Experience Center planned to open at Kodak park

Kodak Experience Center

It's sorta old news, but I just found out about it and some cursory searching on APUG didn't find a thread about it.

It looks like Kodak has commissioned Jack Rouse Associates to build an "experience center" complete with exhibits, a café, and a shop. It is scheduled to open Spring of 2018. It doesn't have quite the same draw to me as the George Eastman Museum, but it's still pretty neat. I gotta say, Kodak seems to be showing a positive trend in reaching out to the public, what with the Kodakery podcast, Kodachrome magazine, the pop-up shop at Christmas and the announcement of the new Super 8 camera and Ektachrome film.

It's also good news that they decided to put it in Building 28 rather than Building 38 .

I’d prefer to see 16mm film from them perforated both edges and a more aggressive publicity for 16mm stocks. Kodak should be the first film manufacturer to cut all film portions to precisely the same length, something others don’t manage to do, and then declare that length on the darn label. 109 feet, 409 feet, whatever. Kodak would do better reanimating relationships with local photo dealers and film labs worldwide. We don’t buy chewing gum over the internet, do we? There are four photo dealers in my town and when I go to ask them about movie film stocks it is me who gets the role of the one in the know. I mean, that’s an unbearable situation.

Look Film Ferrania: great silence about P30 as 16mm stock. They brutally lack contact with the market. Look at Adox: CMS 20 II not available as 16mm or Double Eight. Ilford: no Pan F plus in motion-picture conversion. No publicity, no discussion.

At least there is some interest at Kodak at their own history.
In contrast to the situation over here, where that interest has vanished. Just recently Agfa did a major step into the opposite direction.

Europan said:

I’d prefer to see 16mm film from them perforated both edges and a more aggressive publicity for 16mm stocks. Kodak should be the first film manufacturer to cut all film portions to precisely the same length, something others don’t manage to do, and then declare that length on the darn label. 109 feet, 409 feet, whatever. Kodak would do better reanimating relationships with local photo dealers and film labs worldwide. We don’t buy chewing gum over the internet, do we? There are four photo dealers in my town and when I go to ask them about movie film stocks it is me who gets the role of the one in the know. I mean, that’s an unbearable situation.

Look Film Ferrania: great silence about P30 as 16mm stock. They brutally lack contact with the market. Look at Adox: CMS 20 II not available as 16mm or Double Eight. Ilford: no Pan F plus in motion-picture conversion. No publicity, no discussion.

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Double perf 16 is available on special order - can't remember how many rolls, but likely to be a lot if you want it finished as 100ft reels. How many tens of thousands of feet do you plan to shoot & in what timescale? The reality is that the overwhelming 16mm market today is for s16 which needs single perf stock.

CMS20 etc probably aren't cut because they are on a polyester base (very bad news if you have a jam) & need fiddling with special developers to get even vaguely useful contrast. Ask Harman about Pan-F, & prepare for a very big bill if they're interested.

Realistically, the simple reason that the manufacturers aren't making the things you demand is that the potential market is vanishingly small. Anyway, who in the real world expects to buy 16mm cinema film stock at a local dealer?

Lachlan Young said:

Anyway, who in the real world expects to buy 16mm cinema film stock at a local dealer?

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Well, in the past Kodak and Ilford themselves for many exotic materials exclusively worked in germany with local dealers. Who on their turn had no idea of prices or order numbers, the latter then the customer had to deliver himself.

iandvaag said:

Kodak Experience Center

It's sorta old news, but I just found out about it and some cursory searching on APUG didn't find a thread about it.

It looks like Kodak has commissioned Jack Rouse Associates to build an "experience center" complete with exhibits, a café, and a shop. It is scheduled to open Spring of 2018.

Click to expand...

From what I've seen, it appears to be an update of what used to be on the first floor of Building 28.

Lachlan Young said:

Double perf 16 is available on special order - can't remember how many rolls, but likely to be a lot

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Kodak used to make a lot of different stocks finished to order, but they seem to have retired (scrapped) a lot of the special perforators. For example with will no longer make, and may no longer have the capability to make Regular 8.

cmacd123 said:

Kodak used to make a lot of different stocks finished to order, but they seem to have retired (scrapped) a lot of the special perforators. For example with will no longer make, and may no longer have the capability to make Regular 8.

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Checking the current MP catalogue, double perf 500T is listed, MOQ of 20x400ft, about 15% more expensive than single perf. I imagine that if you ordered 8000+ feet of any of their camera films they'd double perf & cut them into whatever lengths you want, as long as it'll fit a standard can. Why you'd want to shoot R16 as opposed to S16 is a question no one seems to want to answer...

Lachlan Young said:

Why you'd want to shoot R16 as opposed to S16 is a question no one seems to want to answer...

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Many "classic" 16mm Cameras only accept Double perf film. Their are also many that will accept single perf but have a conventional gate opening. Their are a relatively few 16mm camera that can be used for "super16" where the soundtrack area is also used for image, but to carry on further with those negatives, one would have to blow up to 35mm or use Non-Analog techniques.

Lachlan Young said:

I imagine that if you ordered 8000+ feet of any of their camera films they'd double perf & cut them into whatever lengths you want, as long as it'll fit a standard can.

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Double perf 16mm perhaps but Regular 8 is perfed on both side at twice the rate as 16mm. (2R-1500, rather than 2R-2994 or 2R-3000) It seems to have completly fallen off the radar.

Not completely. I have just finished an overhaul of a Paillard-Bolex H-8 Reflex from 1962 for a German customer. He bought himself a 5,5 mm RX Switar for that camera to add to the lens set. Right now I’m having a Filmo 8 in assembly, wonderful tiny cameras. To read and to write here is a welcome relaxation for me. The advantage of Regular 8 over Super-8 is the perforation holes lying across. Image steadiness is better overall due to this. There’s no plastic cartridge in play. Regular-Eight projectors generally outperform Super-8 projectors mechanically. Some are usable today, after half a century, as if time had stood still. The best need some CLA and then a drop of oil now and then and will run another century. When Kodak’s Jeff Clarke speaks of a film renaissance he might not be aware of it happening also with the Double-Eight film format, slower than with 16 or anything else, but steadily. There are now more raw stocks available in Double-Eight than in Super-8. Don’t believe?

Kodak Vision3 50 D negative, Kodak Vision3 250 D negative, Kodak TXR 7266 from Dennis Toeppen, Urbana IL;
Orwo UN 54, Orwo N 74, Orwo PF 2* from Alfred Kahl, Brühl, Germany;
Agfachrome RSX II D 200 from Wittner Cinetec, Lingenfeld, Germany;
Fomapan Reversal 100 from Foma Bohemia, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, and others
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* Black and white positive print stock, non sensitised, EI around 8 to 10 ISO