Kodak planning to replace remjet on vision 3 films

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Without a doubt, putting AHU in the layers has a number of advantages, but it will also probably make the process more expensive.

No idea about the price, but AHU is most likely going to make cross-processing in B&W developers futile if a silver-based AHU layer is present as mentioned here:


Vision3 films and 250D in particular give excellent results when cross-processed in B&W developers and are cheaper than most B&W films in the local market. AHU is likely to change all of this. :smile:
 

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seems unlikely based on the last partially visible bullet point on the sheet above:

View attachment 399975

The "while the product with remjet is still in the market" seems a touch confusing, but I have a hard time seeing them release it as an ECN product and then changing it once the supplies of the older film is gone..

It's the indication of a start of a transitional window. It might take several years to complete. Shanebrook's book details the procedures that had to be done to get everything aligned (including changing paper colour balances over a period of time) for the launch of Portra in the 1990s.

Even if they were to go to CD-4 for all CN products moving & still, I doubt they would change the baseline aim contrasts (which vary by around the equivalent of a BW paper grade) between motion & still - they would still be different products, just with greater technological commonality which would make the background manufacturing procedures less wasteful (less duplication of research effort for a start) and possibly enhance the diversity of materials available. It might also enable more pricing stability - and encourage other manufacturers into/ back into the market, rather than forcing them to choose between CD-3 and CD-4 couplers.

The other bit which seems to go screaming over peoples' heads unnoticed is that the baseline cost/ ft of motion neg has to be very significantly lower than the cost/ ft of still neg. This is why stuff like Remjet was used - it was cheaper.
 
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They're testing specifically for differences in pressure plate treatment. You need pretty intense light for big differences to show up.
I have a feeling these guys know what they're doing alright.

Yes, they write something about a "fake black gate" on their board sometimes...
...but still this test doesn`t make sense.
If a film did produce halation, it would show up around a strong light source - but lens flare also does show up around a strong light source. If you shine a strong light into the camera lens, you cannot tell whether the effect is lens flare, halation or a combination of both.
You need a strong contrast in your subject or a very bright object with a very dark background, but here they tested how much flare their lenses do produce.
Also i wonder why the outdoor shot is that muddy. I assume the film stock to be tungsten balanced and the outdoor shot to be made without filter, so that`s why its bluish. It also could be overexposed, which could explain why the contrast is low. Or the air was polluted or the window was dirty. Or... the film does produce some halation but from this test you cannot tell - also because they`re panning the camera all the time, its hard to get a sharp image of the outdoor shot.
The studio shots have a lot of dark background and surrounding, if the film did produce halation you wouldn`t see it there. The black writing on the white board can be seen as a higher contrast subject, but there is no strong light aimed onto this board - the rest is lens flare to some extend at least. Maybe its all lens flare, maybe its a combination of lens flare and halation, you cannot tell.
 

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If a film did produce halation, it would show up around a strong light source - but lens flare also does show up around a strong light source. If you shine a strong light into the camera lens, you cannot tell whether the effect is lens flare, halation or a combination of both.

I agree. The lens flare in the super 16 test is so strong that I can hardly appreciate anything else. On the other han, in their 35 mm Portra test the lens flare is minimum, almost none, and you can get more información about the film characteristics.
 

pentaxuser

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It's the indication of a start of a transitional window. It might take several years to complete. Shanebrook's book details the procedures that had to be done to get everything aligned (including changing paper colour balances over a period of time) for the launch of Portra in the 1990s.

Even if they were to go to CD-4 for all CN products moving & still, I doubt they would change the baseline aim contrasts (which vary by around the equivalent of a BW paper grade) between motion & still - they would still be different products, just with greater technological commonality which would make the background manufacturing procedures less wasteful (less duplication of research effort for a start) and possibly enhance the diversity of materials available. It might also enable more pricing stability - and encourage other manufacturers into/ back into the market, rather than forcing them to choose between CD-3 and CD-4 couplers.

The other bit which seems to go screaming over peoples' heads unnoticed is that the baseline cost/ ft of motion neg has to be very significantly lower than the cost/ ft of still neg. This is why stuff like Remjet was used - it was cheaper.

I may have misinterpreted the above but it seems to suggest that rather than preventing consumers from taking advantage of using cine film for stills which seemed to be Kodak's aim based on a thread here not very long ago, it is now wanting to expand the use of cine film in the "stills" market?

What has changed to bring about this change which seems to be to opposite of the behaviour of a company in a near monopolistic position for colour film. To use an analogy it is the opposite behaviour from the tale of the light bulb cartel who bought the patent from the inventor of the "everlasting light bulb and then quietly buried it 😎

Thanks

pentaxuser
 

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Just for absolute clarity: the aim contrast for still colour neg is different from that for motion colour neg. There is no indication whatsoever that this will change. It has nothing to do with couplers. In the past, still colour neg (C-22) was made using the same couplers as motion colour neg, but to different aim contrasts. You can relatively easily engineer a given neg material to deliver either (or for that matter any other) aim contrast.

The main reason why running a CD-3 coupler neg material in a CD-4 developer will raise the contrast is because CD-4 is very significantly more active than CD-3 in terms of coupler formation. Ron Mowrey covered these differences in some detail in the past.
 

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On its face this sounds like good news. I love Vision3 and was really sad when they announced they wouldn't be selling it to non-motion-picture-projects anymore (or whatever the exact wording was... upshot being that I can't buy it respooled for still photography going forward). Since I do ECN-2 at home, being able to skip the hassle of removing remjet but still get the same results (and same antihalation) would be a huge win.

I wonder if that policy change is at least partly explained by this. Right now, remjet is the last bastion of defense between mass market end users with still cameras, and commonly available, relatively inexpensive lab-based C-41 processing. Only a select few labs will actually take Vision3 films with a remjet. If that goes away, the entire C-41 color negative market gets severely undercut. Why buy Ektar, ProImage, Gold, UltraMax, or Portra for $17 USD/roll (current B&H price per roll for Portra 400, and it seems to only be available as a 5-pack), when you could not only buy the (arguably superior) Vision3 for $10/roll from the FPP, but also drop it off at the drugstore for cheap development instead of being forced to send it to a premium lab equipped for remjet films, thereby wiping out most or all of your cost savings?

If they get out ahead of this by getting the buying public used to the idea that "I'm not Martin Scorsese, so I don't have access to buy Vision films," then releasing an upgraded set of Vision stocks with no remjet layer no longer poses that same threat.

In any case, I hope that through some mechanism, I find a way to get my hands on some remjet-free 250D in the future.
 
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MattKing

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I very much doubt that this change has anything to do with still film users.
It is much more likely to be the result of the needs and realities of the motion picture film market - which uses a lot more square meters/inches of film than still films do, even today.
 

BHuij

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Yeah, I absolutely believe that Kodak deciding to move on and create a better Vision film that doesn't use remjet is a result of unmet needs in the motion picture market, and has nothing to do with the little people like me who like to keep a roll of Vision3 250D in the half frame snapshot camera.

But the decision to limit access to small quantities of Vision film (so basically, cutting off the still photographers who want to shoot it) seems too targeted to me. My above post was of course pure speculation, but I've been scratching my head about the motivation behind Kodak's recent decision, and the only thing I can come up with is that they don't want to undercut sales of C-41 films by making inexpensive Vision films available.
 

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So you won't be able to buy it for use as still film.
Fixed this for you:

"So you won't officially be able to buy it for use as still film through channels controlled by Kodak, unless Kodak specifically has sanctioned those channels as they presently do with e.g. CineStill."
 
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mshchem

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I wouldn't be surprised if Cinestill ended up selling some of this if this actually happens. Still if there's a big shot Hollywood type who wants Remjet based film I suspect EK will make it. I don't know, pure speculation.

I do believe that the days of being able to buy 400' rolls of cine film are over.
 
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An awful lot of the 'benefits' of V3 over Portra are rather imaginary, other than the effects of it having slightly lower aim contrast. Portra is also a lot sharper at lower frequencies.
 

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The benefits of V3 500T over Portra 800 are pretty clear for me and the way I use the films. I cannot get Portra 800 to do what I want at all. I can get great results from the Lomography branded 800 C41 film (Probably the same Kodak material as in single use cameras) and the same goes for V3 500T.

I would be 100% certain this move is driven by the needs of the motion picture industry. What it means for still photography remains to be seen. Perhaps ultimately the new V3 won't need to undergo any process to remove the remjet and might be cheaper respooled than the current material. Or processing might be a bit cheaper, which will mean I'll use more in super 8.
 

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Perhaps ultimately the new V3 won't need to undergo any process to remove the remjet and might be cheaper respooled than the current material.

The 'perhaps' is redundant; if there's no remjet, there's no need to remove it either. That's pretty much inherent to this news. Also keep in mind Cinestill only in the beginning actually removed remjet. For quite some time they have been purchasing jumbo rolls without any remjet applied from Kodak; i.e. there never was any remjet on that film to begin with. It also doesn't have any antihalation protection as a result, and this is what will apparently change in a future (additional) product generation. It's not clear to me whether the new remjet-less product will completely replace the present product line or whether it'll be offered as a product line extension.

Or processing might be a bit cheaper, which will mean I'll use more in super 8.
I doubt processing will be cheaper in the motion picture landscape since the equipment is present already. The fact that the remjet removal bath & rollers don't have anything to remove won't save any cost.
It'll be easier for small & home labs because the remjet won't have to be dealt with. For the home user, the financial saving is insignificant, but it saves time evidently, and the result will be cleaner. For small scale labs I don't think it's likely they'll reduce list prices for processing; they'll just use whatever marginal gains to offset other factors that eat away at their (already marginal) profitability.

I don't think anything will get any cheaper as a result of this. Cleaner and simpler for home users, potentially.

The other bit which seems to go screaming over peoples' heads unnoticed is that the baseline cost/ ft of motion neg has to be very significantly lower than the cost/ ft of still neg. This is why stuff like Remjet was used - it was cheaper.
It doesn't go "screaming over peoples' heads unnoticed". @lamerko addressed it in #21, I responded to it in #22 and the gist of that exchange is that we don't know the cost profile of both solutions. Apparently you do, but this is not common/public knowledge, so the qualification of it going over people's heads is really unwarranted. We'll have to take your word for the cost of remjet being lower than another form of AH countermeasures (and anti-static, anti-scratching, anti-friction etc.) I don't see how you could know how this will work out for EK, cost-wise, given the possibility of commonality with other products etc. In fact, from an accounting perspective I'd go so far as to say that it's inherently impossible to state with certainty which option will be more costly, as it depends to a large extent on accounting principles, not just technical differences and materials.

Then there's the ecosystem perspective of cost; it's not just relevant what the production cost for EK is (capex + opex), but also what the cost profile is for the other players in the ecosystem, and finally for the end user. Remjet might be cheaper to manufacture, but needs to be removed, which incurs costs elsewhere in the chain, to which possible costs of QA issues (damage or fouling of film due to remjet removal steps) would need to be added.

You state with quasi certainty that remjet is the cheaper option, but I have severe doubts that your certainty can be substantiated with a relevant, real-world cost breakdown. You don't have access to that information any more than the rest of us.
 

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Remjet is the simplest good solution to base reflection, not the best one in the totality of the process - and has inherent anti-static effects - i.e. it was cheaper and marginally better in the past. The camera transport benefits seem to have more to do with the wax layer coated on top of it. Remjet is easier to enact than an AHU because it is highly unlikely to cause unwanted emulsion interaction - and enacting the AHU will have taken a lot of time and money to ensure that it works properly, especially in a system that was never designed for one. Shanebrook makes clear that the limitations on its use related to processing steps and avoiding getting the carbon mess redeposited. Getting rid of remjet will eliminate borates from the considerable volumes of processing effluent produced by an ECN machine, and it may well reduce post-production time spent on removing remjet artefacts that show up on scans done as rapidly and cheaply as possible (but may not have done as badly on contact prints or wet gate or 2K etc - cf. Fuji's supercoat issues 20+ years ago with non fluid-mount scans) especially when the streamers want low artefact results so that their extreme compression is not as obvious (there has been some recent major madness involving severe grain/ noise elimination, encoding, then adding fake grain back in).

Conspiracist thinking always says more about the people doing it than their targets. Kodak's reasoning is going to be incredibly banal in comparison.
 
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The only downside I can see is that some people like halation, which is evident in V3 stocks with the remjet removed. This option will presumably no longer be available if all V3 production changes to the new version. When I've used still films such as Candido 800 (V3 500T with the remjet removed) I don't mind the halation but it's not something I specifically am trying to achieve. I just hope to be able to obtain the film in the future.

Might make me more likely to learn to process it at home, and the lab I use for cine film processing is a small one so perhaps it will help them too. Mind you, having just obtained the 2x50 foot Lomo tank, I am in a position to process a lot more cine film than when I only had the 30 foot tank....
 

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My understanding is that in the early days, Cinestill was buying Vision3 with remjet, removing the remjet themselves, and then drying and packaging the film for retail.

I suppose it's possible that the new antihalation layer could be washed off of unexposed film, then the film dried, and loaded back into a cassette to shoot. Guess it depends how far you're willing to go for those fluorescent gas station sign photos :wink:
 

koraks

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I suppose it's possible that the new antihalation layer could be washed off of unexposed film, then the film dried
On 35mm film the antihalation package is typically not a 'layer' as such. It can be as simple as a colored base with the dyes incorporated into the base acting as anti-halation measure; this is the case in many B&W 35mm products. These dyes cannot physically be washed out of the base - they're in there forever. There may or may not be additional dyes in the gelatin emulsion that may wash out; whether this would be the case on this new Vision3 product I couldn't say, nor could I say to what extent attempts at washing out such dyes before exposure would have an impact on halation performance.
 

jmrochester

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My understanding is that in the early days, Cinestill was buying Vision3 with remjet, removing the remjet themselves, and then drying and packaging the film for retail.

I suppose it's possible that the new antihalation layer could be washed off of unexposed film, then the film dried, and loaded back into a cassette to shoot. Guess it depends how far you're willing to go for those fluorescent gas station sign photos :wink:
As a point of clarification most consumer color films have the AHU on the same side of and nearest to the base below the emulsion layers. (Cine film has a remjet layer on the reverse side.) In that case, washing out a conventional AHU layer is not likely. Of course it's possible that the AHU could be coated where the remjet currently is, but that sounds like a lot of R&D effort to get the same results as remjet and doesn't help with production simplification.
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