'Sure Be Nice If Ektachrome Wasn't the Only One Available...

[DREW WILEY]

Please don't step too far over the line and confuse manufacturing discernment with ethnic or racial bias. I know plenty of Chinese people who won't buy made in China goods, including my own wife! Of course, in certain categories, esp electronics, there is no choice; they hold a near monopoly.

Chinese tools are utterly wretched compared to Euro or former US alternatives. That I know extremely well, probably far better than anyone else on this forum. But there simply are no more US power tool manufacturers, except for two which are foreign owned - Bosch and Makita, which both have big plants near Atlanta, as well as plants in other countries (even in China, Makita has dedicated plants; in other words, they don't outsource; but their US and Japanese made products are superior). In terms of drill bits, tooling, saw blades, etc, there is generally an even worse disparity in quality. A drill bit made in Austria will outlast a Chinese equivalent 500 times longer. But the same was once said about Taiwanese mfg, and they've come a long ways since.

 

[koraks]

ethnic or racial bias

For the record: neither was implied and thus the reason for intervening.

 

[neuromantism]

Anyone thinking that China doesn't have the mindset for enginnering of their own hasn't seen what are they capable of in terms of optical engineering in consumer electronics nowadays. Think of Laowa starting already in the last decade and Viltrox brand's progress in the field of digital photography optics nowadays, which is not only a cheaper alternative to OEM glass, but also offers innovative engineering on its own. Of course that they had to start somewhere, and most likely that start involved many people working previously in the plants of OEM-brands outsorcing or having their own plants in China. But they definitely don't simply copy what is already there - they are able to develop just as good quality, but for lower cost. I am not a fan of this, I don't like the ethical background of it, but this is the state of the world now.
EDIT: Just to say, I don't like the ethical insufficiency behind any of the modern empires, so its' not like DuPont fares any better compared to Viltrox... quite the opposite! And yet I buy film from Kodak, an American corporation and I own a Viltrox lens, an excellent optical marvel EDIT END
But I also can't imagine that anyone who is not already an established photographic emulsion manufacturer would even consider setting up the production of an another or a revived brand of chrome emulsion, the way we know it. If there was a completely different, easier and cheaper way to produce photosensitive dyes reamining activity on film with a sufficient shelf life to make it commercially available... I am thinking of biotech derived inks, dyes and materials that could potentially make it viable to lower the cost of printing en masse anything - but of course such materials are much less stable and prone to degradation.

 

[loccdor]

Their lens design has definitely stepped up in recent times. Film design would depend on if they see it as a large enough market to be worthwhile. If they were manufacturing film cameras in combination with film the one could give impetus to the other.

 

[Samu]

The classic early E-6 Ektachrome 64 suffered from red contamination of the greens. That could produce wonderful renderings of sage and muted bluish off-green hues, but couldn't hit the nail on the head with cleaner spring greens, that is, unless a special masking correction was applied to dye transfer printing. But as soon as Fujichrome 50 came out, it was the other way around. Alas, no one film does it all. As far as Kodachrome goes, I much preferred the 25 version to the subsequent 64; but other than experimenting briefly with 120 Kodachrome, I was shifting entirely to 4x5 at the time anyway. Just in time for the advent of Cibachrome, first version.

I never used Kodachrome extensively, except for Super8. where the sharpness of the film was really different from any of the E6 based films of the time (Agfa Moviechrome 40 or Kodak Ektachrome 160). The reason was very simple: you had to send the film away for processing. But yes, the film was very good in those times - especially thr lower ISO Kodachrome. Many of the E6 films had issues with dye stability well into the 80's, but this was never an issue with Kodachrome. The negative films of the 80's were already stable, and the negatives from these times will print even today with no issues.