Hello APUG from FILM Ferrania (PART 2)

[mshchem]

The saving of the facility should be reward enough. The film landscape is still being sorted out. Whatever Ferrania can do to make a little money and keep the doors open is what needs to happen. There needs to be, along with film, some sort of mass market product. Fuji seems to be the miracle worker. Alive and well, Instax is making tons of money, I'm sure that's why pack film went away. FIRST a business needs to have revenue and a path to profitability.
The P30 was a big step. Hopefully the 1st of many, if Ferrania needs to sell shirts and caps with their brand to survive great. Anything that keeps these dedicated folks engaged in saving this important cultural institution.

Keep the faith!
Best Regards Mike

 

[Nzoomed]

This is one of the machines saved with the kickstarter:

Looks installed to me.

WOW, thats cool, where did you get that photo from?
I have not seen that before.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Actually, that may not be a coating machine! It may be part of the building HVAC plant.

Here are 2 views of the Harrow coating machine before disassembly.

PE

 

[Nzoomed]

Actually, that may not be a coating machine! It may be part of the building HVAC plant.

Here are 2 views of the Harrow coating machine before disassembly.

PE

I wonder about that also

 

[ChristopherCoy]

I've tried to hold onto the faith for the last few years, but after reading some of the comments on the kickstarter page, it's a bit hard to stay positive at this point.

 

[klownshed]

Other than timescales nothing has changed including the risk of not getting any reward.

The Kickstarter goal was to “Help FILM Ferrania build the factory of the future and the first batch of film is your reward.”

Obviously it’s hugely disappointing that it’s taking so long. But the sense of entitlement is just as disappointing.

If you are angry that you haven’t got your reward then you invested for the wrong reasons. You shoulda just bought some Velvia instead. From a real shop.

 

[Agulliver]

If you are angry that you haven’t got your reward then you invested for the wrong reasons..

This, so many times over. The sense of entitlement is staggering from some quarters. I feel that Dave Bias has been super patient here. His updates have been as honest as possible, he's engaged with this community on behalf of Film Ferrrnia and often received a chorus of entitled "where's MY film?" for his efforts. Film Ferrania have been accused of fraud, of being fake, of being liars, of already having failed totally.....and yet they doggedly carry on doing their work because they believe in 100 more years of analogue film.

If you don't share that belief, that's fine...but really don't go around complaining that you're angry that your freely donated funds haven't (yet) resulted in some colour reversal film popping into your letter box.

 

[baachitraka]

They must be working hard. Trying to bring up anything from ashes to a product may takes long time and even longer when the resources are sparse. Mean-time enjoy shooting the existing/available film.

 

[Harry Callahan]

I don't think you can play the expensive card. P30 was the most expensive black and white film the last time it was available for purchase. Lots of people were disappointed, but paid the piper to be members of the trendy group.

Well, some "nearly fainted" when seeing the price,
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/kodak-reintroduces-ektachrome.143089/page-79

post #1957.
Ektachrome in S8 is very expensive and i´m not comparing Kodak to Ferrania. I just wonder why some put Ferrania down like hell, claiming fraud etc., while they don´t critizise a *single* point on other manufacturers, like Kodak bringing back E100D.

 

[FILM Ferrania]

A "best practices sheet" is not a technical data sheet. It is crowd sourced development information from random guys developing film in their bathrooms, just like the massive development chart. Zero sensitometry.

This is not a completely accurate description of the Best Practices sheet, but close enough to say that this lack of sensitometric data has not stopped anyone from actually using the film. And as plenty of other people have pointed out, when we have the staff to make a data sheet, we'll make a data sheet.

 

[FILM Ferrania]

What My initial study DID reveal is that Ferrania at that time recommended their R 18/a Developer. with a time of 8-10 minutes for the still film, and 6 to 8 minutes for the 16mm film (both at 20C) I went to make a table of the formula of R18/a, (found in another book I bought, in Italian showing the 1958 range of Cine films) and smiled when I realized it is identical to D76.

Even though it is essentially the same as D76, we have considered producing R 18 at a point in time when we have the chemical production capacity to support such a product. We could actually produce it today with a third-party in Italy, if we chose to do so (and we may, yet). We just haven't really had the bandwidth to think about it all that much.

 

[FILM Ferrania]

These guys are unbelievably consistent in missing deadlines... Let´s just face it, Film Ferrania will never ever deliver color reversal film!

You are quite right that we are terrible at estimating the time it will take to do things. But to be fair, we added on a good bit of work after the July plan was begun and have only recently understood what that means for the production schedule.

On the second point, you are wrong, but there is nothing that we can say or do at this point in time except make our color reversal film and let the market judge us.

 

[FILM Ferrania]

I would just like to thank iandvaag for his amazing summary of what Kickstarter is and what FILM Ferrania has done. I will highlight just a few phrases for special emphasis:

Film Ferrania has nothing to apologize for, and owes no one a refund. They used the platform as intended: to secure funds from a community to accomplish a task -- to save old film production machinery from being recycled.

"We want to be clear that backing this project is not simply pre-purchasing film before its release. We are offering rewards in the truest sense of the word."

Ferrania pressed forward, true to their original goal of creating a film factory for the next 100 years.

Furthermore, Ferrania has not reneged on delivering rewards. They were unable to meet their window of opportunity back in 2015, but they have not annulled the rewards.

I feel like we've communicated this stuff over and over, but maybe never so clearly or succinctly.
To be honest, out of 5500 backers, 99% simply read enough of our communications to know that we're still here and still working and are perfectly fine with that knowledge.
There are 1% or so at any given time who decide we're evil frauds and yell as loud as they can all over the internet about it.
I'm pretty much OK with those numbers.

Regarding what has been said in the past:
I haven't yet discovered a way of producing ongoing communications, that are also always right when re-visited months or years after publishing.
We said what we thought we knew, when we thought we knew it.
There is nothing we regret, as such - it's more like we have gained a bit of wisdom. Maybe.

 

[cmacd123]

This is not a completely accurate description of the Best Practices sheet, but close enough to say that this lack of sensitometric data has not stopped anyone from actually using the film. And as plenty of other people have pointed out, when we have the staff to make a data sheet, we'll make a data sheet.

Say Dave, I did find a 1965 Ferrania Data book which has some graphs for the OLD P33 Roll Film. I could scan the pages and make them available to you if they would be useful? I have attached a MUCH reduced Copy of the graph provided so you can see what it is about.

 

[alanrockwood]

You are quite right that we are terrible at estimating the time it will take to do things...

I once heard a project planner tell me that the best way to estimate the time it will take to do a project is to figure out how long you think each step will take, then add the time for all of the individual steps, and then multiply by pi (approximately 3.14).

 

[MultiFormat Shooter]

We said what we thought we knew, when we thought we knew it.

That is all anyone can ask for. Keep up the good work, and try to think of the 99% you mentioned further up in your post, and not the other 1%.

 

[jonasfj]

There´s positive thinking and there´s negative. Is the glass half full or half empty.

Then there´s realistic!

The fact is that Film Ferrania has not installed any of the machines salvaged by the Kickstarter. I am talking about Trixie, Walter and Big Boy. They need those for mass production.

The foundations, trenches, power and utilities would require substantial funding, maybe hundreds of thousands of euros per machine and there´s no sign of any investor.

Ferrania is currently running on the laboratory equipment that was already partly installed when they started the project.

According to their own words, they can produce about 100 rolls of film per day every day of the week. Assume they have a variable margin 1/3 of the price, say 4 euro. That means that they earn 400 euro per day, 2800 per week, 12000 per months, 120000 per year. Realistically it is less than that.

It´s just not a viable business. It´s only a beautiful dream.

 

[William Crow]

Actually, that may not be a coating machine! It may be part of the building HVAC plant.

Cool photos. (Pun intended.)

 

[mshchem]

Still, they saved the equipment and the lab . Anything is possible. If you save a library full of books from being burned, and no one reads them for years. Haven't you still accomplished something great?
More to come.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Actually, that may not be a coating machine! It may be part of the building HVAC plant.

Cool photos. (Pun intended.)

I said that a page or two ago.

 

[wlodekmj]

There´s positive thinking and there´s negative. Is the glass half full or half empty.

According to their own words, they can produce about 100 rolls of film per day every day of the week.

In the August 16, 2018 posting they wrote "cases of 100 rolls every day of the week". Not one case of 100 rolls per day. If they mean two cases of 100 rolls per day, then you are right, but we don't know and can hope they mean 10 or even 100 cases.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

I said that a page or two ago.

Come on Ron, you don't actually expect people to read a thread before they post in it, do you?

 

[cmacd123]

The fact is that Film Ferrania has not installed any of the machines salvaged by the Kickstarter. I am talking about Trixie, Walter and Big Boy. They need those for mass production. .

the tri-acetate machine (Trixie) is a later stage project as long as they can buy the film base where Ilford, And Kodak, and probably Foma buy it. it is still installed in a building they are leasing. (it is not something that one can move...

Walter, the Chemical lab equipment is being used. their iis a video on the Film Ferrania site called "scaling up. showing the use of some of the smaller reaction Vessels. at the moment they have been mostly doing Lab sized Chemical production.

And the last update mentioned upgrades to the coating line, which uses IR scanner equipment. One has to assume that that is some of what they removed from Big Boy before it was demolished. As II understand it, the project that uses Big Boy parts is to enlarge and speed up the small coater to allow bigger runs of film.

the project is to gather all the parts needed to run a "last Man Standing" film factory. with limited man and woman power, they no doubt are curently Buying things that they have saved the capacity to make if needed.

At the moment they do seem to be aiming even smaller that Adox.de, who used to say they they were building the worlds smallest film factory. So far what they have announced are reasonable steps to turn the salvaged equipment into a working small scale production facility.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Come on Ron, you don't actually expect people to read a thread before they post in it, do you?

My bad.

 

[trendland]

This, so many times over. The sense of entitlement is staggering from some quarters. I feel that Dave Bias has been super patient here. His updates have been as honest as possible, he's engaged with this community on behalf of Film Ferrrnia and often received a chorus of entitled "where's MY film?" for his efforts. Film Ferrania have been accused of fraud, of being fake, of being liars, of already having failed totally.....and yet they doggedly carry on doing their work because they believe in 100 more years of analogue film.

If you don't share that belief, that's fine...but really don't go around complaining that you're angry that your freely donated funds haven't (yet) resulted in some colour reversal film popping into your letter box.

The comunication of FERRANIA is excellent, their marketing is excellent, their film is excellent - what is the problem here?

with regards

PS : Their task is also excellent : excellent hard !