Orwo planning return to colour production

[AgX]

I agree with your previous arguments, but I should say that these kind of research info, as well as tons of other research done by Kodak, Fuji, etc... is not leaking to the public domain. We know very little of what was reserarched inside those plants. Much of we know was because of the generosity of Ron Mowrey (RIP), but many have acknowledged film production was based on mostly closed (secret) research.

Any PhD work done at the industry was published. There were scientific magazines. Books were published written by scientiest of major manufacturers. Agfa even had an own publication on scientific matters. Only matters of direct benefit to competitors were not disclosed.

But I agree, there have been absurd incidents. I myself experienced that at a major plant a bunch of documents had been ordered to be destroyed. On top of them a old Phd work that by no means could be saved by me...

 

[flavio81]

Only matters of direct benefit to competitors were not disclosed.

This is what I meant with information that is not available. And these matters are the most important ones -- I mean probably if you want to create E6 color slide of 64 speed with the quality of the late 1970s, probably most of the necessary knowledge is published out there. But to create something that can compete with Provia 100F or even with the 90s Ektachrome 100 Plus (EPP)? That would surely require a few non-disclosed trade secrets...

 

[MattKing]

My father was the customer service manager at a Kodak Canada processing lab for almost a third of a century.
The exact numbers of films processed was always treated as confidential trade information. That knowledge was compartmentalized and never shared with him.
A lot of information was kept compartmentalized at Kodak and its competitors. If someone left, they could only be at risk of disclosing had small parts of the relevant confidential information.

 

[cmacd123]

If someone left, they could only be at risk of disclosing had parts of the relevant confidential information.

In the Book "Making Kodak Film" that is referred to as "The Silver Curtain". engineers making an emulsion, and next door other engineers coating the emulsion, and each group coming in by separate doors and using separate lunch rooms. inefficient, but no one could have gone down to Binghamton and helped out Ansco.

 

[halfaman]

When Kodak films could be processed only in Kodak labs and in no other, and Kodak labs accepted only Kodak films and no other. Seems now like a story from another planet but it happened not long ago.

Reminds me what an old professional told me about the studio business in 80's, when photographers kept away their knowledge from the rest or even gave you wrong information to create confusion.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

Reminds me what an old professional told me about the studio business in 80's, when photographers kept away their knowledge from the rest or even gave you wrong information to create confusion.

I've heard this before but it seems like such a bizarre attitude, helping others doesn't make your own knowledge or experience less meaningful.

 

[foc]

I've heard this before but it seems like such a bizarre attitude, helping others doesn't make your own knowledge or experience less meaningful.

Yes it is bizarre but some people use it to protect their power/status.

 

[Lachlan Young]

In the Book "Making Kodak Film" that is referred to as "The Silver Curtain". engineers making an emulsion, and next door other engineers coating the emulsion, and each group coming in by separate doors and using separate lunch rooms. inefficient, but no one could have gone down to Binghamton and helped out Ansco.

But even if they did go to Ansco, it wouldn't necessarily have helped - it would have needed to be translatable to their machines/ techniques, which never seems to have been simple or linear. And as Bob's book says, the separation of Research and Manufacturing didn't make it quick/ easy to get research outcomes into manufacturable form.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Reminds me what an old professional told me about the studio business in 80's, when photographers kept away their knowledge from the rest or even gave you wrong information to create confusion.

Some of it was undoubtedly about trying to get rid of annoying wannabe sycophants, but a lot more of it (at this distance) looks like people trying to cover up what they didn't know/ were incompetent at - and they could get away with blaming their ineptitude on the manufacturers. Sadly, much of the untrammeled nonsense these professionals sowed has become overly promoted/ dominant in the public discourse.

 

[Tom Kershaw]

Sadly, much of the untrammeled nonsense these professionals sowed has become overly promoted/ dominant in the public discourse.

Do you think this has moved over to the darkroom world as well? One does still see questionable statements made by well known figures.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Do you think this has moved over to the darkroom world as well? One does still see questionable statements made by well known figures.

It has always been there - and the fact that the best methods of absolutely disproving the nonsense are largely only in manufacturer's R&D labs (microdensitometers in particular) is a part of why it keeps on - but we can at least be wary of the often limited technical means of the claimants - why should we believe anything about a developing technique/ developer having universal applicability when (for example) it turns out it's being based on 2-5x enlargements (at best) or on scanners with awful MTF performance? In comparison a manufacturer will have likely tested an emulsion/ release developer over the range from contact print to well beyond 25x, looking at the total information capacity of the emulsion/ developer combination - MTF, visual granularity, latitude, resolution etc, which give a much more accurate & comparable idea of how the film will perform in reality.

 

[alter ego 6x9]

You are wong on that, the USSR manufactured the majority of their need for colour film themselves, though the import from Orwo made still a great share. But on the other side the USSR also delivered chemical compounds to Orwo, necessary for those colour films.

A major part of photochemical research had been done just in the USSR, the names of many those researchers are well known at their western collegues.

When I wrote “serious”, I meant mostly quality, but quantity as well, not the ability to produce per se. Quality was bad. Yes, local market used mostly local stuff (especially cinema industry). For consumers it was quite problematic to buy color film. And I know this for a fact as I lived in that part of the world. Visiting shop every week and asking “when do you think the film will arrive?). Even some BW film was a bit of a problem - quite some waiting before it comes, then it’s gone immediately and then you wait another month. Sure, some “privileged” people could get anything, journalists were getting this at work, but a regular consumer - nope. So yes, I can stand by my words - they did not have serious capacities to make the film available to everyone, and especially color film. And then if you wanted quality, it was always ORWO, not Svema.

 

[K25]

Orwo was in such bad shape back in the GDR, let's say poor as church mouse. I've been to East Germany many times. Minolta was there too. Orwo manufactured mainly B&W surveillance stock. East Germany did import from USSR, CZ and YU film stock. The plant was in appalling condition - from the early 80's. By 1988 it was dead! By 1990 officially.

 

[AgX]

When I wrote “serious”, I meant mostly quality, but quantity as well, not the ability to produce per se. Quality was bad. Yes, local market used mostly local stuff (especially cinema industry). For consumers it was quite problematic to buy color film. And I know this for a fact as I lived in that part of the world. Visiting shop every week and asking “when do you think the film will arrive?). Even some BW film was a bit of a problem - quite some waiting before it comes, then it’s gone immediately and then you wait another month. Sure, some “privileged” people could get anything, journalists were getting this at work, but a regular consumer - nope. So yes, I can stand by my words - they did not have serious capacities to make the film available to everyone, and especially color film. And then if you wanted quality, it was always ORWO, not Svema.

Here we are at the other part of te story. What does "need" and capacity mean? The USSR and the GDR handled different concepts of consumer supply during their existence. The relative effluence of the GDR consumer to a great extent was founded on the USSR for political reason subsidizing the GDR economy. Thus in a sense the USSR consumer paid for that.

 

[AgX]

Orwo was in such bad shape back in the GDR, let's say poor as church mouse. I've been to East Germany many times. Minolta was there too. Orwo manufactured mainly B&W surveillance stock. East Germany did import from USSR, CZ and YU film stock. The plant was in appalling condition - from the early 80's. By 1988 it was dead! By 1990 officially.

Orwo offered the full range of products, in contrast to quite some other manufacturers.
Post 1990 Orwo released 5 own, new colour films. 3 of these on C-41 and E-6 standard.

Orwo closed May 20th 1994.

All state-owned GDR manufacturers (and that was the whole industry) had their legal status changed in 1990 from state-owned into private, but that not necessarily had effect on production.
And for many who were not immediately bought up that "private" status had not much effect as the state ownership was just exchanged into shares owned by state-held trustee (Treuhand).

 

[alter ego 6x9]

Here we are at the other part of te story. What does "need" and capacity mean? The USSR and the GDR handled different concepts of consumer supply during their existence. The relative effluence of the GDR consumer to a great extent was founded on the USSR for political reason subsidizing the GDR economy. Thus in a sense the USSR consumer paid for that.

Yes, but subsidies were mainly in the form of natural resources. It was never consumer goods. On the other hand getting in USSR something “made in GDR” was a big deal, so poor was the local quality and choice. So, back to color film - no, I will never believe ORWO used soviet film stock.

 

[MattKing]

Reminds me what an old professional told me about the studio business in 80's, when photographers kept away their knowledge from the rest or even gave you wrong information to create confusion.

I think most of this was done simply to keep competition at bay.
Studios had overhead. Studio owners wanted to not have to compete with photographers who could afford to do things on the cheap.
I never encountered anyone who intentionally gave out false information, but I certainly saw examples of information that was as much mysticism as anything else.
Many of the most established studio photographers learned their craft by a combination of apprenticing and self teaching. How they understood things was quite personal to them, and really hard to share. They also weren't necessarily all that good at teaching others.
The idea of learning photography and how to operate a photography business in a school environment was a relatively short lived reality.

 

[AgX]

Yes, but subsidies were mainly in the form of natural resources. It was never consumer goods. On the other hand getting in USSR something “made in GDR” was a big deal, so poor was the local quality and choice. So, back to color film - no, I will never believe ORWO used soviet film stock.

Subsidies in the meaning that the USSR sold to the GDR typically raw- or semifinished-goods "under price" and bought from the GDR finished products "over price" by multiple. Those GDR goods typically were those that the GDR hardly could sell on hard-currency markets. Those products they could sell, were more or less restricted to westerm market. Thus the GDR had two very different export markets.

When the USSR stopped selling for instance crude-oil at "friends-price" the whole GDR economy got into serious trouble. On one hand the GDR had been at the top of Europe's exporters of oil-based synthetic chemicals. On the other hand their traffic infrastructure was based on oil, something that had to be changed in short time.

This all is very, very simplified but gives a faint idea on unilateral dependencies, be they political or economical.

Also one has to distinguish between the soviet industry production for consumer goods, for other goods and the industry out of the "military-industrial complex". The latter was completely secluded even for the GDR. This is the reason that on some high-technology fields as highly-integrated circuits the GDR so to say had to invent the wheel a second time and built up an own such chip industry. Which in a way failed: "too late, too little", which nonetheless cost a lot. Money that was not available to other industries, Orwo included.


Concerning the actual economic state of the GDR at the late 80's still today former economic top-functionairs state completely opposing evaluations. Also calculations for comparable prices I find in todays scientific reports often seem not reasoned to me. Well, one should take that all with a lot of salt. Clear though is that in th 80's soviet economists travelled to the GDR trying to convince their counterparts that the GDR economic system has to change.

 

[alter ego 6x9]

Subsidies in the meaning that the USSR sold to the GDR typically raw- or semifinished-goods "under price" and bought from the GDR finished products "over price" by multiple.

Concerning the actual economic state of the GDR at the late 80's still today former economic top-functionairs state completely opposing evaluations. Also calculations for comparable prices I find in todays scientific reports often seem not reasoned to me. Well, one should take that all with a lot of salt. Clear though is that in th 80's soviet economists travelled to the GDR trying to convince their counterparts that the GDR economic system has to change.

Yes, that raw/semi finished sounds logical - they operated the same way in all their influence zones. It is just that when it comes to color film - what could have been that “semi finished”? Surely not film stock.

 

[1kgcoffee]

I would like to see this, but like Ferrania it is likely to be vapourware. Then you have the problem of economies of scale.

If the have the agfa formula and machines (dismantled?) maybe, but highly unlikely.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I would like to see this, but like Ferrania it is likely to be vapourware. Then you have the problem of economies of scale.

If the have the agfa formula and machines (dismantled?) maybe, but highly unlikely.

No. The Inoviscoat machine is very much up, running & producing colour materials.

 

[AgX]

It is just that when it comes to color film - what could have been that “semi finished”? Surely not film stock.

As you know the emulsions of colour films consist of many, many components. I assume they delivered some of these, though Orwo had an own synthesis plant. But I would have to dig that up from my archive. And of course they had to send back silver.
The silver circle typically is overlooked in our discussions. A manufacturer that processes in own labs, gets silver for free so to say. Exporting film means they loose that silver.

 

[alter ego 6x9]

As you know the emulsions of colour films consist of many, many components. I assume they delivered some of these, though Orwo had an own synthesis plant. But I would have to dig that up from my archive. And of course they had to send back silver.
The silver circle typically is overlooked in our discussions. A manufacturer that processes in own labs, gets silver for free so to say. Exporting film means they loose that silver.

So, it’s not film stock. That’s what I am trying to say. Raw materials come from anywhere where it’s available, it’s not technology. Film stock is a R&D product.

 

[AgX]

Well, organic chemicals can be very R&D intensive and costly in production.

And for the GDR buying "anywhere where it is available" already currency-wise was not possible. Add US-embargo, slavishly followed by the western industrial nations, which was the reason for the GDR to have to invent the wheel a second time on the field top-microelectronics.

 

[alter ego 6x9]

Well, organic chemicals can be very R&D intensive and costly in production.

And for the GDR buying "anywhere where it is available" already currency-wise was not possible. Add US-embargo, slavishly followed by the western industrial nations, which was the reason for the GDR to have to invent the wheel a second time on the field top-microelectronics.

The stuff that useful for military was indeed R&D intensive in USSR. The rest... you know... the preference was to rely on industrial espionage...