Kodaks discontinuation announcement, cliffnotes?

PeteZ8 said:

The Formulary link is however misleading then, as it makes it appear ALL D-76 is discontinued when in fact that is not the case. I think that is one of the big things that threw me.

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Funny. I pointed this out in the original thread (the misleading part) and I was shouted down. :-/

Kodak has definitely not discontinued D-76 and it's extremely unlikely they will while they're still in business.

BetterSense said:

Do people really buy the 10gal packets and mix 10gal of stock?

How long does that take you to use?

Are 10 1-gal packets significantly more expensive than one 10-gal packet?

If not, it seems rather imagined harm to have to use the 1-gallon packets. Besides, you can mix up bulk D76 pretty easily. If you are making 10 gallons at a time, you might want to look into that anyway. Kodak can't 'discontinue' D76 in the same sense as they can discontinue TriX or Kodachrome.

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Yes a large lab might still use a 10 gallon pack all in one go then replenish, but these days these labs are now veryfew and far between.

I have an Ilford Catalogue & price list from 1960 and many chemicals were sold in large packaging like that for B&W D&P labs.

Back in the 70's & 80's I used to buy liquid developers & fixers in 25 litre containers it was the most economic method, I guess we used over 100 litres of mixed dev every week.

In a post that was deleted someone stated that Kodak said the chemicals where beong withdrawn and discontinued due to lack of sales.

It's worth noting that Ilford Microphen (ID-68) is now only available in 1 litre packs, yet at it's height it was sold in packs to make 22.5 litres (5 UK gallons) while Ilford's PQ version of ID-11/D76 - Autophen (long discontinued) was sold in various sizes and as a powder or liquid and the largest was a packs of 4 each making 54 litres and the replenisher in 45 litre (10 UK gallon) packs.

That really indicates just how much the market has changed and the huge switch away from B&W from the late 60's onwards, first to colour as most D&P labs switched then only more recently to digital.

Ian

Venchka said:

Microdol-X joined Kodachrome. Gone but not forgotten.

I wonder if they will publish the formula? Or is that common knowledge?

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You can switch to Ilford's Perceptol, or if you're feeling lucky try scratch mixing a formula that mimics it. There have been threads about it and it seems that it might produce dichroic fog with some films. The ingredients are Metol, Sodium Sulfite and Sodium Chloride (not the table variety, it has potassium iodide in it).

Ian Grant said:

It's worth noting that Ilford Microphen (ID-68) is now only available in 1 litre packs, yet at it's height it was sold in packs to make 22.5 litres (5 UK gallons) while Ilford's PQ version of ID-11/D76 - Autophen (long discontinued) was sold in various sizes and as a powder or liquid and the largest was a packs of 4 each making 54 litres and the replenisher in 45 litre (10 UK gallon) packs.

That really indicates just how much the market has changed and the huge switch away from B&W from the late 60's onwards, first to colour as most D&P labs switched then only more recently to digital.

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Fuji-Hunt is still offering a B&W film developer for tank processing in a container to make 125 Liter working solution. So there still seems to be a market for such volumes.

Well the only thing that seems to be going properly is Microdol-X. Everything else is still available in other sizes, or elsewhere (I mean, what does it matter where you buy your glacial acid from?)
Never tried Microdol-X, but I've got an ancient packet of it that I'm gonna mix up once my ID-11 is used up.

I hope they don't nix the 1L packs. That was quite convenient for me.

lajolla said:

As I see this latest forum 'Kodak' paranoia from out here on the west coast, this really is much ado about nothing? The 10-gallon packaging discontinuation was inevitable. Only b+w commercial labs were customers for that product. And those folks unfortunately are long gone. It is only rational that Kodak focus on 1-gallon packaging of powdered D-76. As for the 1-liter package, since the price differential between the gallon package and the liter package is now but a matter of pennies here in the States, I would assume that the liter package's days are numbered as well. I always used the older 32oz D-76 powder packages, but when they shifted to the one liter packages, and the prices for one liter increased dramatically relative to the 1 gallon powder package, I bit the bullet, and now mix a gallon of D-76 stock at a time, and simply dump what I have not used after a week. But it truly was a nice memory to have had the product packaged in less than gallon amounts, since it was always easy and convenient to make a small batch of fresh developer for one-time use.

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The 1L package was likely originally intended for the International market, people outside the United States don't care to have to try and understand about the ancient measurement system the United States is so desperate to hold onto. Unless Kodak intended to dump the international market, I think the Litre package is likely to stay around. If Kodak needs the 1L package for the international market, it really doesn't help them to drop the SKU in the US. Dropping the 1L package and forcing the international market to understand US measure, is likely to lose them a lot of customers.

Good point wogster.

Steve