Kodak films direct from Eastman Kodak (was: Kodacolor 100. New)

[Aidan Sciortino]

I helped out at my community photo club with showing darkroom basics recently, and it was a bit grounding some packaging identification woes from newbies. I would agree that the new EK designs are very consistent (maybe even too much), rather well designed (retro modern even?) and they have the good old K logo! But there is a nice change, paraphrasing a lab, in that EK's 35mm packaging is back to singles for Portra (Ektacolor Pro)
I helped out in some guide slides and realised that there may be 3 designs for these films out there still in the market... The 2000s to recently EK-Alaris, the recent minimal Alaris and EK
View attachment 420973
But by now, EK seems to have the whole range in roll films. I am curious whether the B&W range will be migrated to ESTAR, but it need not to as this is just a finishing and legal distribution change. Also if anything else might be eventually introduced such as Kodacolor 800 non-pro, TMZ in 120, PX, maybe Ultramax/Kodacolor 400 in 120.
Happy to see Tim Ryugo promoting EK's films, the current Eastman Kodak seems well footed and motivated to make films into the future. By the way, this could be very well a result and plan from the consolidation that was misleadingly reported last year.

I was having a conversation about this recently locally. It’s my understanding that they’re hesitant to convert B&W to ESTAR due to concerns about static electricity in the camera when advancing the film.

That being said, I’ve also heard that acetate at this point is the largest single component cost of film production. It is imported from germany since Kodak ripped down their acetate mill during the bankruptcy.

Finding a solution for the base for B&W and more importantly MP film would help Kodak’s margins a lot.

 

[MattKing]

The migration of the motion picture camera films to Estar is indeed proceeding.
But given how relatively tiny their portion of the black and white still film market is, I don't know that they will be likely to incur the relatively substantial re-design costs involved with the change in substrate for those films.
Outside of the big, high speed long film still cameras that used to be used in sports photography, there wouldn't be any issues with static electricity.
The issue with ESTAR base for motion picture cameras is/was more of a concern, because ESTAR won't tear, so even the slightest misalignment in a motion picture film transport would likely result in a damaged camera, rather than a ripped film.
I don't know what the status is of the various intermediate stocks still used in the motion picture process.

 

[mshchem]

Motion picture camera films are acetate to prevent the film breaking the camera. A lot of motion picture camera film is black and white, these are acetate. Going through all the trouble to change might be an issue? Or maybe it will simply change to Estar.

 

[mshchem]

Matt can type faster than I.