Kodak Quality Control Slipping?

Chadinko · Jan 4, 2017

miha said:
Is there a list of such batches?

I got a response from Kodak; the representative says that they have had a limited number of complaints about these marking showing up, typically on B&W film but some color. The change to the new backing paper starts with emulsion #1232, so I guess that films with a later number than that are spooled with the new backing paper.

I think that switching away from a film you like just because of one small glitch is pretty silly, like junking your favorite car when the fan belt breaks.

A guy I know was a professional photographer since the 1960s, and he shot ONLY on Kodachrome 64. He's one of those slide-trader airplane people, and he wouldn't even let an Ektachrome or Fujichrome or anything else-chrome slide into his house, even if it was a subject he desperately wanted. He'd been known to have Ektachrome slides rephotographed onto Kodachrome. And he flatly refused to shoot anything digitally, didn't own a digital camera. Still doesn't as far as I know though I haven't seen him in a couple of years.

When Kodak announce the end of K64 -- which, was an obsolete emulsion since the late 1970s, really, but had such a rabid following that they kept making it -- he bought bricks and bricks of the stuff and bought a chest freezer for his garage to store it in. When the last lab that would process it (I think it was in Germany?) announced that they would stop processing it, he shot like crazy until he the lab wouldn't process his film, and then he hung up his cameras and didn't shoot another frame.

Pretty stupid, if you ask me, but then some people are like that.

AgX · Jan 4, 2017

A fault is one case, but still selling the faulty stuff without even informing the potential buyer is something different. Especially when being a manufacturer (or in this case his descendant) who by many customers and others was regarded THE authority in the industry.

I admit this is somewhat tricky as it is hard to establish the quantity of this fault, with the internet making faults show up fast. So one could argue these are rare cases showing up omly under weird conditions. But in the old days to my knowledge that was a issue I really had to dig into industry publications to find it published.

Photo Engineer · Jan 4, 2017

The faulty stuff was in the pipeline and hard to track down. Remedial action was almost impossible.

The fault was in not letting customers know.

PE

AgX · Jan 4, 2017

You mean Alaris could not trace batches? In times of barcodes and scanners?

What about the whole production being affected and Alaris not wanting to recall it all?

Photo Engineer · Jan 4, 2017

Actually, tracing of film is almost impossible. I can't give the reasons here, because it is very complex.

But, they are trying.

PE

Raptor · Jan 4, 2017

Poisson Du Jour said:
It is unusual to note that Kodak's printing is quite faint and difficult to view through the small red counter windows on cameras

Even more interesting, the numbers are not the same across the product lines.

I process my own film, and I often save the backing paper for various reasons, so I have a bunch of Kodak backing paper in front of me at the moment. The two most common films that I shoot are Ektar 100, and Portra 400.

On the Ektar 100, all the markings are heavy and boldly printed throughout the entire strip.

On the Portra 400, the markings are bold and heavy at the start of the roll, just like the Ektar 100, but the bold printing ends with the staggered arrows that precede the first frame. All the printing beyond that, is very faint (both the "KODAK" marks and the film numbers), then once you're past the last frame, it goes back to thick and bold markings like the leader.

I also have two other types in front of me.
Ilford XP2 Super (400 ASA). It too grows faint for the frame numbers, though it does it after the "START" line (meaning the staggered arrows are also faint), but not as faint as the Portra.
Lomo 800 ASA Color. The Lomo maintains the same marking density throughout, though it uses light white markings on black paper.

AgX · Jan 4, 2017

To my understanding Kodak changed after the occurance/report of that fault the printing in density but also in quantity of figures.
The latter is absurd of course.

Chadinko · Jan 4, 2017

AgX said:
You mean Alaris could not trace batches? In times of barcodes and scanners?

What about the whole production being affected and Alaris not wanting to recall it all?

I deal with things every day in my job that have serial numbers. Some of my distributors can't even tell me which serialized items they sent me -- engine cylinders, batteries, carbon monoxide detectors, tires -- in a particular order. Once the distributors get hold of a product, there's no guarantee that that product is going to where the computer thinks it's going. Heck, I sell these things and I have to go back and look at the FAA forms in order to say what alternator we put on a particular aircraft. And even then, the FAA form usually includes a range of serial numbers from the original production order, and may or may not contain the serial number of the actual unit it came with.

Though film batches have their bar codes and batch numbers, i'm sure it's not important enough to the distributors to track each individual batch for them to add the procedural mechanisms required to maintain such a database and tracking system.

The bar codes refer to the product SKU but doesn't hold any other information. Adding that information would be a technological nightmare.

removed account4 · Jan 4, 2017

AgX said:
You mean Alaris could not trace batches? In times of barcodes and scanners?

What about the whole production being affected and Alaris not wanting to recall it all?

i am sure kodak is able to follow batch / lot numbers, but i found it strange that it took them
months and months to do anything about rolls and rolls of film that were affected by numbers &c appearing
on the negative ... and then when i heard from a friend who attempted to get his film replaced after
the film was recalled he was told to expose the film and seee what happened
before they would exchange it it did not give me a lot of faith ...
i don't think george would have been very happy... after all
he nearly went bankrupt after he was sued by hannibal goodwin...

AgX · Jan 4, 2017

Chadinko said:
The bar codes refer to the product SKU but doesn't hold any other information. Adding that information would be a technological nightmare.

I did not mean the "consumer" barcodes but these on the wholesale packaging. I thought that they included a batch number.
I am corrected.

Photo Engineer · Jan 4, 2017

You have to remember that it seems as if some batches of the same emulsion # were good and some bad. It took some time to sort all of this out.

PE

removed account4 · Jan 4, 2017

Photo Engineer said:
You have to remember that it seems as if some batches of the same emulsion # were good and some bad. It took some time to sort all of this out.

PE

maybe, these reports first appeared over a year ago
i guess it takes a while to figure out if it was a freak occurrence or
a real problem, but telling someone who has bought 100's of dollars worth of film
to expose it to see if it was OK before it was sent back, when it was within the lot/batch numbers
of what was being recalled, doesn't really take any time to sort out.... it's not the best way
to deal with customers who spend an awful lot of $$ on their product, not only because they trust it is
is the best there is but to help keep things afloat. suggesting someone expose film, spend time and energy
and $$ and effort using film that IS KNOWN to be bad, before it is exchanged is kind of loopy...

Chadinko · Jan 5, 2017

Photo Engineer said:
You have to remember that it seems as if some batches of the same emulsion # were good and some bad. It took some time to sort all of this out.

PE

The Kodak rep told me that it was determined to be a combination of off backing paper as well as handling and storage some time during transport. Whether that's actually true I don't know but it sounds plausible to me.

Take paint, for example. The same color from the same batch painted on the same surface will weather differently depending on the conditions in which the object is used. One object gets sent to the tropics and the other to Alaska. Two years from now those two objects, made at the same time in thw same factory, will look completely different.

I equate it to that.

AgX · Jan 5, 2017

But in paint manufacture there is a history too in testing their products, even in real environment.

pdeeh · Jan 5, 2017

Chadinko said:
He's one of those slide-trader airplane people

I don't want to derail the thread, but what does that mean?

railwayman3 · Jan 5, 2017

pdeeh said:
I don't want to derail the thread, but what does that mean?

A lot of serious aircraft enthusiasts collect photos on slides and have always had a strong preference for the results on Kodachrome. If you look for "aircraft slides" or "airplane slides" on Ebay, the majority for sale seem to be shot on Kodachrome.

RattyMouse · Jan 5, 2017

Photo Engineer said:
The faulty stuff was in the pipeline and hard to track down. Remedial action was almost impossible.

The fault was in not letting customers know.

PE

The fault was also in product development. Any changes to formulation, manufacturing, whatever, have to be seamless to the customer, or a positive change if it is noticeable. I work in product development and if any formulation change I made resulted in problems like what we are seeing here, I'd be hauled into my manager's office and be made to account for my poor performance.

I assume the failure here was at Eastman Kodak and not Alaris.

AgX · Jan 5, 2017

I think nobody doubts that. Unless there was serious pressure by Kodak Alaris to save on prodution costs.

But since that division it is Kodak Alaris to face customers, independ of where the cause is.

removed account4 · Jan 5, 2017

railwayman3 said:
A lot of serious aircraft enthusiasts collect photos on slides and have always had a strong preference for the results on Kodachrome. If you look for "aircraft slides" or "airplane slides" on Ebay, the majority for sale seem to be shot on Kodachrome.

i had bunches of them, but they were MAGIC LANTERN SLIDES, not kodachrome
sold them to a collector found on an aviation hisotry website ...
they weren't the originals, i don't think, but still lots of fun,
a lot of the same images can be found in a book called air mail pioneers ...

Photo Engineer · Jan 5, 2017

The backing paper was outsourced and met specs, but somehow this problem crept in. No one knows how. It is like the fog Eastman experienced about 100 years ago and the fog from the Atom Bomb. They just happened. Now, everyone is scrambling to fix the problem. First, they had to find out what went wrong and secondly find the conditions that caused the problem. You must remember that this problem might be a chemical present at the parts per billion level. It takes a bit of time to fix it.

Sure, they handled it wrong, and that is no excuse, but they are trying to fix it. And, with the market the way it is, they are being hurt. You think they like it? No.

PE

Prest_400 · Jan 5, 2017

Photo Engineer said:
The backing paper was outsourced and met specs, but somehow this problem crept in. No one knows how.
PE

Bit OT, but it involves backing paper too. It is a bit curious how 220 was discontinued across manufacturers in 1-2 years. My guess is about the outsourcing and not quite meeting the special needs for 220, so even Fuji ditched it.

Kodak's Ektachrome reintroduction makes a sweet surprise though. Jeff Clarke gave a nice push to Kodak and now Eastman MP has quite a bit of initiative.

alanrockwood · Jan 5, 2017

I once worked for a company that made scientific instruments. We used vacuum pumps in the instruments. One of our suppliers made a small change in one of the materials used in a pump, and suddenly our pumps began to fail after a few months of operation. Lesson learned: Even small changes in a product can have big, and sometimes negative consequences.

Craig · Jan 5, 2017

Prest_400 said:
Kodak's Ektachrome reintroduction makes a sweet surprise though.

When was this? I looked at Kodak's site of currently available films and there are no E6 films.

alanrockwood · Jan 5, 2017

Craig said:
When was this? I looked at Kodak's site of currently available films and there are no E6 films.

http://redirect.viglink.com/?format...ris-reintroduces-iconic-ektachrome-still-film

Photo Engineer · Jan 5, 2017

Prest_400 said:
Bit OT, but it involves backing paper too. It is a bit curious how 220 was discontinued across manufacturers in 1-2 years. My guess is about the outsourcing and not quite meeting the special needs for 220, so even Fuji ditched it.

Kodak's Ektachrome reintroduction makes a sweet surprise though. Jeff Clarke gave a nice push to Kodak and now Eastman MP has quite a bit of initiative.

This problem would not take place with 220 film. There is no backing paper, just leader and trailer.

Lack of sales was the problem with 220.

PE

Kodak Quality Control Slipping?

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