Kodak makes film but today imploded the building where they made film acetate

[MattKing]

FWIW, my father, who is a Kodak Canada retiree, appears to be fully secure in his pension. The other, younger Kodak retirees are in a similar position, although there could be future changes in the value of the substantial fund set aside for their benefit.

To date, the successor to Kodak Canada has maintained the extended health benefits for all the Kodak Canada retirees. That entity is owned by Eastman Kodak.

The Kodak Limited retirees pension plan owns Kodak Alaris, and therefore benefits from its photographic paper manufacturing business, as well as its other business interests.

The Eastman Kodak retirees took the biggest hit - although most of their pensions were mostly protected, their medical benefits were severely curtailed.

I do not know what the status is of all the other retirees of the international Kodak subsidiaries, but I do know that none of them were part of the bankruptcy.

 

[cmacd123]

Acetate should be easier to get anyway. It's used mainly for thin 120 roll films. Estar is far better substrate for sheet film, 'cause its dimensionally stable and robust.!

Acetate is used for most 35mm Negative film, both for stills and movies. Estar* is (was) used for Movie print film. Both acetate and Estar can be used for roll film. and yes sheet film is often on an estar base.

Acetate movie film can be spliced with film cement while Estar cannot. (For that mater Nitrate could also be spliced with film cement. - which actually often contains some Nitrate)

Polyester base will LIGHT PIPE - carry light from the leader area far past the light trap in the cassette. This is why the later production of EFKE and the Agfa Belgium produced 35mm films have to be loaded in subdued light. I collect 16mm film prints and that difference allows one to easily determine what prints are on Estar and which are on acetate just by holding them up near a light.


*ESTAR is a Kodak Trademark BTW, for a base made of Polyester film. Dupont called theirs CONAR (sp)

 

[AgX]

GEVAR was a name used by Gevaert once.

And in this base discussion industrial and medical films and their base requirements have been overlooked. Do not forget that in those heydays, amateur films only were a fraction of the production. And those other markets had to be served by those base making plants too.

 

[AgX]

"silver by the ton" mentions the panic the British military had when they realized their top film supplier was using film base from Agfa Germany.

I think Agfa and Gevaert are mixed up here as base material exporters to the UK, but I would have to double-check this.

 

[DREW WILEY]

When you've done lots of punch and register printing from sheet film like I have (and still sometimes do), acetate is hell, because it's not dimensionally stable. But here's an anecdote for you, Charles. Slightly before Efke (Fotochemika) ceased production, I took a greuling two
week backpack into the mountains with a friend over multiple high passes, much of it devoid of trails, and with massive storms every afternoon, in a remote but extraordinarily beautiful area few have seen. I was carrying 4x5 gear, and my friend an expensive Rollei 6x6 SLR system. He brought along lot of rolls of Efke R25. I warned him to always load his camera in the shade. But then when we finally got back to the car two weeks later it was dark, and he wanted to carefully repack all those exposed rolls for the drive home - wearing a very bright LED headlamp! Well, you can guess the rest of the story. Very few of those frames survived the light piping.

 

[cmacd123]

yep, poly film is very sensitive to light pipe problems. particularly if on a clear base as the EFKE late production stuff was .