Film Progress

With the advent and current market dominance of digital photography, what technical advances if any are being made in film? Has R&D died from lack of investment, or are the boffins still coming up with fresh ideas?

You may wish to read the many posts here about 2 electron sensitization, dye layering and grain mixing! Kodak continues to make improved film, and you may have noticed the return of an improved Ektar film.

PE

Thanks, I'll search those topics.

You must not be paying attention. Kodak just announced the new Portra 400 film. In the last week or so.

yup- not to mention the new Ektar that came out not too long ago. Kodak is still sinkin money into the film game. Glad to see it, too.

On the time scale of digital "innovation", film has never really progressed quickly, and that's fine. There's no problem if a film is not "updated" for a decade or more, in fact, many people who are used to using a film might prefer that. So it might seem that new technological developments are slow, even if the pace of new developments was the same as it it always has been or faster.

I'd say we've lost more than we have gained recently, and I expect it to continue. Sure, in recent years we got a couple new color negative films, but we lost HIE, Neopan 400 120, all 220 B&W film, all Polaroid film, Kodachrome, most (all?) 800 speed color films, quickloads, pretty much all tungsten film, all 400 speed 8x10 color film, internegative film....

Which is true, but like everybody else, you just have to make adjustments.

Jeff