Kodachrome - Totally dead?

RattyMouse · Dec 24, 2013

PKM-25 said:
When ever I refer to people not understanding the economies of scale in making film at the scale that is required to put forth a quality product, the above puts it into full perspective. The people who are often asking for films gone by *highly* overestimate the actual interest...and they take it personally that their chosen product has been discontinued.

I certainly have my hordes of cool discontinued films, but I really choose to use the most stable products out there that meet my needs in order to get into a rhythm I can count on.

Thanks for putting it this way PE, maybe it will sway a few to move on and support the great products we have left....and write a thread about how thankful they are to still have them.

Absolutely spot on. Supporting current films is 1000 times more important that resurrecting old, dead films that had no market even when they were alive.

Christmas morning is over here in Shanghai and my kid's gift opening was caught on two rolls of 120 C41 film.

Photo Engineer · Dec 24, 2013

BrianShaw said:
Your numbers mau not fully reflect the fact that some participants wouldn't use K even if it did resurect from the grave.

Brian, that is just exactly my point!

Of all of these APUG members only a few are truly interested.

PE

Photo Engineer · Dec 24, 2013

My wife and I are celebrating a quiet Christmas Eve listening to music and reading. Some of our kids and grandkids were over this afternoon and we will see more tomorrow.

But, while sitting here I have been reviewing in my mind the procedures for making Kodachrome (as far as I know them) and my mind boggles. I have considered writing down my thoughts but it would take a several page word document from the start to finish. If I did that, I wonder how many would be interested....

Here is an outline.

1. Make 9 emulsions, 3 each for R/G/B.
2. Test the 9 emulsions alone and together to see if they meet specs.
3. Sensitize with Gold and Sulfur. See if they meet specs
4. Coat 3 sets of 3 emulsions to test as R and G and B
5. Spectrally sensitize and retest and do a short keeping test
6. Coat a short narrow test of a multilayer and test
7. If all tests are passed then go for it.

Chemicals needed, Silver Nitrate, Sodium Bromide, Potassium Iodide, Gelatin (probably 2 - 9 types), 3 sensitizing dyes minimum, TAI preservative, 3 specific preservatives, hardener, and of course access to a processing line for testing. This includes CD3, Cd6, 3 couplers, lots of other organics, alkali and an MQ or PQ developer.

You need a team of technical people for making, coating and testing. Not the same people. They have to test for grain, sharpness and color reproduction as well as speed.

This document would be long and hard to read.

Have fun. I'm not going to do it and bore you. Get some friends to join you and post here instead.

PE

Ken Nadvornick · Dec 24, 2013

I guess we'll just have to wait and see then, right?

I mean, if KA took on EK's film sales business, they're either going to have to sell a shit load more film (and digital) than EK did, or suffer the same fate as EK. Yet they went ahead and took on that business anyway knowing that fact. Dumping legacy costs helps, but will continue to be eroded by an ongoing shrinking market. Something has to give somewhere if they want results different from EK.

Either there's a huge dark matter mass of hidden film buyers out there that EK somehow missed. Or they have found a way to make less film. Or something else. But whatever the answer turns out to be, it can't be the status quo from decades past.

You guys are great at trying to measure success in 2013 against metrics from 30+ years ago. By those standards every film product and company is doomed. Time has moved on, guys. New approaches and models are needed to be successful. That's what Ms. Pasterczyk's comments, if correct, would seem to be trying to address.

You guys need to stop living in that past. There are no more answers there. Only failed business models. The successful film companies of today, and there are some, know this.

Ken

RattyMouse · Dec 24, 2013

KA will succeed because they have found a way to make less film, more profitably. Bringing back a dead film like Kodachrome, which failed due to no demand, will only destroy the last remnants of Kodak. Hopefully, KA will not waste one moment on ideas like this which will destroy them.

Ken Nadvornick · Dec 24, 2013

RattyMouse said:
...which failed due to no demand...

...by the minimum production requirements of 30+ years ago.

Find a way to make Kodachrome, or Ektachrome, or Plus-X, or Portra, or TMax, or any other current or discontinued Kodak film, today at 1/100,000th the volume of 30+ years ago (or whatever volume is required in today's tiny professional and consumer film markets), and that ancient definition of "failed" might just become irrelevant.

It's not any one film, current or past, that is the enemy here, including Kodachrome. That view comes from listening to and parroting too many APUG posts made with (obvious) axes to grind.

It's the minimum production levels for all Kodak films that are the problem. Today's markets can't support those 30+ year old levels. That's always been the fundamental problem. Everyone from Perez, to PE, to the camera store clerk down the street has acknowledged that at some point.

Fix THAT, and lots of previously unthinkable possibilities might then just be worth kicking around again.

C'mon. Give these KA guys some credit. They're not fools. They're not going to risk everything just for a new run of Kodachrome.

If Kodachrome were ever in the position to actually be commercially resurrected at the boutique level, it would likely only be as an afterthought to some sort of reworked and updated micro-production environment that had been created to save ALL Kodak films, and thus hardly an existential threat.

Ken

AgX · Dec 25, 2013

RattyMouse said:
KA will succeed because they have found a way to make less film, more profitably.

Have they?

PaulDK · Dec 25, 2013

Sigh..., reading about chemicals used for the production, it almost makes me want to get away from film.

Be careful about the discussion, it could lead to falling interests among the younger generation who wants to experience film.

AgX · Dec 25, 2013

There is a constant struggle at the industry to cope with or conquer new regulations. Those are often absurd concerning the consumer's side seen the extremely low concentrations of those substances.

David A. Goldfarb · Dec 25, 2013

Photo Engineer said:
This document would be long and hard to read.

Have fun. I'm not going to do it and bore you.

PE

I think that's going to be our secret weapon to put an end to all the Kodachrome speculation and controversy.

railwayman3 · Dec 25, 2013

Photo Engineer said:
My wife and I are celebrating a quiet Christmas Eve listening to music and reading. Some of our kids and grandkids were over this afternoon and we will see more tomorrow.

But, while sitting here I have been reviewing in my mind the procedures for making Kodachrome (as far as I know them) and my mind boggles. I have considered writing down my thoughts but it would take a several page word document from the start to finish. If I did that, I wonder how many would be interested....

Here is an outline.

1. Make 9 emulsions, 3 each for R/G/B.
2. Test the 9 emulsions alone and together to see if they meet specs.
3. Sensitize with Gold and Sulfur. See if they meet specs
4. Coat 3 sets of 3 emulsions to test as R and G and B
5. Spectrally sensitize and retest and do a short keeping test
6. Coat a short narrow test of a multilayer and test
7. If all tests are passed then go for it.

Chemicals needed, Silver Nitrate, Sodium Bromide, Potassium Iodide, Gelatin (probably 2 - 9 types), 3 sensitizing dyes minimum, TAI preservative, 3 specific preservatives, hardener, and of course access to a processing line for testing. This includes CD3, Cd6, 3 couplers, lots of other organics, alkali and an MQ or PQ developer.

You need a team of technical people for making, coating and testing. Not the same people. They have to test for grain, sharpness and color reproduction as well as speed.

This document would be long and hard to read.

Have fun. I'm not going to do it and bore you. Get some friends to join you and post here instead.

PE

Not making any point one-way-or-the-other, but a description of many industrial and manufacturing processes would seem equally, or even more, complicated compared to your outline above.

In the great days of Kodachrome all the processes which your list would be a routine everyday operation in several Kodak plants throughout the world, as would the processing of tens of thousands of films.

I suppose, on one hand, I'm not over-impressed by the suggested complexity of the manufacture of Kodachrome (other makers, including Ilford, Fuji, Sakura and Dynachrome produced similar films and, I believe, Fuji still coat films with up to 14 layers). But, OTOH, I admire the QC and dedication at Kodak which kept the standards so consistent over some 75 years.

Hope you had a great Christmas Eve and enjoy the rest of the holiday.

BrianShaw · Dec 25, 2013

PaulDK said:
Sigh..., reading about chemicals used for the production, it almost makes me want to get away from film.

Be careful about the discussion, it could lead to falling interests among the younger generation who wants to experience film.

That is an uncomfortable truth that many of us has grappled with for many years.

Roger Cole · Dec 25, 2013

I can't imagine why reading about the complexity of Kodachrome would discourage anyone from using chromogenic materials much less far simpler black and white ones.

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Ken Nadvornick · Dec 25, 2013

BrianShaw said:
That is an uncomfortable truth that many of us has grappled with for many years.

Sorry, but if the mere discussion of a now long-discontinued film from a single film company who isn't even in the business of selling film anymore is enough to scare away a potential new film user, then I'd submit that potential user was never going to be around for the long-term anyway.

Would you feel similarly if the topic was Panatomic-X? Be honest now. Not with me, with yourself. Because if the answer is yes, then the logical extrapolation becomes that the entire history of all discontinued films from all companies past and present must become forbidden territory.

On the other hand... the sometimes hysterical reactions in these threads by those who apparently don't like any discussion at all taking place, yeah... I could see THAT as being off-putting to any number of potential new film users. Or even just casual readers.

The really uncomfortable truth is that hysteria makes us all look bad...

Ken

Wayne · Dec 25, 2013

Roger Cole said:
I can't imagine why reading about the complexity if Kodachrome would discourage anyone from using chromogenic materials much less far simmer black and white ones.

neither do I. But then I don't even know what "far simmer" means. ;-)

Roger Cole · Dec 25, 2013

It means an iPhone auto-incorrect for "far simpler!"

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BrianShaw · Dec 25, 2013

AFAIK the discussion was (for me at least) a nod toward green-ness... not necessarily related to the complexity or simplicity of specific film product. Chemical production and waste is a necessary evil. That's all I meant by my comment. You might be reading too much between the lines, Roger, but there wasn't intended to be anything between the lines. IDK what Ken is ranting about in post 214 but it seems almost a hysterical as the hysterical posts.

BrianShaw · Dec 25, 2013

p.s. Ken... I TOTALLY agree with your first sentence. For whatever reason - environmental awareness, lack of commitment, etc - that is likely true.

Roger Cole · Dec 25, 2013

Oh, I took it wholly with reference to the complexity of Kodachrome.

Black and white is not, with a few exceptions for some toners, environmentally unfriendly. Color isn't so bad compared to many other arts either, even digital if one considers the industrial processes required for the manufacture of cyclically obsoleting electronic equipment.

It seems Kodachrome is worse than chromogenic materials but nothing that couldn't be dealt with.

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BrianShaw · Dec 25, 2013

Ken Nadvornick · Dec 25, 2013

Sorry Brian. Didn't mean for it to come off that way. I guess at this point I'm just overly wary after all of the hysterical beat-downs.

The original question was simply "Is it totally dead?" I never thought I'd need a Secret Service detail assigned for life just for presenting logically reasoned arguments that the answer might be "Maybe not?"

(But regardless of their beatings, the answer still really might be "Maybe not" after all.)

I hope you're having a good holiday Brian, and that Santa didn't suffer the same fate as UPS and FedEx.

Take care,
Ken

Sirius Glass · Dec 25, 2013

Ken Nadvornick said:
I hope you're having a good holiday Brian, and that Santa didn't suffer the same fate as UPS

Problems with UPS? Try FedExLax for those things which absolutely positively must mover over night.

BrianShaw · Dec 25, 2013

Ken... I TOTALLY understand. There is too much hysteria and other odd attitudes happening lately. So far Christmas is good for us. I'm working on the holiday feast and trying to keep my cool in light of two octogenarian mother's in the house. Hope all is going well for you and yours!

Photo Engineer · Dec 25, 2013

You refer to a 30+ year old business model. Well, here are some facts for you.

When Kodak was 30+ years younger, 1983, the market for film was expanding and Kodak began construction of the new high speed coating machine. It was in use in the 90s. Film was still increasing in demand - EXCEPT for Kodachrome and then E6 products. Kodachrome was decreasing during that time period not staying constant or increasing like the rest of the film market.

It passed below sustainability in the early part of this century and was followed by E6 products. Fuji may leave the market soon for E6. There is quite a sustainable market for C41 products, especially disposable cameras.

As for my outline, it is just that and presages pages and pages of a Word file which could be posted, but the task is (although a potential secret weapon) rather thankless! So, there it remains.

As for coating small quantities, all products are prototyped on small Research or Development machines, and there are 4 in KRL that can do this. They can coat as little as 100 ft of a full multilayer or as much as 1000 ft or so, and the coatings can be up to 11" wide. But why do it when there is no profit. Give me a small staff, the chemicals, a lab and coating time and I could do it, but in the end, I would be in a hole. No profit. Not even enough income to satisfy the investment let alone break even.

PE

Gerald C Koch · Dec 25, 2013

Albert Einstein once said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." These Kodachrome threads certainly fit the definition. Some people seem to think that things may change but they never will.

Kodachrome - Totally dead?

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