Shocked at how much bulk TMY-2 costs

[Don_ih]

I hope the demand for b&w and color films will substantially shrink in the near future so to force the manufacturers to lower their prices.

You forgot to add "then stop making it and go out of business."

 

[DeletedAcct1]

You forgot to add "then stop making it and go out of business."

So be it.
A dying person cannot be kept alive indefinitely.
The plug must be unplugged at some point.
Don't you agree?

 

[Don_ih]

A dying person cannot be kept alive indefinitely.
The plug must be unplugged at some point.

Oh, is Kodak dying? Has anyone let them know? What will happen to all their young children?

 

[MattKing]

"Labour intensive" does not mean "difficult". That someone has to actually work to make the product shouldn't be noteworthy.
What is significant is that their main target market does not use bulk rolls.

Really - it's too hard to do? Just a few years ago, they sold 200' Vision stock on core. They don't sell it anymore probably because no one was buying it (what good is 200 feet of movie film?).

Better: 14 years ago, they sold all their Vision stock at 100' lengths:

View attachment 341526

And the price didn't reflect any particular difficulty doing it.

View attachment 341527

I expect that offering 100 foot lengths back then was because the 100 foot machine was part of the high volume motion picture print stock line, meaning it shared a different slitting and perforation workflow. Most of the relatively automated machinery from that line is now gone, because motion picture print stock volumes are almost gone. The 100 foot machine remains, but it's expensive to operate, on a per roll basis.
Eastman Kodak have and use costing structures that reflect the demands of a business that needs to run very lean. Those structures effectively penalize low volume products. Lower prices would require subsidizing production, and they are unwilling to subsidize 100 foot rolls.

 

[MattKing]

So how hard it is to load some portra rolls on the cine machines ?
I would take some portra 400 400’
feet for 1$ a foot. I don’t care the perforation is different.

To arrange for that, you will need to approach your local retailer and ask them to approach a local distributor. That distributor will then need to convince Kodak Alaris that there is sufficient volume to add that as a SKU to their product catalogue - Kodak Alaris has the worldwide marketing and distribution rights for the Portra films. Kodak Alaris will have to convince Eastman Kodak to add that product to their production schedule. Most likely, that will happen if there are projections for sufficient orders to justify diverting several thousand feet in that format.
Once everything is set up, and that has been added to all necessary catalogues, you will then most likely need to place a prepaid order through your retailer, who in turn will need to do the same through the distributor, who in turn will have to do the same through Kodak Alaris.
Depending on the terms of the agreement between Kodak Alaris and Eastman Kodak, there may be a wait from there, until Kodak Alaris has gathered sufficient orders to justify the necessary run.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Matt - your specific explanation is very helpful. Production cost is tightly bound to output volume. In this instance, it seems that the extra fuss needed to still offer bulk rolls is almost equivalent to prototyping expense, at least post-coating wise. And it's a comparatively tiny market.

Kodak does offer custom cut options. Those of us who shoot sheet film are quite aware of that. But there has to be sufficient demand in advance, with a committed pool commensurate with a realistic minimum volume to make it worth Kodak's time and fuss. The vendor involved has to take financial responsibility for the complete sum.

 

[Don_ih]

I expect that offering 100 foot lengths back then was because the 100 foot machine was part of the high volume motion picture print stock line

The "100 foot machine" on that production line would likely be the "200 foot," the "400 foot," as well as the "1000 foot" and "2000 foot" machine. Why would you make a different machine to run every different length of film? They sold 200 foot rolls of motion picture film just a couple of years ago.

None of it actually matters since their bulk film prices beat their individual roll prices. If you want Tmax 100, buying a 100 foot roll is still cheaper.

 

[Radost]

I expect that offering 100 foot lengths back then was because the 100 foot machine was part of the high volume motion picture print stock line, meaning it shared a different slitting and perforation workflow. Most of the relatively automated machinery from that line is now gone, because motion picture print stock volumes are almost gone. The 100 foot machine remains, but it's expensive to operate, on a per roll basis.
Eastman Kodak have and use costing structures that reflect the demands of a business that needs to run very lean. Those structures effectively penalize low volume products. Lower prices would require subsidizing production, and they are unwilling to subsidize 100 foot rolls.

Kodak use to offer 100’ feet vision for crashes and explosions. .
I suspect “might be wrong off course so dont jump on me” they stop making it to prevent still people from buying it and force them to buy 3 times more expansive product.

 

[DREW WILEY]

You're not factoring in more handling time with shorter rolls, but even different packaging, with multiple options of anything upping overall production cost. It annoyed me to heck back when they stopped boxing 8X10 film any more than 10 sheets per box. But that meant less types of boxes to deal with, and perhaps also a deceptive price point for what you actually get per box, kinda like, "contents of this box of cereal sold by weight, and not by volume". The marketing types were involved too, it would seem. But overall, it's all about simplifying the whole workflow. The less they need to start and stop a master spool shy of totally automated cutting, the more efficient the day becomes. Some of that seems to have been die cast in prior to current circumstances. Now they're in a panic just to keep up with ordinary 35mm canistered product demand. So really, no surprises there. The multitude of consumers come first, before specialty demands.

 

[Radost]

You're not factoring in more handling time with shorter rolls, but even different packaging, with multiple options of anything upping overall production cost. It annoyed me to heck back when they stopped boxing 8X10 film any more than 10 sheets per box. But that meant less types of boxes to deal with, and perhaps also a deceptive price point for what you actually get per box, kinda like, "contents of this box of cereal sold by weight, and not by volume". The marketing types were involved too, it would seem. But overall, it's all about simplifying the whole workflow. The less they need to start and stop a master spool shy of totally automated cutting, the more efficient the day becomes. Some of that seems to have been die cast in prior to current circumstances. Now they're in a panic just to keep up with ordinary 35mm canistered product demand. So really, no surprises there. The multitude of consumers come first, before specialty demands.

A company can not expect all products to be as efficient and cheap to produce. It’s supposed to be a variety. Some products have better profit margin than others. Cutting corners and trying to squeeze every dollar out of every product is not how companies grow.
IMHO If Kodak wanted to make it they should follow the older rules of capitalism and provide a cheaper product but higher volume to take advantage of supply and demand and grow the business. So many young people are already moving to “older digital point and shoots” because of film prices. And the film business growth is pretty much based on the resurgence of interest of a demographic that does not have a lot disposable income. Shortages and price increases will IMHO hurt Kodak in the long run.
A good analogy is the car dealerships. The went so crazy with their unregulated greed that all car companies are planing to find a way “bribe politicians” and leave the car dealership business model.
And if that happens the car dealerships business model will deserve to die and will be better for the consumer.
But Cars are a necessity. Film is not.

Now on the other hand prices might scare people away from film which can make Kodak slim even more and provide a cheaper product.
Those are just opinions. I am not a professional photographer and am not in the photo business.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It can be hard to see from other people's perspectives. And manufacturing corporations have their own internal tensions. But the Kodak of old had just so many octopus arms at the same time, that it lost track of some of them, and then subsidized the shortfall from other sectors. They were big not only in high volume film production to Hollywood, government and military applications, and millions of consumers, but also in dyes and Eastman industrial chemicals, and a number of other things. Today they are more a niche company, for better or worse. What got them into deep trouble to begin with was playing unrealistic games on the stock market, right when technology was rapidly changing. The US stock market is largely and unrealistically based on quarterly statements, and there are lots of way of gaming that in short-term favor of the CEO, top management, and even stockholders, that might be quite unhealthy for the company in the long run.

Today there film division can no longer be subsidized by other facets of the company because there is only a limited amount of that. To survive, they need to run things as if it were a private corporation, and rely on the pay-as-you-go model. Stay small, pay your bills, pay your workers, and stay on top of maintenance and supply issues. And I think it would be a mistake for them to get tempted too deeply into secondary lines of lower cost product, at least under their own brand label. I've seen that kind of script play out way too many times, and know how risky it is.

I suspect they're just trying to keep up with overhead plus some realistic profit. And their semi-competitors are necessarily following suit. Not only Ilford and Fuji, but even Foma pricing has gone way up recently. It's called inflation. We all hate it; but it is what it is. I don't think there's any ominous plot out there to gouge consumers. When that occurs, it's mostly at the distribution and retail end of things. If a manufacturer ends up with a 2 to 4 % bankable net profit at the end of the day, that would be typical.

I once also had a lot of interaction with car dealerships, and especially their service departments, due to selling them their necessary tools and so forth. Lots of dealers make close to zero on new cars per se. I heard that multiple times from the dealership owners themselves. But they do make a ton of money in their service departments, often unethically. And car parts??? - easily a 1000% markup from cost of manufacture on some of those, especially the bait and switch generic import parts. But that's a completely different business model than Kodak uses. All I can hope is that their scale of film production keeps gradually increasing, and greater volume allowing some relief at the price end. My only silver bullet answer to high prices is what I've already done - buy film when it is cheaper, and store it in a freezer.

 

[MattKing]

The 100 foot loads were an anomaly - their major market shrunk to just a tiny portion of what it was, at approximately the same time as the other product that was also produced in volume and used some of the same equipment - the motion picture print film line.
The older high volume and efficient equipment that was used for those products was scrapped, leaving much slower and less efficient equipment to fill the needs of the tiny market that remained for them. The other products, which retained higher volumes, were moved over to much more automated and efficient and relatively inexpensive equipment.
That equipment cannot rationally or effectively or inexpensively be used for the tiny volumes of 100 foot bulk loads - or for motion picture print film either.
For those who are convinced that Eastman Kodak's decisions based on allocation of costs to products that sell in tiny numbers reflect greed or ineptitude or something nefarious, I'm curious why you think you would be able to do better?

 

[DeletedAcct1]

Oh, is Kodak dying? Has anyone let them know? What will happen to all their young children?

Like it or not, Kodak will go bankrupt again if it continues to raise prices.

 

[Radost]

Like it or not, Kodak will go bankrupt again if it continues to raise prices.

I agree. Sustaining the business should be higher priority then short term profit.

 

[Radost]

It might nit be a bad thing if Kodak is broken down and the film part moves to an ILFORD like workers owned structure.

 

[MattKing]

You do understand that moving resources away from profitable and growing product lines to ones that are niche products where the potential for growth is minimal is the antithesis of "sustaining"?

 

[MattKing]

It might nit be a bad thing if Kodak is broken down and the film part moves to an ILFORD like workers owned structure.

What are you going to do for equipment and buildings and IP?
No one is going to lend enough money to buy that from Eastman Kodak.

 

[Radost]

You do understand that moving resources away from profitable and growing product lines to ones that are niche products where the potential for growth is minimal is the antithesis of "sustaining"?

ALL film is niche.

 

[Radost]

What are you going to do for equipment and buildings and IP?
No one is going to lend enough money to buy that from Eastman Kodak.

In a bankruptcy might be cheaper to let the workers buy what is left and run it like ilford.
Most of the chemicals come from China anyways.
I believe a boutique operation concentrated on film manufacturing can be better for the consumer long term.
No need for RandD. No need for investing In new products.
Just roll some C41 and BW film. Drop positive if it is too expansive

 

[Radost]

Or ask trump for another billion dollars.

 

[MattKing]

In a bankruptcy might be cheaper to let the workers buy what is left and run it like ilford.
Most of the chemicals come from China anyways.
I believe a boutique operation concentrated on film manufacturing can be better for the consumer long term.
No need for RandD. No need for investing In new products.
Just roll some C41 and BW film. Drop positive if it is too expansive

Eastman Kodak is a commercial printing service company with a relatively small (~20%) division that has special expertise in coating technologies that include coating photographic film.
The land and buildings that the coating and finishing production require are an important part of the security that Eastman Kodak relies upon in order to support their indebtedness. If Eastman Kodak goes into bankruptcy, it won't be because of its film related business, it will be despite its film related business. But Eastman Kodak can't afford to, and wouldn't be permitted to, operate its film related business in any way other than efficiently, with a view to turning operating profits, and maintaining its physical and human resources.
The "chemical" operation only relates to motion picture film, plus the synthesis of some specialty chemicals.
And Ilford is a far, far smaller entity than Eastman Kodak as a whole.

 

[koraks]

I believe a boutique operation concentrated on film manufacturing can be better for the consumer long term.

You know, I believe that, too. But I don't believe anyone is ever going to make the investment to make that happen for complex products like color film. For b&w film, I can sort of see how it might work. For color film, we have Ferrania as an example of how that might pan out. I do wish them the best, don't get me wrong, but I've yet to see a decent quality color film leave those premises.
The scenario of breaking up Kodak will just leave a couple of non-photography related businesses become part of companies like Sabic or whathaveyou, and the photo and cine film businesses will simply cease to be. Employees are not going to pull their wallets to buy the necessary assets; they'll walk off the premises and on to either early retirement or a new career.

It's kind of a catch-22, with Kodak having very little choice but to try and tread water.

 

[DeletedAcct1]

It might nit be a bad thing if Kodak is broken down and the film part moves to an ILFORD like workers owned structure.

Besides, Kodak is already broken down, the chemical lineup is nowhere to be found, isn't produced anymore, Sino Promise shut down the production and distribution some time ago.

 

[DeletedAcct1]

You do understand that moving resources away from profitable and growing product lines to ones that are niche products where the potential for growth is minimal is the antithesis of "sustaining"?

Kodak, as any other film producers, is already a niche product maker.

 

[DeletedAcct1]

ALL film is niche.

exactly!