Kodak committed to making film "as long as there's demand"

cmacd123 · Aug 28, 2023

eli griggs said:
And the advantage of the "Super Slide" is that it works in Kodak 35mm slide projectors.

actually ANY BRAND of 2X2 slide projector. Sawyers for example made both slide projectors and had a 127 TLR made for them by Topcon. The Kodak Carousel series made it hard for other slide projector brands to thrive. other than novelty units like the B&H side cube. (I still have bad dreams about that one)

MattKing · Aug 28, 2023

cmacd123 said:
other than novelty units like the B&H side cube. (I still have bad dreams about that one)

Do those dreams involve bent corners and being "stuck"?

eli griggs · Aug 29, 2023

cmacd123 said:
actually ANY BRAND of 2X2 slide projector. Sawyers for example made both slide projectors and had a 127 TLR made for them by Topcon. The Kodak Carousel series made it hard for other slide projector brands to thrive. other than novelty units like the B&H side cube. (I still have bad dreams about that one)

Yes, the Promo Jr. aka the Sawyers Mk. IV, which I have a nice example but I need to make a new skin for.

The Kodak slide projectors was the only projector I was familiar with for using super slides, though I've never owned a slide projector.

I have a 4x4cm back for my medium format slr, but I can't see myself cutting down 120 film to 4x4cm for slides, yet.

cmacd123 · Aug 29, 2023

MattKing said:
Do those dreams involve bent corners and being "stuck"?

more like the slide in Pakon Style Plastic slide mounts were just coming out, and the early ones had black plastic on one side. They melted nicely in a Slide Cube. or if not jammed and got bent.

mshchem · Sep 6, 2023

Fascinating video Kodak film processing

cmacd123 · Sep 6, 2023

and how many seconds in did everyone say "Australia"? mostly Kodachrome in that collection. the scenes are definatly not in order of the workflow.

mshchem · Sep 7, 2023

cmacd123 said:
and how many seconds in did everyone say "Australia"? mostly Kodachrome in that collection. the scenes are definatly not in order of the workflow.

I saw NSW, that tipped me off. Lovely footage, covered prints, slides, movies and quality. Amazing how quickly Kodak developed the technology. Similar to Apple. Such rapid progress.

Henning Serger · Sep 7, 2023

Lachlan Young said:
Instax is likely swallowing vast amounts of available coating/ finishing capacity -

Well Lachlan, not really if we are looking precisely at it:
1. Coating: The boom in instax demand has been really huge - permanent growth since 2004 !! For 19 years. That is really exceptionell in economic history.
Nevertheless if I look at the current market - even calculating future growth - it is very unlikely that it is so huge that it is surpassing the max. coating capacity. The coating machines of Fujifilm, Kodak, Ilford, Foma, Inovisproject (daughter of Polaroid producing the CN film base) are so big that max. production capacity in shift-operation is many times the current market volume.
Therefore I have severe doubts that Fujifilm has currently a bottleneck in coating capacity.

2. Finishing: The finishing of instax films is indeed running at full capacity in 3-shift (24/7 operation) for quite some time now. Fujifilm has indeed reached a limit here and will invest further in significantly increased capacities (target: 20% more).
But:
Finishing/confectioning for instax is completely different to finishing 135, 120 and sheets. Completely different technology, completely different, seperated, unique lines. You cannot finish instax film on a 135 or 120 line.

Best regards,
Henning

Henning Serger · Sep 7, 2023

Agulliver said:
Kodak have repeatedly said that lower prices are unlikely.

That is correct, they have said that.
But:
There is also a lot of market pressure. With the exploding Kodak prices Kodak has lost a significant amount of market share in BW.
Even long-term, for decades loyal Kodak BW film customers stopped buying Kodak BW film and switched brands, mainly to Ilford Photo, partly to the others.
The time in which Tri-X was the best selling BW film globally is gone, history.
Concerning BW film Kodak is currently not competitive anymore with their prices. Period.
They have to react if they want to keep their BW line running.

Best regards,
Henning

Agulliver · Sep 7, 2023

Henning Serger said:
That is correct, they have said that.
But:
There is also a lot of market pressure. With the exploding Kodak prices Kodak has lost a significant amount of market share in BW.
Even long-term, for decades loyal Kodak BW film customers stopped buying Kodak BW film and switched brands, mainly to Ilford Photo, partly to the others.
The time in which Tri-X was the best selling BW film globally is gone, history.
Concerning BW film Kodak is currently not competitive anymore with their prices. Period.
They have to react if they want to keep their BW line running.

Best regards,
Henning

At the moment they have a near monopoly in colour, so the price rises aren't such a big problem for Kodak's market share. But with B&W you must be correct. Especially in UK/Europe where the price of Kodak B&W film sometimes looks silly compared to Ilford. I'd be curious as to how much B&W film Kodak sells globally and how that has changed in recent years. How does Tri-X sell against HP5+ ? It's not so long ago that they brought back TMZ so they must have been confident of a continuing market then....but how have things changed?

Anon Ymous · Sep 7, 2023

Agulliver said:
At the moment they have a near monopoly in colour, so the price rises aren't such a big problem for Kodak's market share.

It can be a problem if those who shoot C41 become fed up with the increased prices and stop shooting film. It's not that there aren't any alternatives.

Henning Serger · Sep 7, 2023

Agulliver said:
At the moment they have a near monopoly in colour, so the price rises aren't such a big problem for Kodak's market share. But with B&W you must be correct. Especially in UK/Europe where the price of Kodak B&W film sometimes looks silly compared to Ilford.

Yupp, prices in EU:
Tri-X 135: 14.50€
HP5+ 135: 8.98€

TMY-2 135: 14.90€
Delta 400 135: 9.89€
XP-2 400 135: 10.95€

TMX 135: 13.99€
Delta 100 135: 9.98€

Agulliver said:
How does Tri-X sell against HP5+ ?

HP5+ is meanwhile selling significantly better than Tri-X.
Not surprising at all: If you are being honest, then you can do with HP5+ all what you are doing with Tri-X. The two films are extremely similar in their performance, and most photographers will have problems to distinguish the results of the two in a blind test.
And an increasing number of photographers is realizing that these very small differences - if at all visible - are not worth a price difference of more than 5.50€ per film.

Agulliver said:
It's not so long ago that they brought back TMZ so they must have been confident of a continuing market then....but how have things changed?

The price situation has changed significantly. And that has very significant effects on demand for Kodak BW film.

Best regards,
Henning

Henning Serger · Sep 7, 2023

Anon Ymous said:
It can be a problem if those who shoot C41 become fed up with the increased prices and stop shooting film. It's not that there aren't any alternatives.

Exactly.
And that is the danger for the market.

Best regards,
Henning

Lachlan Young · Sep 7, 2023

Henning Serger said:
Well Lachlan, not really if we are looking precisely at it:
1. Coating: The boom in instax demand has been really huge - permanent growth since 2004 !! For 19 years. That is really exceptionell in economic history.
Nevertheless if I look at the current market - even calculating future growth - it is very unlikely that it is so huge that it is surpassing the max. coating capacity. The coating machines of Fujifilm, Kodak, Ilford, Foma, Inovisproject (daughter of Polaroid producing the CN film base) are so big that max. production capacity in shift-operation is many times the current market volume.
Therefore I have severe doubts that Fujifilm has currently a bottleneck in coating capacity.

2. Finishing: The finishing of instax films is indeed running at full capacity in 3-shift (24/7 operation) for quite some time now. Fujifilm has indeed reached a limit here and will invest further in significantly increased capacities (target: 20% more).
But:
Finishing/confectioning for instax is completely different to finishing 135, 120 and sheets. Completely different technology, completely different, seperated, unique lines. You cannot finish instax film on a 135 or 120 line.

Best regards,
Henning

I think it's a question of staffing - going by the amount of coated product needed to make each box of Instax, I'd not be surprised if it meant coating was running quite close to the capacity of single shift working (so, probably a bit under a third of full 24/7 capacity) - and that finishing has probably hoovered up workforce who might be otherwise deployed on finishing/ packaging 135/120/ sheet materials - in other words, Fuji may have intially taken corporate decisions to not expand workforce/ working shifts, but rather to redeploy to fulfill demand for their biggest selling products - and taking decisions to suspend/ kill off products that management perceive as less important - and only now that they've hit the capacity wall are they investing in more total capacity.

And Ilford are, from what I've heard/ experienced when trying to get some of their slower selling/ less frequently finished products recently, seemingly running at near total capacity in finishing of roll film product.

I'd also add that different countries seem to have different price sensitivities - which may relate to differences in delineation between whether the views of hobby users are or are not regarded as being of market significance - I've felt that there's perhaps a tendency to over-weight the price sensitivity of hobby users in Germany whereas the assumption of a relatively more elastic price perception within the world of higher capacity users (within the varied aspects of 'professional' practice, be it fine-art, commerce etc) in the Anglo-American world tends to carry more weight here in terms of price aims.

Henning Serger · Sep 7, 2023

Lachlan Young said:
I think it's a question of staffing -

Could be generally possible, but I don't think it is the case here. Because Fujifilm has already been running instax film confectioning in 3-shift 24/7 operation for several years. And at the same time Fujifilm had also increasing demand for standard film, and - at least from the numbers I have - no significant under-utilization of 135 film confectioning.

Lachlan Young said:
And Ilford are, from what I've heard/ experienced when trying to get some of their slower selling/ less frequently finished products recently, seemingly running at near total capacity in finishing of roll film product.

That could indeed be possible. The confectioning capacity of 120 film is generally much smaller at all big film manufacturers. The production output of the fully automated 120 film finishing machines are generally about 1/6 - 1/8 compared to the fully automated 135 film confectioning machines running at Ilford, Kodak, Fuji.

Best regards,
Henning

Lachlan Young · Sep 7, 2023

Henning Serger said:
That could indeed be possible. The confectioning capacity of 120 film is generally much smaller at all big film manufacturers. The production output of the fully automated 120 film finishing machines are generally about 1/6 - 1/8 compared to the fully automated 135 film confectioning machines running at Ilford, Kodak, Fuji.

Best regards,
Henning

I realised after I'd posted that I was implying 120, when I was trying to use a statement to cover 135 and 120.

Mackinaw · Sep 7, 2023

Henning Serger said:
Yupp, prices in EU:
Tri-X 135: 14.50€
HP5+ 135: 8.98€

TMY-2 135: 14.90€
Delta 400 135: 9.89€
XP-2 400 135: 10.95€

TMX 135: 13.99€
Delta 100 135: 9.98€

But, in the U.S. looking at the B&H website, everyone of the 35mm Kodak T-Max films are cheaper than the equivalent Ilford Delta films (both being tabular grain films). So price differences vary as to what country you're talking about.

Jim B.

Agulliver · Sep 8, 2023

Mackinaw said:
But, in the U.S. looking at the B&H website, everyone of the 35mm Kodak T-Max films are cheaper than the equivalent Ilford Delta films (both being tabular grain films). So price differences vary as to what country you're talking about.

Jim B.

I think Henning was responding to my post saying that the price difference in UK/EU for Kodak B&W products compared to Ilford makes it rather difficult to justify purchasing Kodak. While some folk may have a preference for Kodak as a brand or a particular fondness for a specific film (eg. Tri-X seems to be beloved).....I don't think there's a person on this earth who would claim that Ilford doesn't also make B&W films of the highest quality. You can do everything with HP5+ that you can do with Tri-X, everything with the Delta line that you can do with T-MAX films and so on. So, faced with a huge price difference....it is clear that for at least half the global market....Kodak are at a big disadvantage.

faberryman · Sep 8, 2023

Mackinaw said:
But, in the U.S. looking at the B&H website, everyone of the 35mm Kodak T-Max films are cheaper than the equivalent Ilford Delta films (both being tabular grain films). So price differences vary as to what country you're talking about.

In the US the price difference depends on how you buy your film. For example, at B&H, TMax100 is $10.99/roll and Delta 100 is $11.99/roll, so advantage Kodak. However, for bulk loading, which is what I do, TMax100 is $159.95 ($8.88/roll) and Delta 100 is $131.95 ($7.33/roll), so advantage Ilford. Compared to some of the rebranded films about which you nothing, these films are a bargain no matter which one you buy in which packaging.

Henning Serger · Sep 8, 2023

Agulliver said:
I think Henning was responding to my post saying that the price difference in UK/EU for Kodak B&W products compared to Ilford makes it rather difficult to justify purchasing Kodak.

Exactly.

Best regards,
Henning

Stephen Furley · Sep 8, 2023

Cholentpot said:
I ran across some video tape from the early 90's where my then teenage gumcracking hairspray cousin is in the background saying 'Fuji yuck, don't use that stuff!'

Also, as a user of 110 and 126, it ain't fumble free.

Was it recorded on Fuji video tape? Their U-Matic cassettes in particular have archival storage problems. Sony tapes of a similar vintage seem to be much more stable.

Stephen Furley · Sep 8, 2023

eli griggs said:
Yet it was even more popular than 135 for a number of years and even today, many of us own and use the cameras and film format, preferring medium format that is still so easy to carry and get great results from

What about 828?

Cholentpot · Sep 8, 2023

Stephen Furley said:
Was it recorded on Fuji video tape? Their U-Matic cassettes in particular have archival storage problems. Sony tapes of a similar vintage seem to be much more stable.

Knowing my mother who was the camera...person, whatever was on sale.

brbo · Sep 8, 2023

The reason behind high Kodak prices of BW film is really simple. Kodak is limited by its converting line. They can make X millions of rolls per year (either C-41, E-6 or BW). They can sell (through Alaris) every roll they make. They have virtually zero competition in C-41 and E-6 segment so they can get away with pretty hight prices (at the moment) in that segment. It makes zero sense for them to even try to compete with price in BW segment. Every BW roll sold at competitive prices is a direct opportunity loss when C-41 roll can be sold at much higher price. Even if BW production cost would be lower than C-41 the difference couldn't possible be anywhere near as much as what the difference is in going market prices for C-41 and BW.

Until general C-41/E-6 price level comes down there is no rational incentive for Kodak/Alaris to lower the prices of BW film. Now, that could only happen with significant additional supply of C-41 film (I hope you are not counting on Fuji to do that) or serious decrease in demand (I really hope we don't experience that).

BHuij · Sep 8, 2023

Ironically the C-41 films from Kodak are so expensive at this point that a lot of people are moving over to ECN-2 films, largely ones made by Kodak and then stripped of Remjet (or not) and repackaged by companies like Cinestill. Kodak's only serious competition in the color film market is Kodak. But motion picture films have very different mechanisms controlling their pricing compared to C-41, which at this point is just catering to a niche market.

Kodak committed to making film "as long as there's demand"

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