Kodak B&W Films Slightly Improved Recently?

braxus · Mar 30, 2015

I have been reading some comments lately, about the quality of Kodak Alaris' films being slightly improved recently, at least on movie film. Improvements in 5222/7222 were noted, and I think I read improvements in Tri-X as well. Something about a silent/ unannounced change making the grain of these films slightly smaller. Can anyone confirm this? I shoot both still and movie film, so its relevant to me on both counts.

BrianShaw · Mar 30, 2015

Where are you reading that?

braxus · Mar 30, 2015

It was on Cinematography.com where I read some posts in regards to that.

mnemosyne · Mar 31, 2015

IIRC it was reported around last Photokina that sales for Kodak professional still films (CN & bW) had bottomed out or were improving slightly, while sales of consumer films where still shrinking. I think it was Henning Serger who reported this here on APUG, but this is from my memory and I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the info

pdeeh · Mar 31, 2015

OP seems to be talking about improved "technical quality" of the films rather than improved sales, perhaps it's misplaced being in the "product availability" subforum

mnemosyne · Mar 31, 2015

pdeeh said:
OP seems to be talking about improved "technical quality" of the films rather than improved sales, perhaps it's misplaced being in the "product availability" subforum

oops ... seems I completely missed the plot!

BrianShaw · Mar 31, 2015

Scott... considering the response your getting here and on photo.net, and the fact that I can't find one posting that discusses the topic... I'm guessing that what you heard is a random internet rumor. I'd be shocked that Kodak is doing too much engineering of emulsion given the slow sales and small demand, but I could be wrong. They re-engineered Porta at a time that I thought that to be a stupid idea... so what do I know. Have you called Kodak (I always thought you were better connected with Kodak than most of us), or asked the folks on the cinematography forum who posted this kind of chatter? I'm curious too.

CropDusterMan · Mar 31, 2015

For Kodak to be re-engineering any of their emulsions at this point would make absolutely no fiscal sense...like Ford remanufacturing parts today for their old Edsel line.
(Not to insult great Kodak emulsions by comparing them to Fords dud.).

MDR · Mar 31, 2015

The film has been improved several times in the last 10 years but more the mechanical side of it and less the emulsion side. Better backing etc... which might result in some improvements to the Emulsion. Personaly I highly doubt that Kodak has invested even a cent in improving the Emulsion itself, their B/W MP emulsions have been Kodak'S stepchildren for quiet some time. I trust the original source of the rumour since he really know his stuff and improvements of the non Emulsion part of the film do have an effect on the look of the film.

Buzz40 · Mar 31, 2015

No information here, but I hope the "refining" of Tri-X's grain is false. I shoot it much for the grain I can pull out of it. I love it's more classical look for so many subjects.

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MDR · Mar 31, 2015

Don't worry Tri-X for MP use is not identical to Tri-X for still photography the former being a reversal film. So any improvements done to the MP Version of the film are more or less irrelevant to still photographers it's also no longer available in 35mm
Double-X is a beautiful film and still available in 35mm thank god for small favours

mnemosyne · Mar 31, 2015

Buzz40 said:
No information here, but I hope the "refining" of Tri-X's grain is false. I shoot it much for the grain I can pull out of it. I love it's more classical look for so many subjects.

Tri-X was reformulated around 2007, when Kodak concentrated its film coating activities into one facility. Packaging and branding changed somewhat at the time (from "Tri-X 400" to "400TX") and a new data sheet with different dev times was published. This 2007 re-formulation was the last major change in Tri-X I am aware of. As others have said given the state of affairs at EK it is unlikely that they would do any major reformulation of the film today unless they are forced to do so by outside factors like availability of certain raw materials.
I don't have extensive experience with Tri-X as I have been using mostly Ilford product over the years, but it appears to me that negatives from current Tri-X are indeed finer grained than those I still have from the 1980s. For me, modern Tri-X grain appears to be not much coarser than that of TMY400. This is just my very subjective impression from occasional use of these films. When I want to see grain in my pictures, I nowadays rather use Kentmere 400.

braxus · Mar 31, 2015

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=55564&p=426620

This is one of the threads I saw. Not sure where the other one was. Mention of 7222 changing slightly with slightly smaller grain and lack of acidic smell. Not sure where the Tri-X thread was. Maybe this was a small change made recently.

BrianShaw · Mar 31, 2015

That is a 2012 thread that really doesn't speak to your question except for one recent off-handed comment. I think you are chasing a wild goose and Dirk may be throwing red herrings.

Seems like nobody can corroborate that and everyone doubts the veracity of such claims

Maybe asking Dirk to answer the question would be best; if you haven't done so already

Ko.Fe. · Mar 31, 2015

It is self illusion. How else you convince yourself to buy overpriced, but same Kodak film?
"it's just an illusion, a-ha"...

braxus · Mar 31, 2015

Brian,

The thread from Dirk is from 2015 and is a recent posting. Here is an exerpt from post #19:

Posted 22 March 2015 - 09:11 AM

"The 7222 seems to have changed for the better recently, it used to have more grain and a typical acidic smell that is gone now, they didn't tell anyone but it certainly has changed."

BrianShaw · Mar 31, 2015

Understood. I did not write the sentence clearly. Dirks comment is very curious. Perhaps only he can explain his thesis.

MDR · Apr 1, 2015

If you saw the posting about Tri-X improvements on cinematography.com it is completely irrelevant to still photographers this is not the same film. Tri-X for MP film is a reversal film and not a neg film furthermore it is not available in 35mm and has a very different look and contrast than the still film. The only thing it has in common with tri-x still film is the name that's it. One of the changes of the MP film is that it is now sold under the Eastman label meaning budget product as opposed to premium product Kodak.

railwayman3 · Apr 1, 2015

The current Kodak Movie films seem to be all fully listed and indexed on: http://motion.kodak.com/motion/Products/Production/index.htm

cmacd123 · Apr 1, 2015

MDR said:
. One of the changes of the MP film is that it is now sold under the Eastman label meaning budget product as opposed to premium product Kodak.

The other way arround actually, They have almost completely phase out the use of "Eastman" to refer to Movie film, in favor of "Kodak" as in "Kodak Vision 3 Colour negative". It was a couple of years ago I last had a print made from 16mm negative but the stock the print was on Said "kodak" rather than "eastman" in the edge print.

MDR · Apr 1, 2015

Cmacd123 my post wasn't really clear. Since the introduction of Vision 1 Films Eastman was used as the name for their "lower cost" films. Nobody will say that the EXRs weren't beautiful some of them even survived into the Vision 2 era the 50D (2006) and 500T (2003) but they were definitely cheaper than their Vision Counterparts. B/W is a niche/budget product hence the Eastman name. The use of Kodak instead of Eastman was once again Kodak Marketing at it's best. Kodak synonyme for cheap and mass production is used as name for a premium product instead of Eastman(color) who was more or less a synonyme together with Technicolor for big budget Hollywood color movies.

cmacd123 · Apr 2, 2015

for sure EK has made a serious effort to rebrand their Movie stocks as "Kodak" as each one has been updated. The only sticks on the Kodak go/motion site called eastman anymore are ones that have survived from the older days. The "Kodak Vision" name has been applied to all the newer stocks, and that went to version one, two and three, before Fuji stopped competing in the Movie realm.

MDR · Apr 3, 2015

cmacd123 again proof of Kodak's idiocy. Perez was not the only fool at Kodak the marketing dept. is partly to blame as well. It also shows what Kodak thought about their past. Phasing out the founders name tsk tsk tsk.

cmacd123 · Apr 6, 2015

Some parts of Kodak seem to be moving out of step. I received my Copy of "american Cinematographer" last week, (the one with the robot on the cover) and the ad in the back is for Kodak Movie film as part of their #FilmWorthy campaign. Part of the design was a hand drawn stylized version of the "Giant K" logo that Kodak dumped several years ago. Assume someone in the MP division figures it has better brand recognition than the current logo (or wordmark - just the word kodak in a funny typeface hardly counts as a logo)

Kodak B&W Films Slightly Improved Recently?

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