Ilford, Kodak, Fuji, Manufacturing question

Stephen Frizza · Feb 21, 2010

i am curious what happens in manufacturing of film if something goes catastrophically wrong with the intended film being made. Say if its a colour film and a colour layer is ruined and the film only produces images which are
ultra blue or if a black and white emulsion is made but has a spectral deficiency or is terribly contrasty etc... what does the manufacture do with a material if it does not meet the set parameters? does the film get destroyed?
does it get made into a "special" product? and does anyone who had worked in an ilford, fuji or kodak plant know if such an occurance has happened?

Michael W · Feb 21, 2010

They send it to Australia.

AgX · Feb 21, 2010

"Special Product":

Polapremium offers at the moment an SX-70 technology film which turned out unstable, with dye-transfer going to completion, blackness.
They offer it as film with kind of selfdestruction, in a nicely-made black box.
http://www.polapremium.com/shop/film/sx70/fi_sx70_1_1009_fade

Or was that effect intended...?

Stephen Frizza · Feb 21, 2010

goldie said:
They send it to Australia.

hahahahaha years ago kodak had a stock which was fire damaged that they sent around Australia. I swear this isn't a lie. The paper was bad in 2 ways, the colour across it shifted from magenta to green and there were some boxes which had weird marks as though water had somehow gotten in. Kodak said nothing and hoped no one would notice, but labs here did and they complained kodak accepted all the stock back after a group of the main pro labs got together about the issue. It wasnt untill the stock was accepted back did it get revealed what had happened to it.

Ian Grant · Feb 21, 2010

If something went wrong at a coating stage it would go for silver recovery/recycling.

Ian

AgX · Feb 21, 2010

Film base will be rceycled too.

Ian Grant · Feb 21, 2010

AgX said:
Film base will be rceycled too.

Yes but there are complications, it's relatively easy when recycling direct from the manufacturers as they can label and keep different film bases separate.

But the experience we had reprocessing Graphics & X-ray films was that film bases were almost always mixed and impossible to sort, and the plastics recyclers wouldn't take them as a consequence. So it went for landfill.

Ian

Simon R Galley · Feb 22, 2010

Dear Stephen,

Everything we manufacture, at all stages, is subject to rigid quality control, if it is ever out of the specified manufacturing tolerances it is destroyed and sent for silver recovery. It will be exactly the same at KODAK and FUJI.

Simon. ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology limited :

Daire Quinlan · Feb 22, 2010

Isn't there some anecdote about Fujis' Fortia SP being originally a messed up batch of Velvia that resulted in even more OTT contrast and saturation ? Apperently, so the tale goes, fuji decided to sell it as a new film for Sakura that year to see how it would get on. And lo and behold, a legend was born

That's all probably completely untrue of course ...

mikebarger · Feb 22, 2010

Good story though.

Mike

Stephen Frizza · Feb 22, 2010

Simon R Galley said:
Dear Stephen,

Everything we manufacture, at all stages, is subject to rigid quality control, if it is ever out of the specified manufacturing tolerances it is destroyed and sent for silver recovery. It will be exactly the same at KODAK and FUJI.

Simon. ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology limited :

If something was produced that was out of the tolerances but was able to produce an image, rather than destroy it do you think any company would be willing to sell the material if there was a client offering to pay for the entire product produced?

Photo Engineer · Feb 22, 2010

I sincerely doubt the "fire sale in Australia" story, as being a case of Kodak not knowing what happened at a warehouse and the paper got out without their knowledge. They keep tight reins on all product quality issues. As Simon says, all of the companies scrap out of tolerance materials. Even the support is reclaimed to some extent.

The Velvia story is either a fabrication or has been distorted. Sakura would never sell Fuji products. They were bitter rivals in Japan and were owned by rival competitive companies.

PE

Photo Engineer · Feb 22, 2010

Stephen Frizza said:
If something was produced that was out of the tolerances but was able to produce an image, rather than destroy it do you think any company would be willing to sell the material if there was a client offering to pay for the entire product produced?

Steve;

The material would be destroyed in the plant before any customer knew there was defective product.

PE

AgX · Feb 22, 2010

See my Polaroid/Polapremium hint...

Stephen Frizza · Feb 23, 2010

Photo Engineer said:
I sincerely doubt the "fire sale in Australia" story, as being a case of Kodak not knowing what happened at a warehouse and the paper got out without their knowledge. They keep tight reins on all product quality issues. As Simon says, all of the companies scrap out of tolerance materials. Even the support is reclaimed to some extent.

The Velvia story is either a fabrication or has been distorted. Sakura would never sell Fuji products. They were bitter rivals in Japan and were owned by rival competitive companies.

PE

P.E yes i should have been a tad clearer with that story, in australia all kodaks photographic materials are not kept in the hands of kodak they are in a dispach warehouse which is ownded by a diffrent company, clients call kodak and order the items kodak then passes it on the the place the items are kept and shipped and they never actually see it. so yes your quite right responsibility was to a large degree with the distribution company.

Daire Quinlan · Feb 23, 2010

Photo Engineer said:
The Velvia story is either a fabrication or has been distorted. Sakura would never sell Fuji products. They were bitter rivals in Japan and were owned by rival competitive companies.

PE

I didn't even know there was a company called Sakura ?
By Sakura I meant that brief period in early spring when all the cherry blossom trees are flowering. Apparently that's the time of the year when fortia is released, specifically for those events.

ozphoto · Feb 23, 2010

I remember a batch of Kodak Gold 100 film missing the yellow layer (late 80s early 90s) - had the rep come out and strip us of well over 500 rolls of the stuff. Only realised when labs complained that they had to filter the film so much.

Ooooops. . . . . . . :O

AgX · Feb 23, 2010

Daire Quinlan said:
I didn't even know there was a company called Sakura ?

"Sakura" (yes, cherryblossom) was the brand-name prefix for films from Konishiroku Photo Industry Co. Ltd.
Later they became Konica, now they are Konica-Minolta.

Sometimes they used "Sakura" in a way that it could be understood as company name.

Ilford, Kodak, Fuji, Manufacturing question

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