Kodak Alaris discontinues BW400CN film

Xmas · Aug 20, 2014

NJH said:
.,.but would probably settle on something finer than XP2s. Its always seemed bizarre to me that the so called film resurgence and so much of the stuff on the net is around playing with tri-x and scanning it at home on some basic scanner.

No detectable difference between XP2+ or BW400CN apart from the BW being a little more difficult with VC paper. They both allow ICE dust removal.

I normally carry a cassette (of either) around in gbag in case I need a prompt turn local around.

Scanning does not require a darkroom, enlarger and skill. And it allows email, & gilee print, which are to hand already. The resurgence is that the cheap scanner, used 35mm prosumer SLR, together are cheap. Lots of people don't get a dev tank. C41 colour seems to be the norm.

RattyMouse · Aug 20, 2014

Siompa said:
That's too bad.. I live in sweden and although we have pretty good supply in Stockholm and some other bigger cities, the availability of film in smaller towns are really bad.

I was recently in a small town in the south of sweden and the only B&W film i could get a hold of were kodak bw400cn, without driving for an hour. They had no "real" B&W film since they didn't develop it anywhere in town.

The local grocery store that I shop at here in China carries two kinds of 35mm film. Fujifilm Superia 400, and Kodak 400CN.

I guess now they will only carry Fujifilm.

Siompa · Aug 20, 2014

it was the same two films in the place i was

RattyMouse · Aug 20, 2014

TheFlyingCamera said:
Actually, this kind of makes sense - since virtually nobody is printing anything any more anyway, this odd bird which always was a bit of a niche market doesn't have a big market share. It really is best for printing on RA-4 paper. It works, well enough, when printed on fiber paper, but the folks who are going to keep black-and-white film alive are the ones who are going to home process and do their own enlarging, not the target market for this film. That, and the advent of instagram filters and the like make me surprised this film lasted as long as it did. Unless Kodak goes completely tits up quickly, I see them ending up with a similar palette of films to Ilford - Tri-X for a traditional grain emulsion, TMax 100 and 400 for T-grain emulsions, plus the Portras and Ektar 100. If I HAD to lay speculation on what would go next, I'd say it would be Portra 800 - it's expensive, and relatively low volume compared to the others. But I'm not speculating.

Fujifilm has consolidated around 400H. We lost 160NS and Reala. I suppose it's likely that Kodak will follow suit and that Portra 400 will be their last color negative film (aside from consumer grade) standing.

Stephen Frizza · Aug 20, 2014

My biggest client only shoots on this film stock grrrr.

markbarendt · Aug 20, 2014

Stephen Frizza said:
My biggest client only shoots on this film stock grrrr.

Time to stock up.

Richard S. (rich815) · Aug 20, 2014

Stephen Frizza said:
My biggest client only shoots on this film stock grrrr.

Really? Curious if they ever compared it to XP2 and if so why they preferred 400CN...

GarageBoy · Aug 20, 2014

Kodak BW400CN is gone...

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/films/bw400cn/main2.jhtml?pq-path=13402
Guess it's XP2 time

Xmas · Aug 20, 2014

too late see
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

whlogan · Aug 20, 2014

Count on Kodak to quit making the stuff we like... way to go, guys... at least you keep going steady...

Logan

Xmas · Aug 20, 2014

TheFlyingCamera said:
...Unless Kodak goes completely tits up quickly, I see them ending up with a similar palette of films to Ilford - Tri-X for a traditional grain emulsion, TMax 100 and 400 for T grain...

but Ilford have not cancelled their

cromogenic
50 ISO trad
100 ISO trad
3200 ISO T
IR
etc.,...

yet, and they have not done colour for about 50 years.

When Kodak closed down UK and French film coating (about 05), they created a dependency on high volume film sales. And I know PanatomicX was stopped even earlier. And that they still do DoubleX in B&H perforations, which perf Ilford have stopped.

So choice is slipping away but we still have some.

RalphLambrecht · Aug 20, 2014

Ilford XP2 is better anyway.

Sirius Glass · Aug 20, 2014

So we are losing a product without a need or a market. For starters Tri-X, TMax, FP4 and HP5+ are much better.

Jaf-Photo · Aug 20, 2014

Sal Santamaura said:
Why do you care? You're "quitting film," right?

For personal reasons, I am currently not shooting film. But I never said I hate film and want it to die. Quite the contrary, I hope to be able to pick it up one day.

KA announcing its first film discontinuation has a huge symbolic significance.

PKM-25 · Aug 20, 2014

Jaf-Photo said:
KA announcing its first film discontinuation has a huge symbolic significance.

I see that film being niche within a niche under a niche, so I am inclined to not agree. It's business as usual for me, buying Ilford, Kodak and Fuji films as my freezer dips below 80% on any given film type....

Richard S. (rich815) · Aug 20, 2014

PKM-25 said:
I see that film being niche within a niche under a niche, so I am inclined to not agree. It's business as usual for me, buying Ilford, Kodak and Fuji films as my freezer dips below 80% on any given film type....

I agree. I had no idea it was still around.

Prof_Pixel · Aug 20, 2014

Jaf-Photo said:
KA announcing its first film discontinuation has a huge symbolic significance.

It's just reinforcing the saying: "Use it or loose it".

David A. Goldfarb · Aug 20, 2014

Threads merged.

Xmas · Aug 20, 2014

PKM-25 said:
I see that film being niche within a niche under a niche, so I am inclined to not agree. It's business as usual for me, buying Ilford, Kodak and Fuji films as my freezer dips below 80% on any given film type....

I understand your posture but it is the only Kodak mono film in most of the large and medium sized shops of our largest pharmacy chain. Competing with HP5+ and XP2+ at same (or similar) price point!

That is a large stock position and unless Alaris is quick a significant loss of UK market %, even if it is small. KA might substitute Trix but many people will only buy C41 film as turnaround of retained silver film is slower. So yes niche but complete loss of a marketing point or a large reduction respectively.

It would force me to XP2+ if I did not home process.

Only a few of our camera shops now stock any film!

Im not sure that KAs or EKs management could pound sand into a rat hole...

RattyMouse · Aug 20, 2014

Sirius Glass said:
So we are losing a product without a need or a market. For starters Tri-X, TMax, FP4 and HP5+ are much better.

BW400CN is better than all those films at being developed in C41 chemicals.

By itself, i doubt that the loss of this film is a big deal. But now the news has hit most of the photo news web sites, and from the comments one can see that Kodak continues to push its brand name into the gutter. Kodak is synonymous with failure now. No one thinks about Kodak until news like this, yet another film dying. Comments are made like, "i didn't know film was still available". Kodak is then forgotten until the next sad announcement.

A marketing effort to project a more positive image would be nice for a change.

TheFlyingCamera · Aug 20, 2014

Xmas-

my sympathies are limited. While it sucks that you can't walk in to the average Boots and pick up a three-pack of Kodak Gold/Fuji Superia/400CN, drugstores have never been, at least for me, a significant source for film. The films I have liked, for a very long time, have not been readily available locally (and with the death of our major camera store, Calumet, available at all). When they were, they were somewhat to significantly more expensive than ordering online, if they were in stock. That said, three clicks of a mouse and I'm ordering a brick of my favorite emulsion from B&H (or for you, Calumet UK or Silverprint or ffordes or whoever). It really doesn't chafe my backside to do a LITTLE planning ahead and keep a few rolls of Tri-X, Ektar 100, FP4+, PanF, Delta 3200 and the Portras in my fridge. You want to shoot C41 b/w? Go online, order ten rolls of XP2+, and when you have two rolls left, go order another ten! This is the new reality - brick-and-mortar stores don't stock products that we want anymore. But distribution and retail via the internet is actually cheaper and more efficient now than it was in the brick-and-mortar days.

RattyMouse · Aug 20, 2014

TheFlyingCamera said:
Xmas-

my sympathies are limited. While it sucks that you can't walk in to the average Boots and pick up a three-pack of Kodak Gold/Fuji Superia/400CN, drugstores have never been, at least for me, a significant source for film. The films I have liked, for a very long time, have not been readily available locally (and with the death of our major camera store, Calumet, available at all). When they were, they were somewhat to significantly more expensive than ordering online, if they were in stock. That said, three clicks of a mouse and I'm ordering a brick of my favorite emulsion from B&H (or for you, Calumet UK or Silverprint or ffordes or whoever). It really doesn't chafe my backside to do a LITTLE planning ahead and keep a few rolls of Tri-X, Ektar 100, FP4+, PanF, Delta 3200 and the Portras in my fridge. You want to shoot C41 b/w? Go online, order ten rolls of XP2+, and when you have two rolls left, go order another ten! This is the new reality - brick-and-mortar stores don't stock products that we want anymore. But distribution and retail via the internet is actually cheaper and more efficient now than it was in the brick-and-mortar days.

Yes, very true. Buying film is not difficult at all. But the loss of one of the very few films still in the public eye perhaps has a price that we cannot put a value on at this moment.

TheFlyingCamera · Aug 20, 2014

RattyMouse said:
Yes, very true. Buying film is not difficult at all. But the loss of one of the very few films still in the public eye perhaps has a price that we cannot put a value on at this moment.

Possibly true- but then if people were so desperate to keep this film around they would have been buying more of it and using it more. Obviously the market as a whole did not match the stated passion of the few who have expressed it here. But selling single rolls at the drugstore to random individuals is never enough to keep a film line going - Kodachrome probably had a much larger user base than BW400CN did, and they killed it off. I know some people liked it a lot for the convenience, but it wasn't all that good as a black-and-white film - if I really want a black-and-white image I'm better off busting out the Tri-X (or Tmax 400, or Delta 100 or whatever) and either having a local lab do it, mailing it off to a pro lab in a bigger city, or just learning how to home process (which once you get past the $50 or so it takes to get a tank, a couple reels, and some graduated cups for measuring chemistry, is radically cheaper than giving it to a lab). Either that or just shoot regular C41 color neg and learn how to print it b/w or do the digital thing and convert it in Photoshop. At the point you're turning over 100% of your process to the whims of a drugstore minilab, you may as well just go hybrid. You'd have better results in all probability.

Truzi · Aug 20, 2014

It's sad to see a film discontinued, even if it's one I don't use. I think I have a different view on things, though.
Fuji and Kodak cannot scale easily. Each, in my opinion, is stronger in different areas (not saying either is bad in other areas). It seems they are striking a balance, and hopefully will not compete certain things out of existence as the market shrinks.
Fortunately Ilford is in a good position with their offerings.

cmacd123 · Aug 20, 2014

Of course the shift in other parts of the market has also hurt the posible market of this product. At the time it came out, there were 1 hour labs in every shopping area, and so this product allowed folks to have easier access to B&W than Tri-X. Just drop it off at the lab and have negatives in 20 minutes, or prints in an hour.

with fewer 1 Hour labs the ballance has shifted where Tri-x probably is the faster way to get a B&W negative.

Now that does not negate the advantage of having colour Negative like latitude in a b&W film.

Kodak Alaris discontinues BW400CN film

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Kodak Alaris discontinues BW400CN film

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