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

[Nzoomed]

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10 years after my former employer went "belly up," I still don't want to publicly reveal things that are otherwise unpublished.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.)

I guess this is likely because there is no longer any threat of competitors stealing their ideas, and likely many of their patents have also expired.
We dont have Fuji making anywhere near as much film these days and have dropped many products in recent years too.
I guess the PR value of the video outweighs any risks of showing their processes too, especially if it helps a new generation of younger shooters pick up a camera and buy their film.
In the last 10 years ive been shooting film, its getting more difficult and expensive to buy common cameras such as an Olympux XA and dont go there with mju's! They have gone through the roof in price!

 

[Nzoomed]

I finally got round to watching part 2, was very interesting to see how the coater actually worked.
I noticed a few things of interest in here, firstly the clean room standards were a bit lower than I expected, was surprised that they were touching parts of the machinery where film ran right past with no gloves.
I didnt realise that the coater worked like a waterfall and landed perfectly on the film travelling past, I thought the film almost made contact right on the coating head itself.
I only had seen a video of the ferrania coater previously and couldnt get a good idea where the film path was. Kodak also has a bit more precision thing going on around the coater with the doors that close and control air flow.
Also noticed that they were not wearing respirators like they were in the ferrania factory when starting the coater. I remember PE commenting about this on that video and he said one of the binders is toxic, so perhaps Kodak had some way to reduce or extract the aerosols in the coating room, but just an observation.

Huge respect for Kodak allowing destin to film this, I agree its likely recruiting material and they are doing a bit to get people interested in shooting film.
I also think they know there is no competition left with the infrastructure to keep making film like this anymore as so much coating machinery has been scrapped. Fuji would be the only threat and they dont even make motion picture film anymore, so Kodak is likely the only company left with the capability of making any film up to this standard, and we can see everything that goes into making this stuff is insane.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Ilford also has the capability of making film up to "this standard".

 

[MattKing]

Ilford also has the capability of making film up to "this standard".

I'm not sure that their colour film options are quite as successful .

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I'm not sure that their colour film options are quite as successful .

Colour film? What's that?

 

[Sal Santamaura]

Colour film? What's that?

It (as well as color film) is what's generally discussed in the Color: Film, Paper, and Chemistry category at PHOTRIO.

 

[cmacd123]

I am of course whondering what happened to his promised "Part 3" as Kodak's methods for getting film into cassettes seems to be far different than the rest of the remaining industry.

 

[Nzoomed]

Ilford also has the capability of making film up to "this standard".

Even colour film? They only can coat B&W cant they?

 

[Nzoomed]

I am of course whondering what happened to his promised "Part 3" as Kodak's methods for getting film into cassettes seems to be far different than the rest of the remaining industry.

It will come in due course, its been a few months between his videos.

 

[cmacd123]

Even colour film? They only can coat B&W cant they?

they only normally coat B&W, but I suspect that the coater that they had AGFA build for them can do anything that the Coaters that agfa used themselves can do.

 

[koraks]

they only normally coat B&W, but I suspect that the coater that they had AGFA build for them can do anything that the Coaters that agfa used themselves can do.

AFAIK PE once pointed out that the multilayered waterfall coaters like used at Kodak and Fuji that pour a sandwich of several layers at once are pretty much unique. I doubt Ilford has the technology. Inoviscoat probably was working on it, although it's also possible they were trying a sequential approach. I don't know.

 

[Nzoomed]

AFAIK PE once pointed out that the multilayered waterfall coaters like used at Kodak and Fuji that pour a sandwich of several layers at once are pretty much unique. I doubt Ilford has the technology. Inoviscoat probably was working on it, although it's also possible they were trying a sequential approach. I don't know.

I thought that a multilayer coater was needed for pretty much all colour film.
Watching Destins video, it appears that even with a multi layer coater, that it had to go through a second coating phase after being dried out in those long tunnels, along with a second drying phase.
Quite a complex task.
I think PE quoted the number of layers that some films can have, and it can be upwards of 20 layers IIRC, I need to go back and watch the video to count how many layers the coating head can do, but I think it was around 7 layers on that coating head.
Watching the ferrania video, their coating head appeared to have had about the same amount of layers. This would make sense, as if the coating head could only perform 2 or 3 layers, it would need many coating and drying cycles.

Edit:
I can count 9 layers on the coating head on the ferrania video.

Also here is the remarks PE made at the time:

Hello APUG from FILM Ferrania (PART 2)

Similar but different. Things at the head end of our machines moved a lot faster and the drying cabinets always were under tension and never loose as shown. The last time I saw coating all the layers started at one time. PE

www.photrio.com

 

[Nzoomed]

Part 3 is now uploaded to his channel at long last!

 

[MattKing]

Part 3 is now uploaded to his channel at long last!

And discussed here: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...3-of-3-smarter-every-day.199284/#post-2681972

 

[Nzoomed]

OK, seems there are several threads on this.