What a bunch of codswallop. What do you expect them to do; jump into your arms and immediately announce the introduction of a brand new line of color products for 2022? You're clueless. Kind and enthusiastic, that too, but also completely clueless.
Old Ilford/AGFA colour emulsion formulas
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Good after noon
How are you my dear brother
I hope you are fine ,,
Actually, I am very happy
I heard that there is a professional laboratory in Russia that was able to use hand tools from making a color film recently after it succeeded in making a black and white film years ago.
But this poor laboratory asked for funding from his country’s government to build a production line for making a color film, but his request was almost rejected.
We are talking here about a professional laboratory that provides acidification services for photographers, and over time he became preparing amateur photochemistry and then he used hand tools and was able to manufacture a black and white film and then a color film.
- This lab, according to the owner’s statement, consists of five employees, including three chemists and two female assistants, who are the wives of two men.
- You can compare that small institution with the ancient Ilford Foundation (on paper only) which dates back to before the Great Flood, and was a companion of the Prophet Noah.
Right, I suspect that the comparison causes a lot of embarrassment to any just person.
- You should not collect excuses, the Ilford Foundation is (paper hero) without any value.
To whom do you speak, my dear please?
To you, of course. Look, if you spend some time understanding how an R&D intensive industry works, especially in a niche market that's already saturated, it could save you some dissapointment that results from blurting out nonsense (sorry, I can't make more out of it) and then getting empty responses.
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- mohmad khatab
- Deleted
- Reason: Instulting and rude
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- mohmad khatab
- Deleted
David A. Goldfarb
Moderator
I suspect that there is some auto-translation going on here behind the scenes that’s making things more incendiary than they need to be. I’d recommend that everyone in this thread proceed with that awareness and avoid any language that may contain even a hint of an insult that is likely to be magnified by online translation software. Likewise, if you feel insulted by something someone has said, imagine that in their native language it might not be so severe as it looks by the time you read it, and don’t try to match insult for insult.
Your point of view deserves respect and appreciation.
But I do not use a translation program.
Meanwhile, English is not my native language.
Maybe you are right.
Greetings
I apologize
Alright, fair enough. I apologize for calling you clueless, Mohmad. That was impolite at best, and certainly not diplomatic.
Let me explain why I think calling on parties like Filmotec/Orwo or Ilford to come up with new color materials, possibly based on expired patents, is not likely to get enthusiastic responses from such companies.
Firstly, concerning the background knowledge, as pointed out by someone else, the expired patents themselves are only of very limited use. They're obviously outdated knowledge, they are very incomplete as to giving insight into the actual engineering of a product (nobody files a patent with complete information and they're always written in such a way to obfuscate or leave out essential information) and moreover, they are fairly useless when it comes to having to set up a production system. The latter is significant, as developing a functional color film or paper is one thing, but bringing it to the market in significant volumes and at an acceptable and consistent quality level is quite another thing.
Secondly, performing the R&D on both film development and production engineering is a rather involved task. If you're interested in some of the more general considerations in engineering a color film, please see the posts of Photo_Engineer, which I know you are aware of. It's a careful balancing act and getting it right across 9 emulsions and yet more layers just takes time and manpower. This means that (1) the lead time of such a product will be several years at best, and (2) it will occupy R&D manpower that companies like Ilford also need for simply keeping the existing product range going - think of re-engineering products due to disruptions in the supply chain, troubleshooting quality issues, assisting partners in optimizing their products for toll manufacturing, etc. Embarking on the adventure of a whole new range of products with a significantly higher degree of complexity is not something a company takes lightly, and only something that is feasible for companies that are doing exceedingly well. Sadly, none of the major photographic materials companies fall in that category. Some of them are doing fairly well considering the circumstances, some have simply been struggling for decades now. This brings me to the third issue:
Undertaking the R&D and production system setup requires a significant investment. Someone like Henning Serger may be able to give you some figures, but it's certainly not going to be a few hundred thousand dollars, or even a couple of million. It's not just the R&D manpower, production engineering, but also acquiring the necessary equipment (which for the largest part will have to be custom-engineered and -built), qualifying the production process, training production and QA personnel, implementing a marketing strategy and playing the sales/distribution channels to push your product. The sort of investment this requires simply isn't pocket money that they have lying about on a shelf for all but one of the companies active in the film business (more on the exception below). This means that one or more investors need to be found, and this just happens to not be an attractive opportunity for those. Return on investment is likely to be marginal at best, and risk of non-payment of the sum or interest is significant. Approach an investor with a plan like this and they'll politely wave you out with the question to send a good business case. Which, if you make it, is either attractive, but a fairytale, or it's realistic, but unattractive. And this has to do with no. 4:
While the film market is experiencing a resurgence, this does not mean it's a glorious business opportunity per se. You said that companies have been expanding production capacity (notably Kodak), but keep in mind that this is essentially getting a tiny fraction of the idle capacity of decades ago back into the air. The market is essentially served by a rather vast, but largely dormant production capacity, mostly in the hands of Kodak and Fuji. There simply is no unserved market that a party like Ilford or Filmotec could jump into - any market share for a new player will have to be wrestled from one of the existing ones. As Adox has indicated a few months ago (for B&W, and this is not likely to be different for color), margins are already unsustainably low. If you add some more competition to this, it will only drive prices a little lower still, essentially making one or more players go belly up or give up on this market. This brings me to Fuji: as you indicated, they have been pulling out of the film business (with the exception of first dropping Acros and then reviving it again, but this is a rather small exception to a much larger pattern), which suggests that it just isn't financially interesting anymore to remain in that business. A firm like Kodak simply has very little choice (most of their attempts at diversification resulted in lukewarm results at best, or sometimes even outright failure) and will try anything just to keep alive, including investing relatively much in a market that is not very attractive financially. Hence, any new entrant in the color film business (and it will be similar for paper, although volumes are more interesting there) looking for an investor will run into investors who have to choose between the uncertainty of moderate success in color film production and the much less risky and overall much bigger financial returns of investing in, say, some off-shore windmills.
The example of the Russian lab that you referred to is furthermore problematic and not a very useful example for the following reasons:
* It's not verifiable to what extent their product actually would meet the demands or a real market.
* As a lab, they evidently were only capable of performing basic product R&D, but not production engineering (let alone distribution channels etc.), so at best, they're stuck with a potentially functional product, which only exists at an experimental scale - and scaling things up is not a trivial business, as for instance any chemical engineer can explain with painful examples to illustrate.
* The fact that they knocked at the door of the Russian government (who obviously declined to finance the venture; see above, combined with the question what the policy of the Russian government is in terms of industry support in this specific sector) suggests that other investors are in any case not lining up, and potentially have also declined to participate.
* Being unnamed, it's kind of hard to verify what party we're discussing here and to what extent their purported succes in fact has materialized.
I would like to offer another example for your consideration, which is perhaps a bit more transparent, at least if you go by publicly available information online, which is the case of Ferrania. This is a group of people who know exactly what they are doing, in the sense that they have full access to the intellectual property as well as in-depth knowledge of how the production process functioned in practice (i.e. the 'tricks of the trade'), they have assembled virtually all of the necessary equipment, etc. - in essence, they're reviving something that already existed, in exactly the same form, which should be more straightforward than creating something entirely new from scratch as you suggest Ilford or Filmotec should be doing. And yet, in the years that they've been working on it, they have gotten to the stage of being able to produce limited volumes of a fairly functional B&W precursor to their intended product, with the color version not yet being in sight of consumers. Please note that I'm not saying that Ferrania is a failure - far from it. I think they're doing a fascinating and commendable job. But their progress does illustrate that even with a lot of goodwill from various stakeholders (including employees who doubtlessly have been putting in significant amounts of time for no or very little payment), it's a very long and arduous road. And that may be a road that is perfectly feasible for someone who has the right combination of guts, stamina, and a certain craziness to go completely against the grain of any business sense. It is not a feasible road for a company that needs to feed dozens or hundreds of families and that has some seriously critical shareholders with likely a decent amount of business sense.
So, in short, if you want to seduce a company like Ilford/ Harman to produce a color film, I think that at least where we are now, in 2020, you're simply barking up the wrong tree, and it doesn't take an insider in this industry or an MBA to recognize this.
Let me explain why I think calling on parties like Filmotec/Orwo or Ilford to come up with new color materials, possibly based on expired patents, is not likely to get enthusiastic responses from such companies.
Firstly, concerning the background knowledge, as pointed out by someone else, the expired patents themselves are only of very limited use. They're obviously outdated knowledge, they are very incomplete as to giving insight into the actual engineering of a product (nobody files a patent with complete information and they're always written in such a way to obfuscate or leave out essential information) and moreover, they are fairly useless when it comes to having to set up a production system. The latter is significant, as developing a functional color film or paper is one thing, but bringing it to the market in significant volumes and at an acceptable and consistent quality level is quite another thing.
Secondly, performing the R&D on both film development and production engineering is a rather involved task. If you're interested in some of the more general considerations in engineering a color film, please see the posts of Photo_Engineer, which I know you are aware of. It's a careful balancing act and getting it right across 9 emulsions and yet more layers just takes time and manpower. This means that (1) the lead time of such a product will be several years at best, and (2) it will occupy R&D manpower that companies like Ilford also need for simply keeping the existing product range going - think of re-engineering products due to disruptions in the supply chain, troubleshooting quality issues, assisting partners in optimizing their products for toll manufacturing, etc. Embarking on the adventure of a whole new range of products with a significantly higher degree of complexity is not something a company takes lightly, and only something that is feasible for companies that are doing exceedingly well. Sadly, none of the major photographic materials companies fall in that category. Some of them are doing fairly well considering the circumstances, some have simply been struggling for decades now. This brings me to the third issue:
Undertaking the R&D and production system setup requires a significant investment. Someone like Henning Serger may be able to give you some figures, but it's certainly not going to be a few hundred thousand dollars, or even a couple of million. It's not just the R&D manpower, production engineering, but also acquiring the necessary equipment (which for the largest part will have to be custom-engineered and -built), qualifying the production process, training production and QA personnel, implementing a marketing strategy and playing the sales/distribution channels to push your product. The sort of investment this requires simply isn't pocket money that they have lying about on a shelf for all but one of the companies active in the film business (more on the exception below). This means that one or more investors need to be found, and this just happens to not be an attractive opportunity for those. Return on investment is likely to be marginal at best, and risk of non-payment of the sum or interest is significant. Approach an investor with a plan like this and they'll politely wave you out with the question to send a good business case. Which, if you make it, is either attractive, but a fairytale, or it's realistic, but unattractive. And this has to do with no. 4:
While the film market is experiencing a resurgence, this does not mean it's a glorious business opportunity per se. You said that companies have been expanding production capacity (notably Kodak), but keep in mind that this is essentially getting a tiny fraction of the idle capacity of decades ago back into the air. The market is essentially served by a rather vast, but largely dormant production capacity, mostly in the hands of Kodak and Fuji. There simply is no unserved market that a party like Ilford or Filmotec could jump into - any market share for a new player will have to be wrestled from one of the existing ones. As Adox has indicated a few months ago (for B&W, and this is not likely to be different for color), margins are already unsustainably low. If you add some more competition to this, it will only drive prices a little lower still, essentially making one or more players go belly up or give up on this market. This brings me to Fuji: as you indicated, they have been pulling out of the film business (with the exception of first dropping Acros and then reviving it again, but this is a rather small exception to a much larger pattern), which suggests that it just isn't financially interesting anymore to remain in that business. A firm like Kodak simply has very little choice (most of their attempts at diversification resulted in lukewarm results at best, or sometimes even outright failure) and will try anything just to keep alive, including investing relatively much in a market that is not very attractive financially. Hence, any new entrant in the color film business (and it will be similar for paper, although volumes are more interesting there) looking for an investor will run into investors who have to choose between the uncertainty of moderate success in color film production and the much less risky and overall much bigger financial returns of investing in, say, some off-shore windmills.
The example of the Russian lab that you referred to is furthermore problematic and not a very useful example for the following reasons:
* It's not verifiable to what extent their product actually would meet the demands or a real market.
* As a lab, they evidently were only capable of performing basic product R&D, but not production engineering (let alone distribution channels etc.), so at best, they're stuck with a potentially functional product, which only exists at an experimental scale - and scaling things up is not a trivial business, as for instance any chemical engineer can explain with painful examples to illustrate.
* The fact that they knocked at the door of the Russian government (who obviously declined to finance the venture; see above, combined with the question what the policy of the Russian government is in terms of industry support in this specific sector) suggests that other investors are in any case not lining up, and potentially have also declined to participate.
* Being unnamed, it's kind of hard to verify what party we're discussing here and to what extent their purported succes in fact has materialized.
I would like to offer another example for your consideration, which is perhaps a bit more transparent, at least if you go by publicly available information online, which is the case of Ferrania. This is a group of people who know exactly what they are doing, in the sense that they have full access to the intellectual property as well as in-depth knowledge of how the production process functioned in practice (i.e. the 'tricks of the trade'), they have assembled virtually all of the necessary equipment, etc. - in essence, they're reviving something that already existed, in exactly the same form, which should be more straightforward than creating something entirely new from scratch as you suggest Ilford or Filmotec should be doing. And yet, in the years that they've been working on it, they have gotten to the stage of being able to produce limited volumes of a fairly functional B&W precursor to their intended product, with the color version not yet being in sight of consumers. Please note that I'm not saying that Ferrania is a failure - far from it. I think they're doing a fascinating and commendable job. But their progress does illustrate that even with a lot of goodwill from various stakeholders (including employees who doubtlessly have been putting in significant amounts of time for no or very little payment), it's a very long and arduous road. And that may be a road that is perfectly feasible for someone who has the right combination of guts, stamina, and a certain craziness to go completely against the grain of any business sense. It is not a feasible road for a company that needs to feed dozens or hundreds of families and that has some seriously critical shareholders with likely a decent amount of business sense.
So, in short, if you want to seduce a company like Ilford/ Harman to produce a color film, I think that at least where we are now, in 2020, you're simply barking up the wrong tree, and it doesn't take an insider in this industry or an MBA to recognize this.
OP
OP
Your exactly right and the problem then is even if you were able to create a film product you still have to win people over away from Kodak and Ilford products with something that would probably never be as good and definitely never as good if it’s colour. People love Kodak and Fuji’s products because of the reliable and consistent results and the reassurance they are given every time they load a roll. Sure I’d absolutely love to be apart of a new film manufacturing plant but I don’t see it happening unless a company goes under and someone buys the plant, (basically the impossible project mark 2!) it wouldn’t happen. I would love to make my own emulsion one day, maybe make/ get made a emulsion coating machine? Lance
Basic emulsion making is fairly easy. You can make a variety of coating devices up to and including R&D lab-grade coating blades for coating a layer at a time. An actual test-scale (let alone full size) coating machine would probably cost millions if newly built to the necessary specifications.
David A. Goldfarb
Moderator
Thanks, Mohmad. In any case, we all need to be mindful of the fact that Photrio is an international forum, which is part of its value, but we should all be careful of misunderstandings.
Yes - in your view, it seems very logical in theory.
But my dear.
Basically, life is basically illogical.
Many things in our life are illogical.
Not everything logical will definitely work.
And the opposite is also not true,
- The Agfa company is a good example of this. It was looted, robbed, divided, and dismantled, but it succeeded in its two parts. After uniting a few years ago, it collapsed for unknown reasons. Does this make sense ?!
A British used camera dealer went to Japan and established an online store. He buys used cameras from Japan and sells them to the world. His business kept on booming until I heard he was building a lab and buying a machine to make a black and white film. Does that make sense?
- The same example happened in Finland, and there is already now a Finnish black-white film, but it is designed for the icy freezes.
There is also a Japanese investor negotiating with the Communist Party of China to rent a production line from the Lucky Corporation of China, which stopped the manufacture of the analog film. Does this make sense?
- Lomographic Foundation established a small factory in Austria to manufacture a color film, but it is very expensive, mysterious and unreliable.
. ADOX has bought a coating machine from Agfa Heirs and is building a production line right now - they are walking slowly but they lack scientific expertise.
- I agree with you that a lot of patents are fake and not applicable on the ground - but he finds a huge and serious exception and is the exception of patents (ORWO) and its sisters - The patents that were issued before the reintegration of Germany are all valid to apply on the ground by 100% and will give very acceptable results.
Why ?
Because the only thing that distinguished the Communist philosophy was that it was publishing real patents so that everyone could benefit from them. Had it not been for the publication or diversion of patents (ORWO), it would not have been Ferrarania and Konica pursued her from making a color film, as well as the Ukrainian sava and Foma Czech and the Bulgarian Forte - all of these Companies managed to produce a color film based on patents (ORWO) except for Ilford.
- Patents (ORWO) are actually enforceable on the ground of the benefactor and are not lagging behind as you think, but are very refined qualities and are able to develop and update and never expired. You can watch the Russian movie War and Peace to see the magnificence and accuracy of this wonderful movie.
Life really doesn’t often make sense.
- The Russian government refuses to fund a photography project because it is preoccupied with financing a civil war in Syria and has other projects that are more important from the point of view of the Russian decision-maker, this does not mean that he is right. To get a large number of color film with different flavors and from the production of different companies at an acceptable and fair price.
I do my best to persuade and influence Filmotic, Ilford and Foma - why not
- Away from logical theoretical calculations, I just threw a stone into the stagnant pond, I am just a man who lives next to the pyramids - I am tired of using the cheap expired film - I am tired of developing those films that have expired since 1998 and I am bored with the unpleasant surprises that result from these films And dream about the availability of new and varied brands and products, one way or another.
Perhaps I am a dreamer - but there is nothing wrong if it were not for dreamers today we would not be living in this technologically advanced age
There must be someone who dreams of irrational and unrealistic things and insists on them and seeks and advocates them without boredom and then the universe responds to his dreams in the end.
Semi-accurate statistics confirm the rise and growth of the analog imaging market by 9% annually in the last five years
Let's dream my friend, dreams are free blood.
Last edited:
OP
OP
Can’t you import fresh film? It’s probably not cheap but I don’t see why you couldn’t. I’m definitive that Kodachrome has the best colour reproduction and longevity over any other film made and while it would be easier to make the emulsion layers for Kodachrome than other films with integral colour dyes it’s obviously a lot harder to develop with two re-exposures during development. Is this true that the exact processes for ORWO products exist? The other problem is how much modification needs to be done to such formulas if there are any hazardous/hard to get chemicals involved. Lance
Kodachrome's colour reproduction might be 'pleasing' to some, but accurate it is not - not in any of its evolutions. It was sharper and longer lived than pre-E6 technology films, but as E-6 caught up, Kodachrome slowly sank. The ORWO technology is derived from pre-WWII Agfa technology. It uses/ used some pretty nasty chemicals (compared to CD-3, CD-4, CD-6) in terms of their toxicity and potential allergen causing nature.
Without going into your arguments (some of which I follow, some of which are in my view a bit haphazard), I can synpathisize with what you're saying here. Yes, we do need dreams. We also need common sense and rationality, but without dreams, we're stuck in boredom.
It is derived from technology of the 60s.
These are different perspectives on how each eye can see colors.
Kodakrome works according to the principle of addition, while ORWO system works according to the principle of subtraction, these are two oppositions.
The kodacrome process is very long and extremely complicated, but the special process (ORWO) is a simple and easy process. The chemicals are absolutely not toxic and harmless to the environment, and they are all accessible materials. The formula works without any modifications, as it is a non-counterfeit formula.
I agree with you very much
The formulae calls for CD-1 which had been superseded by the early-mid 1950's in Kodak formulae by CD-3 etc. The release notes for Kodak 5248 (25T, 16D) in 1952 state a developer formulation that explicitly uses CD-3.
ORWO used CD-1 - which was replaced by CD-3, CD-4 and CD-6 precisely because of the unpleasant allergen causing behaviour of PPD and its early derivatives. As early as the 1940's Kodak were explicit that you should exercise extreme care in handling PPD and what became CD-1/ CD-2 because of the risk of allergic reactions/ sensitisation.
This is an exaggeration of anxiety.
This is an exaggeration of fear.
I am using (CD2) and nothing happened ,, I am using it with my bare hands without any gloves, there are no problems and there is no sensitivity.
My friend used to work for the Egyptian State Cinema Company (Studio Misr) laboratory and they have been using (CD2 @ & CD1) for many years, and my friend did not happen anything. They later replaced (CD1), and brought (CD3) instead, and that was because of getting a huge deal at a very excellent and very attractive price from a German chemical company that had a large stock of this developer and wanted to get rid of it for a nominal price, and Nothing happened.
- When that quantity was consumed in the laboratories of the Egyptian Foundation, they returned to import CD1 again, but this time they brought it from India.
- I have never heard that a person has ever had any type of allergy, and no reliable academic scientific study has been issued to confirm this claim.
I strongly suggest anybody interested should get Bob Shanebrook's "Making Kodak Film", not only it gives insight on the great complexity of film production, but shows the actual mind-blowing Kodak plant, and also shows pretty clearly that Kodachrome is far from a a "simple" film to make.
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- kevs
- Deleted
- Reason: pointless
If we're talking about grain growth/ emulsion blending etc and sensitisation of the underlying BW emulsions, yes they're likely 1960's technology, but the Fischer couplers didn't seem to go through anything approaching the evolution of the Kodacolor ones in terms of better durability of colour, or less toxic developing agents. There does seem to have been (prior to Leverkusen going to C-41/ E-6) some divergence between Leverkusen and Wolfen in processing formulae etc with consequent impacts on the ability to process both companies' colour films in each others' chemistry to optimal quality.
To quote Hanson and Kisner of Eastman Kodak in the December 1953 edition of the 'Journal of the SMPTE' talking about the use of CD-2 in the early Eastmancolor cinema print film developer "A word of caution is in order about handling the Colour Developing Agent CD-2. This may cause dermatitis among individuals exposed to it, and in some instances serious complications can result. Only a strict adherence to rigid discipline at all points where there is contact with this chemical or the developer solution will hold to a minimum the number of cases of chemical dermatitis among laboratory personnel." If you want to contradict Wesley T. Hanson, go ahead, but unless you have exceptional toxicological evidence to present, I know whose judgement I'd trust significantly more.
You can get base knowledge of color emulsion and color couplers making from the books of P. Glafkides Photographic Chemistry and the more modern color chemistry described in the book S. Fujita:
https://books.google.ru/books?id=g8zyCAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=ru#v=onepage&q&f=false
Agfa Color emulsions formulae were known, but as far as I understand, they are unavailable in the internet, but perhaps you can get it in offline libraries as CIOS/BIOS reports.
You can find some modern E-6 emulsions and processing in patent informations, for example:
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/33/be/41/1b47033d30b66c/US6720134.pdf
It is not commertial emulsion recipe, but it can be used as a first reference if you really trying to reproduce E-6
This is just a press release issued in 1953, and there is no academic scientific study to confirm it.
- And this is a very, very ancient history - Life has evolved a lot after this date, even the chemicals have improved very much.
- I know lab technicians have been working in Egypt Film Studio for 30 years and have not had anything.
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