How Kodak Makes Film Light Sensitive (How Film Is Made Part 2 - Smarter Every Day)

[Andrew O'Neill]

 

[Adrian Bacon]

This is awesome:

 

[mshchem]

This is awesome:

Thanks for sharing! I've been waiting for this.

 

[Dirb9]

Part 2 has been published, covering emulsion manufacturing and coating. There's a lot of information he's covering, so much that he published a video just for quality control here, as well as a longer less edited version of part 2 here. I'm in the middle of watching through the first video right now.

 

[grat]

It is Heart-Warming to see that Kodak.....ANY film producer..... is still practicing the "Dark-Art"

I think it's safe to say they're at the Dark Science level at this point.

Although it does amuse me that the most critical part of their film production line relies on a guy with a piece of acrylic and a wooden pencil.

 

[MattKing]

Moved and merged with other threads and posts on the same subject.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I think it's safe to say they're at the Dark Science level at this point.

Although it does amuse me that the most critical part of their film production line relies on a guy with a piece of acrylic and a wooden pencil.

I want that job!

 

[mshchem]

I worked at the General Mills plant in Cedar Rapids Iowa. It's amazing how similar the process flow is between making Cheerios, and Fruit Roll ups are. Extrusion, puffing, coating, drying, chilling and slitting.
I was at General Mills in the first few years of the 1990s. Had a master control room, nothing as advanced (at least back then) I worked in their qc chemistry lab.

These videos are great to see how lucky we are to have access to the color films that we have. Nothing short of miraculous. Can't wait to see the finishing operation.

 

[Mr Bill]

I think this video is great, especially with respect to showing details of the hopper. From my job with a large studio chain outfit I've had the incredible opportunity to have had personal tours of several coating operations. But never close-up views in the light like this. We had corporate secrecy agreements with all the manufacturers we worked with so these are things I haven't spoken about. But with these public reveals I guess a certain amount of the confidentiality veil is lifted.

Probably the best tour, along with my boss and a former boss, included time inside the Control Room for a pro neg film (prior to Portra, so 20+ years ago). When we were introduced the department manager informed us that they had been waiting for us to arrive; they were getting ready to coat some of our film (full emulsion runs were allocated to us). I asked one of the Kodak execs escorting us, will they be able to answer any questions for us? He thought for about a half-minute, then turned to the Control room staff and said, "Tell these guys anything they want to know." (Anyone who knows me well would be saying, "Oh, oh!")

Now, we saw the confidentiality as almost a sacred thing, which is one reason why people trusted us to this degree. Today, roughly 10 years after my former employer went "belly up," I still don't want to publicly reveal things that are otherwise unpublished. So it's kinda cool to see things being publicly revealed.

Fwiw I love watching Destin's other videos too. He also has another one in this series related to QC tests of the coated film. Probably worth seeing. (As a photo guy I'm a little amused by Destin's seeming inability to understand the effect of looking at colored objects through colored filters. Someone shoulda explained what cyan, magenta, and yellow really are, spectrally; he's a smart guy.)

 

[mshchem]

It would be interesting to know utilization of the coaters? 24/7 ? It's a miracle that Kodak has been able to maintain such an operation.
I heard the mention of Ebay for the occasional weird part

 

[Kodachromeguy]

I heard the mention of Ebay for the occasional weird part

Not that surprising. My friend worked in health sciences at Grand Gulf nuclear plant in Port Gibson, Mississippi. His machines used DEC Alpha 64-bit computers to analyze radiation and other parameters. They bought spare circuit boards via eBay. He thought other parts of the power plant were also operated with VAX/VMS, but the upgrades in 2020-2021 may have updated all these systems.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

It would be interesting to know utilization of the coaters? 24/7 ? It's a miracle that Kodak has been able to maintain such an operation.
I heard the mention of Ebay for the occasional weird part

What I found so interesting is how many 24 exposure rolls they get per one of those master rolls. 60,000 rolls! That means each master roll they run is ~$300,000+ or more worth of finished rolls at wholesale. Basically, every time they do one of those runs that's not a small chunk of cash.

 

[mshchem]

I finished watching the extra videos, one gets into the physical chemistry and the mixing of emulsions, preparing of chemicals etc. The other is a quality control video. This is an important documentary film. Everyone who is fond of film should check it out.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Also I thoroughly enjoyed the other videos in the description. The Chemistry of Kodak Film, and Kodak's Film Quality Process. Jeff sure knows his stuff!

 

[mshchem]

1.3 billion dollars and that was when it was built.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Cool videos. Hope Starbucks doesn't see it and buy them out, and repurpose the machinery for making lattes faster.

 

[cmacd123]

What I found so interesting is how many 24 exposure rolls they get per one of those master rolls. 60,000 rolls! That means each master roll they run is ~$300,000+ or more worth of finished rolls at wholesale. Basically, every time they do one of those runs that's not a small chunk of cash.

and if it is "off" in some way, it gets sent for silver recovery.

 

[mshchem]

It appears that if there was still a market these folks could increase output by a staggering amount. How suppliers, distribution etc etc could keep up is another thing entirely.

Absolutely amazing, stunning. I could watch another 3 hours.

 

[cmacd123]

It appears that if there was still a market these folks could increase output by a staggering amount. How suppliers, distribution etc etc could keep up is another thing entirely.

That was my thoght a few hours after watching. seems they gave him a tour on the coating on Thursday where tow batches of ektar and Portra 800 were bibg run Next day everythig was shut down except some trolleys were waiting for Monday to make some industrial films..
that facility was was a 24/7 operation evn in Robert "Laser's" book. NOW the key may be to realise that it was built for Movie film, and the market for 2383/3383 is posibly 0.1% of what that setup was designed for. (data on 2383/3383 if you don't know what I am refering to : https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/product/post/print-films/vision-color-2383-3383 )

 

[mshchem]

That was my thoght a few hours after watching. seems they gave him a tour on the coating on Thursday where tow batches of ektar and Portra 800 were bibg run Next day everythig was shut down except some trolleys were waiting for Monday to make some industrial films..
that facility was was a 24/7 operation evn in Robert "Laser's" book. NOW the key may be to realise that it was built for Movie film, and the market for 2383/3383 is posibly 0.1% of what that setup was designed for. (data on 2383/3383 if you don't know what I am refering to : https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/product/post/print-films/vision-color-2383-3383 )

One thing that struck me was the free reign of the videography / photography granted by Kodak. The skeptic in me thought this is like what the real estate agents do today. Take a video tour of your future home.

This shows in part why SinoPromise is behind on producing color negative paper. How anyone could build a plant(s) like this today is beyond me.

 

[cmacd123]

yes, it does seem like the famous "Silver curtain" has come down.
not sure if Sino-promise had some paper capacity. and I suspect that one could get away with a much simpler factory if only colour paper was being made.

 

[MattKing]

The Silver curtain has come down for two reasons:
1) they are just about the only remaining manufacturer making colour film in industrial sized quantities - in essence, there are no meaningful competitors; and
2) more than anything else, they are trying to attract new, young talent to build their skilled and highly knowledgeable specialist workplace.
These videos are essentially recruiting videos.

 

[mshchem]

The Silver curtain has come down for two reasons:
1) they are just about the only remaining manufacturer making colour film in industrial sized quantities - in essence, there are no meaningful competitors; and
2) more than anything else, they are trying to attract new, young talent to build their skilled and highly knowledgeable specialist workplace.
These videos are essentially recruiting videos.

You are correct on both points. Kodak would be a dream job for engineers. Destin hit a goldmine of laminar flow. To think that the "waterfall" of all the color layers is applied simultaneously. Mind blowing. Serious Physics/Physical Chemistry just to get to the how the heck do we build a machine to do this?

I understood the 1st step of making a silver bromide emulsion, 35+ years ago I made a decent AgBr emulsion went through all the ripening, chilling washing etc. That got me to the state of amateur emulsion making in the 1880's

 

[Arcadia4]

These are an excellent set of videos for an insight into 'modern' film manufacturer, the scale of the plant and complexity of equipment and emulsion manufacture itself is very impressive, although no doubt set up for big runs of movie film in the 90s the current production feels a bit like homebrew in a major brewery - clearly no shortage of capacity for bulk film to offset the current product shortage.. no doubt due to downstream issues in finishing - look forward to that episode. I particularly enjoyed the extra tech film on chemistry of kodak film on the '2' channel.

Theres a lot in there that at one time would probably couldn't have been filmed or have required 'blurred images' with a hushed voiceover , but its all now 30yr old tech and there probably isn't anything that their onetime rival fujifilm doesn't know or doesn't have, given Ashigaras setup is probably similar in scale.

 

[cmacd123]

I understood the 1st step of making a silver bromide emulsion, 35+ years ago I made a decent AgBr emulsion went through all the ripening, chilling washing etc. That got me to the state of amateur emulsion making in the 1880's

Ioften wonder if 2302/3302/5302/7302 (Eastman fine Grain release positive film) which is a slow blue sensitive B&W film is that much different from what was offered in the 1800s except for much better consistency. (although FG Positive is only intended for contact printing)