Film from Italy -- Ferrania starting production 2014

[cmacd123]

A major manufacturer built such machinery or at least the critical part themself. Especially emulsion coating was a critical step in production speed.

did ilford now admit that they bought some of their equipment from AGFA over the years.

 

[Nzoomed]

I really hope that film Ferrania start their own film processing lab for motion picture film, i have to send all my S8 film to the netherlands to get processed, so i may as well send it to the people who are making the stuff if they were open to offering a processing service, maybe even a prepaid service like what was done with kodachrome.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Agfa bought some equipment from Ilford. It was the other way you have it Charles.

As for slowing down, no, you can lose out! The emulsion needs a time to dry and if you dry to fast you blow the emulsion off the support. Drying is a critical phase and requires a set time. There are differences. Agfa and some other European countries use heated cabinets throughout. Kodak uses a chill box and then drying cabinets. Kodak uses a "folded" machine with air bearings for turnaround, and so they make a 180 deg turn on air. That is amazing to watch. Kodak machines use up to 3 coating stations with slide or curtain coating heads, with the last stations production running overhead the catwalk through the machine.

PE

 

[georg16nik]

did ilford now admit that they bought some of their equipment from AGFA over the years.

A few months ago in a thread about Agfa-Gevaert by Agx; Simon R Galley wrote this:

Dear AGX,

History is important :

I have huge admiration for AGFA, the photo manufacturing world is a small one, and we have always had close relations. AGFA Photo made great products, had great technology, the Leuverkusen machine was a triumph, great people and its going away was very sad. Although as you probably know some of the AGFA finishing machines live on here at HARMAN.

I still own and treasure my father's AGFA Camera that he owned and used for 30 years.

You may or may not know that the then owner of ILFORD in 2004 made an offer to buy AGFA Photo
( for 1 Euro ) take on the laibilities and put ILFORD and AGFA together, many people here today including most of the current Board worked on that deal.

Then a 'management buy out' that gave Gaveart much more came along and the rest, very sadly, is history.

Simon. ILFORD photo / HARMAN technology Limited :

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

 

[Roger Cole]

A few months ago in a thread about Agfa-Gevaert by Agx; Simon R Galley wrote this:



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

Wow. I didn't see that post by Simon. That might have made the film world a much better place with Agfa's color technology (I really liked their Portrait 160 / Optima 100 / Ultra 50 trio - and those that like the super saturated look of Velvia would LOVE Ultra 50) and Ilford's black and white. And yes I know Agfa made some excellent black and white materials including the late lamented APX25 and APX100 and I'd love to have those - well the 100 anyway, still have some frozen 4x5, the 25 is too slow for my needs - but I don't know if Ilford would have kept the competing B&W products.

Optima 100 was a good film but really did nothing that Portra 160 isn't even better at. But there's NOTHING like Portrait 160 on the market anymore. The closest thing to Ultra 50 is Ektar 100 and it's a superb film but Ultra 50 was still more saturated (less accurate too but never mind. Think of it as "the Velvia of neg film only maybe more so."

I had no experience of their E6 films but heard they were pretty good and we'd at least have had another choice.

What could have been. Sigh. Well we got the modern Ilford/HARMAN so the glass is at least half full.

 

[Nzoomed]

Wow. I didn't see that post by Simon. That might have made the film world a much better place with Agfa's color technology (I really liked their Portrait 160 / Optima 100 / Ultra 50 trio - and those that like the super saturated look of Velvia would LOVE Ultra 50) and Ilford's black and white. And yes I know Agfa made some excellent black and white materials including the late lamented APX25 and APX100 and I'd love to have those - well the 100 anyway, still have some frozen 4x5, the 25 is too slow for my needs - but I don't know if Ilford would have kept the competing B&W products.

Optima 100 was a good film but really did nothing that Portra 160 isn't even better at. But there's NOTHING like Portrait 160 on the market anymore. The closest thing to Ultra 50 is Ektar 100 and it's a superb film but Ultra 50 was still more saturated (less accurate too but never mind. Think of it as "the Velvia of neg film only maybe more so."

I had no experience of their E6 films but heard they were pretty good and we'd at least have had another choice.

What could have been. Sigh. Well we got the modern Ilford/HARMAN so the glass is at least half full.

Agfa still have a plant in Belgium which makes the filmstock for the Rollei Digibase CR200 and CN200 films, does this film stock differ much from previous AGFA stocks?

 

[AgX]

Their current reversal film is a consumer film emulsion from the 90's coated on PET base.

Their other current films are different from consumer films.

 

[Nzoomed]

Their current reversal film is a consumer film emulsion from the 90's coated on PET base.

Their other current films are different from consumer films.

How many films are they producing in that plant?

The aviphot chrome they produce is supposed to be for aerial photography, but its interesting to note that they only produce a negative film in ISO400 or ISO100, they dont produce ISO200, yet the Rollei Digibase CN200 is marketed as an ISO 200 film.

I found this on the agfa site about their coater, quite interesting.
http://www.agfa.com/sp/global/en/internet/main/production_facilities/coating_facilities/index.jsp

 

[Photo Engineer]

A few months ago in a thread about Agfa-Gevaert by Agx; Simon R Galley wrote this:



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

Ahh, but there is making and coating equipment. Too bad I was not more specific.

PE

 

[cmacd123]

As for slowing down, no, you can lose out! The emulsion needs a time to dry and if you dry to fast you blow the emulsion off the support. Drying is a critical phase and requires a set time. ...
PE

Exactly! The drying time is fixed, and so you need to have enough film in the drying area that it has the time to dry at whatever temperature is "right" for the kind of film that you are making.

Now the design of the existing giant building was undoubtedly originally set up to meet production goals by allowing a fast enough film/paper travel while stil giving time for the slowest drying product, which might be a conventional B&W paper.

Once you have this monster building, you can plan every new product to be coated fast enough that it is dry after taking the the entire route. The faster a given product drys, the faster you can plan to run the coater and the lower the amount of the capital cost of that machine you have to apply to the price to make that product.

Once that is decided, you can actually design the product to be coated at XY meter per second.

Now move the coater head to a new building with a much smaller drying room. Using the latest ideas on air supported rollers and such, and assume the same drying time. with a much shorter physical space for the drying to take place, the web will have to move much slower to be dry before you reach the take-up station. it still might take say 30 minutes, or whatever it took in the monster building.

With the web running more slowly, the actual slots and chemical delivery would have to be adjusted to get the same thickness of all the layers in all the right places. Making the same size batch would take many times longer, but that is not so much an issue as I doubt that ANY maker is running their coating lines more than a couple of times a week these days. The staff that run the line spend the rest of the week in the converting section.

I am of course speculating here. but to my warped mind that would be the way to downsize the machine to make it take less room. You still have the issue of anchoring the coater section to bedrock, but you would have that in moving any film coater. Now as to where that fits into the lab building, or if they plan on an addition of taking over a nearby building that is for the folks to know and for use to find out.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Charles, you are speculating. Too much heat restarts the sulfur or sulfur + gold sensitization up again and fogs the material. Just one example of "building" a product. Evaporative cooling in the form of low humidity must offset this effect of higher speed and temp. And, for various reasons, you cannot design backwards. That would be a train wreck. If you have a formula, you design the coating conditions backwards, but you don't pick your conditions and then pick a formula.

PE

 

[Nzoomed]

Charles, you are speculating. Too much heat restarts the sulfur or sulfur + gold sensitization up again and fogs the material. Just one example of "building" a product. Evaporative cooling in the form of low humidity must offset this effect of higher speed and temp. And, for various reasons, you cannot design backwards. That would be a train wreck. If you have a formula, you design the coating conditions backwards, but you don't pick your conditions and then pick a formula.

PE

So you are saying that you have to build a coater to suit the film formula, because each formula has different properties which drying time, humidity and temperature etc can affect?

If thats the case, how do they develop new films? They would obviously have to make a formula that suits the equipment they have on hand im guessing?

I take it that Film Ferrania will be able to make the new plant work properly with the equipment they have on hand, but im expecting they will need serious modification made to "Big Boy"

 

[Photo Engineer]

Well, I never said that for starters.

But, here is an example of a coater with a 200 ft ceiling in the cabinets. You can build it to have turn around rollers at 200 ft, 100 ft and 50 ft. Is that flexible enough for you? You can build it with 3 coating stations and 2, 4, 6, 8 and etc coating hoppers which can flow at any speed you want.

And, typically, I start with a 4 layer coating and do 2 passes to get an 8 layer coating, or 3 passes for a 12 layer coating. In production, they would just use a higher ceiling with more dryer space! Geeez, no wonder we had photo engineers. You guys have absolutely no imagination. Well, you guys also know nothing about film building and R&D.

We are going to be in the crapper with what you guys think up!

PE

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Geeez, no wonder we had photo engineers. You guys have absolutely no imagination. Well, you guys also know nothing about film building and R&D.

We are going to be in the crapper with what you guys think up!

That's why I simply sent Ferrania my $140 instead...



Ken

 

[wblynch]

That's why I always believed that Kodak was in the industrial films and coatings business, not the "imaging" business. That's where they made their mistake.

They could have done wondrous things if they stuck with coatings. Like PV solar cells, new batteries from rolled films. Even auto coatings that wrapped on and set with heat-shrink or uv light and could even change color with weather, darkness or even a user adjusted controller. Do things no one else could do or even think about doing.

I think Kodak was involved with early OLED development. That's the stuff I'm thinking about.

Who knows where this new adventure will take Film Ferrania?

 

[ME Super]

Charles, you are speculating. Too much heat restarts the sulfur or sulfur + gold sensitization up again and fogs the material. Just one example of "building" a product. Evaporative cooling in the form of low humidity must offset this effect of higher speed and temp. And, for various reasons, you cannot design backwards. That would be a train wreck. If you have a formula, you design the coating conditions backwards, but you don't pick your conditions and then pick a formula.

PE

I'm going to attempt to put the wisdom PE has put into this post into layman's terms. Let's say you're baking a cake, and the instructions say to bake it for 40 minutes at 350*F. In high school chemistry there was a rule of thumb that if you raised the temperature by 10*C (18*F), you'd double the reaction speed. Theoretically, then, you could bake the cake at 370*F for 20 minutes, and get the same result as you did by baking it 40 minutes at 350*F. In practice, however, your results will differ because the water in the cake is only going to transmit the heat from the outer layers of the batter to the inner layers so fast. Baking the cake at 370*F for 20 minutes might result in the outside being done, but the inside still being liquid. Baking it longer could result in the outside being burned before the inside is fully baked.

Coming from an Engineering background, I can tell you that I'd rather have a Civil Engineer designing roads and bridges than having a football player doing it. Some things are best left to Engineers or other experts in their field. PE is one of those guys that I'd want designing a film, but it might be a bad idea to have him design a bridge. Likewise, the Civil Engineers are good at the bridge designs, but not so good at the film designs. Put the two of them together in the same room, however, and the Photo Engineers end up with a coater that suits their needs, designed by Civil and Mechanical Engineers. And the Civil and Mechanical Engineers end up with a film that gives them what they need to record family memories.

 

[Nzoomed]

Well, I never said that for starters.

But, here is an example of a coater with a 200 ft ceiling in the cabinets. You can build it to have turn around rollers at 200 ft, 100 ft and 50 ft. Is that flexible enough for you? You can build it with 3 coating stations and 2, 4, 6, 8 and etc coating hoppers which can flow at any speed you want.

And, typically, I start with a 4 layer coating and do 2 passes to get an 8 layer coating, or 3 passes for a 12 layer coating. In production, they would just use a higher ceiling with more dryer space! Geeez, no wonder we had photo engineers. You guys have absolutely no imagination. Well, you guys also know nothing about film building and R&D.

We are going to be in the crapper with what you guys think up!

PE

Well i certainly dont know very much about photo chemistry at all, but from what ive read from your posts and other people here, ive learned a great deal!

I have to hand it to these guys in Italy, i would love to visit their factory and meet the team!

Have you ever considered going over there to meet them?
You should contact them, i reckon you could get a job in helping them develop new film formulas and have a holiday at the same time!
They certainly would be keen to meet someone who had experience in film manufacture, especially the likes of Kodak and Kodachrome, im sure you would be able to provide valuable skills for them.

 

[MattKing]

Well i certainly dont know very much about photo chemistry at all, but from what ive read from your posts and other people here, ive learned a great deal!

I have to hand it to these guys in Italy, i would love to visit their factory and meet the team!

Have you ever considered going over there to meet them?
You should contact them, i reckon you could get a job in helping them develop new film formulas and have a holiday at the same time!
They certainly would be keen to meet someone who had experience in film manufacture, especially the likes of Kodak and Kodachrome, im sure you would be able to provide valuable skills for them.

Ron:

A visit to Italy would be a nice change from the barn, don't you think?

 

[Nzoomed]

Ron:

A visit to Italy would be a nice change from the barn, don't you think?

I agree, this makes me want to go to Italy, because im dead keen to take a factory tour!

Not that im not keen to see Italy, ive been meaning to travel to Europe for some time but never gotten round to it!

 

[cmacd123]

Charles, you are speculating.

of course, I am trying to wrap my feble brain arround the process to understand it better.

Too much heat ... fogs the material. ... Evaporative cooling in the form of low humidity must offset this effect of higher speed and temp.

I was not Thinking about changing the temperature. the film coater in my minds eye has dry air at a specified temperature which is probably close to 20C And in fact is exactly the temperature and RH the lads at IMATION last used when they made the last batch of Scotch Chrome.

What I was thinking was that lets say some formula is known to take 20 minutes to dry at 20C and 20% RH. if you coat it at 1000 feet a minute, you would need to have a drying chamber that holds 20,000 ft of film before you roll it up. If to go to the other extreme so you could coat it at only 10 feet a minute. the wet stage would be dry in 200 feet, and you could probably skip 99% of the drying rollers.

And, for various reasons, you cannot design backwards. That would be a train wreck. If you have a formula, you design the coating conditions backwards, but you don't pick your conditions and then pick a formula.

But But BUT, if someone from Alaris called you up tomorrow and gave you a contract to design a new film, BUT it had to be made like all Kodak film in Building 38. Would not the maximum (and Minimum) length of the dryer be fixed in that they are not going to let you add on to the building. My feeble mind is guessing the coating speed maximum is going to have a limit in that the film has to be dry by the time it gets rolls up.

Just like if they wanted to make a batch on the existing "Big Boy" in sunny Italy, they would have to be sure it would dry in the sideways football field building they show in the video. using an old IMATION formula that calculation would presumably already be done.

 

[Xmas]

That's why I always believed that Kodak was in the industrial films and coatings business, not the "imaging" business. That's where they made their mistake.

They could have done wondrous things if they stuck with coatings. Like PV solar cells, new batteries from rolled films. Even auto coatings that wrapped on and set with heat-shrink or uv light and could even change color with weather, darkness or even a user adjusted controller. Do things no one else could do or even think about doing.

I think Kodak was involved with early OLED development. That's the stuff I'm thinking about.

Who knows where this new adventure will take Film Ferrania?

Kodaks management did do things no one else would think about doing - wrong things...

If Ilford have not done colour (or cine or 220) for decade(s) why are Ferranni trying to restart - there is no E6 market they should have tried C41 first or mono.

There are too few E6 labs left. There are not that many C41 labs left. Impossible does not need labs. It was the C41 labs that killed Polariod.

What % of the mono market is reversal?

 

[TheToadMen]

Ron:

A visit to Italy would be a nice change from the barn, don't you think?

We could make an international APUG day in Europe out of it!!
How about April 26th, 2015? We could combine it with "Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day" (WPPD-2015).
Visit the factory and join some workshops ....

(I can organize a pinhole workshop or a polaroid lift with Impossible film)

 

[Nzoomed]

Kodaks management did do things no one else would think about doing - wrong things...

If Ilford have not done colour (or cine or 220) for decade(s) why are Ferranni trying to restart - there is no E6 market they should have tried C41 first or mono.

There are too few E6 labs left. There are not that many C41 labs left. Impossible does not need labs. It was the C41 labs that killed Polariod.

What % of the mono market is reversal?

I disagree, i commend Film Ferrania for releasing E6 as their first film, its a film that needs to be saved before it fades away completley.

Im not interested in shooting C41 films, they simply dont achieve the effects im after.
E6 is also cruical for motion picture formats such as super8 and 16mm etc.
If Fuji stop E6 production, it could very well be the end for all E6 if Ferrania dont get this up and running before that happens

Infact, the demise of kodachrome was what got me off by butt to start shooting film again, namely Ektachrome, ive got a good stockpile in my freezer, but im looking for other options.
If ferrania is successful, we will once again have 3 factories producing E6 films, Ferrania, Fuji and Agfa (belgium)
I believe that this scotch chrome based film stock will be the closest thing remaining to Ektachrome, if any of the sample shots ive seen on Flickr are anything to go by.

I do have to say that im surprised how many hobbyists are into super8, but i think thats a good thing!
We will only get more people out there shooting the stuff, since kodak took away Kodachrome 40 and E100D, the feedback that Ferrania have received about super8 has been amazing.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Well, I never said that for starters.

But, here is an example of a coater with a 200 ft ceiling in the cabinets. You can build it to have turn around rollers at 200 ft, 100 ft and 50 ft. Is that flexible enough for you? You can build it with 3 coating stations and 2, 4, 6, 8 and etc coating hoppers which can flow at any speed you want.

And, typically, I start with a 4 layer coating and do 2 passes to get an 8 layer coating, or 3 passes for a 12 layer coating. In production, they would just use a higher ceiling with more dryer space! Geeez, no wonder we had photo engineers. You guys have absolutely no imagination. Well, you guys also know nothing about film building and R&D.

We are going to be in the crapper with what you guys think up!

PE

What are the advantages to coating a 12 layer film as a 3x4 layer coating rather than a single 12 layer pass?

 

[Tom Kershaw]

I disagree, i commend Film Ferrania for releasing E6 as their first film, its a film that needs to be saved before it fades away completley.

Im not interested in shooting C41 films, they simply dont achieve the effects im after.
E6 is also cruical for motion picture formats such as super8 and 16mm etc.
If Fuji stop E6 production, it could very well be the end for all E6 if Ferrania dont get this up and running before that happens

I do have to say that im surprised how many hobbyists are into super8, but i think thats a good thing!
We will only get more people out there shooting the stuff, since kodak took away Kodachrome 40 and E100D, the feedback that Ferrania have received about super8 has been amazing.

Suspect that reliable small scale processing of super8 and 16mm film stocks would be a good way forward. CatLABS have posted about a prototype Jobo insert for rotary processing of super8 film, which seems like a good idea.

Tom