and have the skills to prepare the most fantastic meals on it, it doesn't mean that resturants and fast food places will go out of business.

But of course, the day when a labs RA-4 minilab is exhausted, the executives need to make a choice. I don't know much about the other technologies when it comes to speed, quality and archival quality. But if you get the same speed, the "same" quality (different look of course) and archival quality the thing that matters for most executives is price pr print, service costs and so on.

The era of C-41 minilabs in every city is soon over, infact already over in many cities. Already now the discussion is more like "how many minilabs in this country?" and not like "how many minilabs in this city?" I thought the marked would stabilize a bit in 2011, but it didn't. Will that kill c-41? I don't think so. But it will for sure force many of the labs to switch from minilabs to small "table top" machines, manual processing or send the rolls to larger national or international labs.

DREW WILEY · Jan 10, 2012

The function of minilabs is still quite alive, even if the corner drugstore variety is becoming scarcer.
Disposable camera for one thing. Around here more and more one sees bulk processing of film snapshots, at Costco for example. But at a more serious level, RA4 is the key ingredient to any large
printmaking outside inkjet. Still a very big market apparently, with Kodak and Fuji fighting over it till
the bitter end. Cut sheet sales of paper for all the colleges around here go mainly thru the retail
channel, while all the automated lines including Lightjet etc have on-board roll trimmers. And when
it comes to volume, or to direct enlarging, RA4 still offers certain competitive advantages over inkjet.

tomalophicon · Jan 10, 2012

The only minilab in my town of 25,000 inhabitants processes 50 rolls of 35mm film and makes 3000 prints each week on Fuji Crystal Archive.

DREW WILEY · Jan 11, 2012

There seem to be quite a few minilabs still going in this area, but their slow demise is more due to discounters doing huge volume RA4 snapshot work. For quality snapshot work, the better local camera shops send work out to the pro-quality dip n' dunk machines. Even the "all digital" lab down
the street sells real 35mm and 120 color film because there are still a lot of folks who prefer the look, even if it gets scanned for output. Most new small camera sales to amateurs are obviously
digital, but given the fact that a single sheet of 8X10 film has more squares inches than two long
rolls of 35mm, I suspect the dip n' dunk lines will remain healthy, not to mention the far more numerous 4x5 color film shooters around here. Big studio catalog and food photog has obviously gone
to scanning backs. But large format seems to be having a local revival.

John Shriver · Jan 11, 2012

Fuji has essentially ceded the professional C-41 market to Kodak, that's why there's so little C-41 sheet film from them. But Fuji are getting close to owning the E-6 market, and many of their E-6 films are available in sheet sizes, although some you have to import directly from Japan.

Photo Engineer · Jan 11, 2012

Kodak seems to have the C41 and MP market and FUji has the E6 market for the most part.

PE

foc · Jan 14, 2012

tomalopicion The only minilab in my town of 25,000 inhabitants processes 50 rolls of 35mm film and makes 3000 prints each week on Fuji Crystal Archive.

Does the minilab also do digital printing from media cards? 50 rolls a week sounds good to me, given population size, but 3000 prints sounds very low.

I own a minilab in Ireland with a simular local population. If we processed 50 rolls of 35mm films a week we would be very happy, average is 35-40. On the printing side we would do on average (including both film and digital) 10000 prints a week on Fuji Crystal Archive paper.

Infact I reviewed some of our figures for last Sept-Dec 2011 and there was a 5% increase in C41 film processing. I have also seen an increase in secondhand 35mm camera sales, for the same period we sold 32 film cameras, thats on average 2 a week (and the likely cause of the 5% increase).

The bigger picture is how will this will continue, will it increase or decrease. Volumn of film processing keeps falling but according to my figures it looks like leveling out (remember I can only comment from a personal point of view). My C41 processor is now 5 years old and I hope to get another 5 years out of it, but if I had to choose now to purchase a new processor I would have to think twice regarding the investment and the return.

I can see the whole film/minilab becoming more niche market, more so than it is. I can still buy my chemicals from Champion or Fuji (Champion probably make it anyway). I don't know the future of RA4 paper, I was told there is no more R&D being done on RA4 by my Fuji engineer, but if there is demand there will be supply. Besides the cost of RA4 paper is way cheaper that inkjet. I saw the results from the Fuji inkjet minilab printer 2 years ago and while impressive it still was a long way behind an RA4 print. I'm sure it will catch up and when the price is right labs will switch and so the vicious circle for RA4 begins.

Bob Carnie · Jan 14, 2012

Ron - I am running small batches of C41 , I am considering a bulk purchase of colour film for same emulsion consistencey. I can match the amount of chemistry required to process this purchase.
my question is how long can C41 chemistry last on shelf,properly packaged, in your estimation?

Photo Engineer said:
Many big kits are repackaged and relabeled, is why I wondered. Also, several companies make their own in small kits such as we see here on APUG. So, maybe the small kit market is bigger than we think but "disguised".

PE

Photo Engineer · Jan 14, 2012

The stabilzer / final rinse is just about eternal! The fix is as good as any fix, the bleach is just about eternal, so there are the main tail-end players.

The developer is only as good as the color developer part. I have had that part go bad in a year or less in one kit and in another go bad after about 3 years.

This assumes cool storage of unopened bottles of concentrate.

Opened containers of developer should not be kept for more than a month and during that time should be stored under an inert gas. Opened Fix, Bleach and Stab keep very well.

PE

Bob Carnie · Jan 14, 2012

thanks Ron

DREW WILEY · Jan 16, 2012

It's perfectly logical that R&D on RA4 products have reached a plateau. The latest generation of Fuji
papers were released just a year ago, and the level of quality is quite impressive. Why make folks
constantly recalibrate if you don't need to. Competition between EK and Fuji is partially what drove
this contest, but let's be appreciative of the result. Ilford color division (not Harman) is also a player
in RA4 papers, and someone else seems to have popped up too. Since the chemistry is standardized
and has more than one source itself, it doesn't seem to be in any foreseeable danger. All this doom
and gloom mentality seems to be getting out of perspective. Change is inevitable someday. But that
fact isn't going to stop me from making prints. Heck, and asteroid could hit, so everyone better
hurry up and drag all their negatives down into some underground bunker... and remember a canopener too!

Denverdad · Jan 16, 2012

foc said:
Infact I reviewed some of our figures for last Sept-Dec 2011 and there was a 5% increase in C41 film processing. I have also seen an increase in secondhand 35mm camera sales, for the same period we sold 32 film cameras, thats on average 2 a week (and the likely cause of the 5% increase).

It is comforting to know that in at least some locations C41 processing might be on the uptick. Unfortunately, here in the Denver area the trend seems to be in the opposite direction - at least among the "pro" shops, where I like to take my film. I have always considered myself fortunate to live in an area with at least three of these higher end photo shops. But, I only recently learned that the one closest to me is now farming out its C41 processing to one of the others, and this is after starting to farm out their E6 processing just a year or two before. The lady there told me that she hadn't even seen a roll of C41 come into the shop in over a month. The guy at another shop - one that I had previously only used for E6 development and printing - confirmed a decline in C41 processing there too, and stated that he would be surprised if they still offered it in two years. On the plus side, he did say that they were doing more and more E6 processing, especially in 4x5.

Jeff

Color Negative Processing Future???

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