Kodak discontinues E6 chemicals?

Roger Cole · Mar 29, 2014

You can crank the saturation as high as you want. I agree it's not the same as Velvia but for mass market purposes it will satisfy most demands for saturation.

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perkeleellinen · Mar 29, 2014

Roger Cole said:
Anyone else remember Agfa Ultra 50? Now there was a super saturated neg film!

I've got seven rolls left and they're holding up remarkably well. The reds in particular are so saturated it's like someone has dropped a blob of gloss paint on the paper. I've always wondered what it would be like printed on Ultra Endura.

Xmas · Mar 29, 2014

CatLABS said:
Yes thats true. No E6 kits though.

http://www.silverprint.co.uk/ProductByGroup.asp?PrGrp=5081

?

CatLABS · Mar 29, 2014

Xmas said:
http://www.silverprint.co.uk/ProductByGroup.asp?PrGrp=5081

?

I was talking about Fuji, and in the US.

ME Super · Mar 29, 2014

StoneNYC said:
I disagree, digital can't come close to the colors of Velvia50... Ektar100 has a much better chance than digital...

Anyway AGFA Ultra50? Hmm I've never heard of it... A quick google search says I LOVE it!

Yeah Ektar 100 is a nice film. So is portra 400 - high praise from someone who primarily shoots E6. I've had Dwaynes make slides from a scan of Ektar 100 and they look good too. Nice saturated colors like the print, only projectable!

jerrybro · Mar 29, 2014

Could the decline in slide film use be related to the increase in the affordability of consumer video cameras?

Xmas · Mar 29, 2014

no slides were never consumer that is why kchrome disappeared.

NatGeo, soft pornographic and fine art only.

C41 was >95% of market, faster, cheaper better prints

Thomas Bertilsson · Mar 29, 2014

Slides are fascinating. My dad shot about about 150,000 of them over the years, but eventually went the way of electronic capture with color. I love looking at slides via a nice Rollei projector. It really is something else. If I was shooting more color I'd probably try to be part of the last gasp of direct positive.

It's too bad that the chemistry is becoming hard to obtain, but it had to be expected. I've used home C-41 kits from Arista before and they worked really well. I imagine their E6 kits would also do the trick. But for lab businesses I expect they wouldn't be very economical.

Hope all of you who process E6 can find a viable alternative. Looks like Ron knows of a source in Rochester that might well be worth exploring. I'm sure their model is better suited to today's demand for E6 films.

CatLABS · Mar 29, 2014

Xmas said:
no slides were never consumer that is why kchrome disappeared.

NatGeo, soft pornographic and fine art only.

C41 was >95% of market, faster, cheaper better prints

That is absolutely the opposite of the reality.
Close to 90% of the customer base for chrome were amatures and small home users of 35mm slide films. The entire slide market was based on that market segment. As soon digital cameras, and more then that Digital print labs which could make fast, cheap and high quality prints of any materials (including negatives and digital cameras) regular folks stopped buying slide films and 90% of the market was gone in 1-2 years. That was the end.
Video cameras might have had an effect as well, but those were cheap (relatively) and very popular since the early 90's yet slide films took the hit with the explosion of digital cameras 2001-2005.

Most pro photographers stopped using chrome when IRIS printers came to marker, and even less of them used chrome when Imcaons and labmdas started selling, and before they all switched to digital completely they used negatives, because they were cheaper, and MUCH easier to handle (exposure tolerance etc.).

Perhaps some old school print houses still used chrome, but all news photographers (except for some "silly" white house photographers, like the guy who shot monika and bill in the crowd), used negatives exclusivly, as all news rooms had super fast minilab film processors and funky nikon/leaf scanners. This was fast and the chance of having a non usable shot was almost non existent, but they always - shot negatives.

The fact kodak had a hard time selling something 10 years before that has nothing to do with the actual demise of the market, but just shows that bad management and product marketing is nothing new there.

CatLABS · Mar 29, 2014

Thomas Bertilsson said:
It's too bad that the chemistry is becoming hard to obtain, but it had to be expected. I've used home C-41 kits from Arista before and they worked really well. I imagine their E6 kits would also do the trick. But for lab businesses I expect they wouldn't be very economical.

Kodak discontinuing anything does not make it more or less easy or hard to obtain.

Kodak E6 chemistry was never marketed to consumers, and E6 kits were and are available regardless of that fact (and soon will be at least one more option).

StoneNYC · Mar 29, 2014

LISTEN UP:

I just spoke with Praus (a kodak certified lab) and he said there's nothing to worry about, that Fuji chemistry is easy to obtain and just as good and kodak isn't giving him any trouble over using Fuji E6 chemistry since they aren't selling their own anymore. So essentially we have nothing to worry about and this will boost Fuji E6 chemistry sales.

Perhaps this might help Fuji keep E6 films around just a bit longer...

Trail Images · Mar 29, 2014

Perhaps this might help Fuji keep E6 films around just a bit longer...

Keeping the best of thoughts on the subject at this point.......thanks for the update.

Brian Puccio · Mar 29, 2014

StoneNYC said:
LISTEN UP:

I just spoke with Praus (a kodak certified lab) and he said there's nothing to worry about, that Fuji chemistry is easy to obtain and just as good and kodak isn't giving him any trouble over using Fuji E6 chemistry since they aren't selling their own anymore. So essentially we have nothing to worry about and this will boost Fuji E6 chemistry sales.

Perhaps this might help Fuji keep E6 films around just a bit longer...

Hey StoneNYC, thanks for the update. Glad to see another person from metro-NY mails their slide film upstate for Edgar Praus (4 rolls should come back in the mail to me today!). Even better to hear that 4 Photo/Praus Productions is planning on sticking around and will continue just fine with E6 chemicals.

Maybe there isn't enough marketshare for two companies to make E6 chemicals and be profitable (due to the economies of scale) but maybe it is still big enough for just Fuji (plus whatever small handful of other organizations are out there).

For those of you looking for a great lab, check out Dead Link Removed -- they just redid the site and the service has always been awesome. I feel bad that I only shoot a dozen or so rolls a year.

--Brian

Photo Engineer · Mar 29, 2014

From some of the data I heard, all reversal films were more Pro oriented than Consumer oriented. A major portion of production of E6 and Kodachrome went to Nat. Geog. AAMOF.

Also, although Fred has a point about E6 going downhill before digital, the big drops I report came from a similar lunch for KRL retirees and a talk given by an EK VP. So, there are some bits of cross information. It seems that the major drop I heard of was in 2005, again, the year that Agfa and Ilford ran into problems.

PE

wildbill · Mar 29, 2014

while fuji does make a 5L E6 kit, fuji didn't sell an E6 kit here in the states, nor will they so don't waste your time with asking.....

AgX · Mar 29, 2014

Xmas said:
no slides were never consumer that is why kchrome disappeared.

Where did you get that information?

(By the way, recently (when professionals long turned digital) in stationary sales twice as much slide films were sold in Germany than b&w films.)

erikg · Mar 29, 2014

Roger Cole said:
But digital can, if you're into that.

I like slide film, but I still shoot it for projection. I stopped shooting it for other purposes once I started printing RA4.

Anyone else remember Agfa Ultra 50? Now there was a super saturated neg film!

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Agfa ultra. Yes that was some palette! I recently scanned some old 120 negs. Nothing quite like it.

Colin DeWolfe · Mar 29, 2014

erikg said:
Agfa ultra. Yes that was some palette! I recently scanned some old 120 negs. Nothing quite like it.

I still have 20 rolls of 120 in the freezer. Used some up this year in Antarctica and Tibet. It's keeping my stock of APX 25 company.

ME Super · Mar 29, 2014

If slides were never consumer, why could you get Kodachrome 64 in 126 for your Instamatic camera back in the day? I vividly remember going to a big box store in the late 70s or early 80s and they had the Kodacolor in 126 in the back room but you could get the Kodachrome from behind the photo desk.

Photo Engineer · Mar 29, 2014

I said "more pro oriented" not "completely pro oriented". So yes, there were consumer products out there.

And the Agfa films I had kept poorly even in the freezer, and some faded after processing.

PE

Prof_Pixel · Mar 29, 2014

When I worked on Ektacolor paper (71-76) the consumer use of color reversal vs. color negative was very market dependent; the US was heavily color neg and Europe (especially Germany) was heavily color reversal.

Photo Engineer · Mar 29, 2014

Yes, Fred, and that was the target for Directachrome which went out, but then was cancelled due to low sales. IDK what happened, but after that it was a roller coaster for reversal. Especially consumer.

PE

pentaxuser · Mar 29, 2014

wildbill said:
while fuji does make a 5L E6 kit, fuji didn't sell an E6 kit here in the states, nor will they so don't waste your time with asking.....

Despite a very definite response in the negative to any likelihood of Fuji launching a kit in the U.S. I am unsure why Fuji will never choose to do this. I would have thought that it has to be a bigger market than say the U.K. or any other European country and in Europe.

It seems to have established a real foothold in the lab market in the U.S. and while there might be kit competitors in the U.S. there are competitors in the U.K. and the rest of Europe.

So what is the key difference that enables those who say the answer is "never" to be so sure?

A genuine question on my part as I haven't seen or have missed the reasons why the NO response should be so categorical

pentaxuser

CatLABS · Mar 29, 2014

pentaxuser said:
Despite a very definite response in the negative to any likelihood of Fuji launching a kit in the U.S. I am unsure why Fuji will never choose to do this. I would have thought that it has to be a bigger market than say the U.K. or any other European country and in Europe.

It seems to have established a real foothold in the lab market in the U.S. and while there might be kit competitors in the U.S. there are competitors in the U.K. and the rest of Europe.

So what is the key difference that enables those who say the answer is "never" to be so sure?

A genuine question on my part as I haven't seen or have missed the reasons why the NO response should be so categorical

pentaxuser

Fuji has little to do with consumers, its one of those marketing strategies, just how they handle business in the US.
There are probably other, more tangible reasons such as:
The cost of creating, licensing, and importing a product in to the US, then making it withstand all the local, state and federal regulations for transport, home use etc etc etc (the list is LONG), is higher then anything this or even a 1000 times larger market might ever offer.
Other reasons may be the same as those of anyone who is not making a business monetary investment in film related products (cant think of many companies that are for that matter, though a few do)

StoneNYC · Mar 29, 2014

pentaxuser said:
Despite a very definite response in the negative to any likelihood of Fuji launching a kit in the U.S. I am unsure why Fuji will never choose to do this. I would have thought that it has to be a bigger market than say the U.K. or any other European country and in Europe.

It seems to have established a real foothold in the lab market in the U.S. and while there might be kit competitors in the U.S. there are competitors in the U.K. and the rest of Europe.

So what is the key difference that enables those who say the answer is "never" to be so sure?

A genuine question on my part as I haven't seen or have missed the reasons why the NO response should be so categorical

pentaxuser

My biggest hope is that film Ferrania will come out with a home kit to match their new E-6 line.

Kodak discontinues E6 chemicals?

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