Survey - Kodachrome Revival Price Point?

[Sirius Glass]

PE, maybe you should just stop wasting your time on responding to these silly, we-can-bring-back-Kodachrome posts. I am sure that you can find something more enjoyable to do.

 

[Photo Engineer]

While I write the new book, or read the draft of Bob Shanebrook's new book, I switch back and forth to APUG for my laughs.

Some people are unreasonable and some are crazy and some are both.

PE

 

[Diapositivo]

Some people are unreasonable and some are crazy and some are both.

Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit

 

[Lionel1972]

Lionel, note that only about 100 people have posted in the survey and only about 25 of them are active in this thread. There are over 70,000 members in APUG. Most could not care. Now I understand that this does not go for the whole world, but among photographers it is pretty representative of the surveys among the public. No one is interested in Kodachrome. That is, compared to the number of photographers world wide.

PE

I have to agree with you on the fact that compared to the number of photographers world wide and compared to the total of APUG members, the number of people who feel passionate enough about Kodachrome to look through that specific section of the forums to find this thread then take the time to sign in, then enter the survey (I haven't figured out how to do it myself) or leave a comment here, is indeed insignificant. Does this can really be taken as an accurate indicator of the potential future interest for a resurected Kodachrome product ? Maybe.
What saddens me more than the lack of interest for Kodachrome is the lack of interest for color transparencies in general. Not only among the mainstream public but among photography enthousiasts like the members of APUG.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Yes, Diapositivo, and it is folly to want Kodachrome back! But no one seems to be becoming wiser.

Lionel, indeed it is true. Lack of interest world wide killed Kodachrome and is killing E6 films gradually.

Sorry.

PE

 

[Nzoomed]

I have to agree with you on the fact that compared to the number of photographers world wide and compared to the total of APUG members, the number of people who feel passionate enough about Kodachrome to look through that specific section of the forums to find this thread then take the time to sign in, then enter the survey (I haven't figured out how to do it myself) or leave a comment here, is indeed insignificant. Does this can really be taken as an accurate indicator of the potential future interest for a resurected Kodachrome product ? Maybe.
What saddens me more than the lack of interest for Kodachrome is the lack of interest for color transparencies in general. Not only among the mainstream public but among photography enthousiasts like the members of APUG.

The survey stats are not accurate enough, even i myself only just come across this thread a week or so ago and it had closed, so i am unable to even complete it.

 

[Nzoomed]

Yes, Diapositivo, and it is folly to want Kodachrome back! But no one seems to be becoming wiser.

Lionel, indeed it is true. Lack of interest world wide killed Kodachrome and is killing E6 films gradually.

Sorry.

PE

Biggest issue for all films currently is the scale of production, its simply too large for the current market.
Manufacturers either have two options, drop a film off from production once its unprofitable, or increase the price, which in turn will decrease sales further.
I dont know why Kodak (and fuji) cant fire up their research coaters and conduct some small runs of film, and im not talking about Kodachrome here.

 

[falotico]

The Kodachrome Wars are raging again! Will this violence never cease? Still, you can't blame people for loving a Kodak product, but someone else will have to bring it back to the market place--if at all. I am against anything that distracts PE from completing his next book.

 

[Sirius Glass]

OMG here we go again. The Kodachromenistas need to do an APUG search before wasting the bandwidth. If Kodak could have saved it, it would have. Kodak tried advertising and promotions. What makes the Kodachromenistas think that they are so much smarter than the film companies professionals?

 

[MattKing]

I dont know why Kodak (and fuji) cant fire up their research coaters and conduct some small runs of film, and im not talking about Kodachrome here.

They can, and the resulting price is astronomical, because the wastage is huge, and they also have to fire up the large scale finishing and packaging equipment that is also expensive.

Finishing and packaging light sensitive materials is expensive.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Biggest issue for all films currently is the scale of production, its simply too large for the current market.
Manufacturers either have two options, drop a film off from production once its unprofitable, or increase the price, which in turn will decrease sales further.
I dont know why Kodak (and fuji) cant fire up their research coaters and conduct some small runs of film, and im not talking about Kodachrome here.

If you know so much, please come to Rochester to advise Kodak management. I'm sure with your depth of knowledge you would be paid a princely salary.

That sarcasm aside, and I don't mean to offend, but the problems are far far more complex than you know. Defects and costs go up as scale goes down. 'Nuff said.

PE

 

[Nzoomed]

They can, and the resulting price is astronomical, because the wastage is huge, and they also have to fire up the large scale finishing and packaging equipment that is also expensive.

Finishing and packaging light sensitive materials is expensive.

I dont know how Ferrania are supposed to achieve this then, I believe their coater has little if any wastage.
It was the opposite for them, they claim their large coater had huge wastage and the only way to make it profitable was to make millions of rolls of film per production run (and sell the stuff)

I didnt think the conversion and packaging would be a huge issue, they just slit the master rolls down and feed it into the appropriate machinery to package the film, im sure it would be easier to modify conversion equipment if need be than an actual coater.

PE should be able to shed more light on this, but perhaps Kodak's research coaters are alot different to Ferrania's?

I know PE said that Ferrania's coater looks much smaller and narrower than Kodaks, so maybe theirs does have more waste.

Kodak did invest in new tooling and they scaled down their current coater, but i understand its still built for a fairly large scale.

If Kodak are able to make some changes, then hopefully we might see E100G and E100VS again.
Kodak themselves even admitted this is possible and that it would not necessarily even rule out Kodachrome if there was enough demand, although i still think its unlikely we will see a return of Kodachrome.

 

[MattKing]

I didnt think the conversion and packaging would be a huge issue, they just slit the master rolls down and feed it into the appropriate machinery to package the film, im sure this would be easier to modify if need be than an actual coater.

It is the finishing and packaging costs that killed 220 film.

And the same factors make Kodak bulk 35mm film rolls so pricey that they are basically never purchased by anyone anymore.

As long as you are willing to pay much, much more money, it can all be done.

 

[Nzoomed]

If you know so much, please come to Rochester to advise Kodak management. I'm sure with your depth of knowledge you would be paid a princely salary.

That sarcasm aside, and I don't mean to offend, but the problems are far far more complex than you know. Defects and costs go up as scale goes down. 'Nuff said.

PE

This is coming from the horses mouth from Kodak R&D Chemist, Beverly Pasterczyk:

"Regarding consumer films, she said that they are considering restructuring
a new approach aimed at producing these at a reasonable cost in much
smaller volumes than in the past. She said that new technology will
permit them to continue to produce these in "boutique quantities" using
single coating machines rather than the huge multiple coaters of the
past. She said that basically, as long as they had sufficient orders for
a minimum of a single master roll "54 inches (almost 1-1/2 meters) wide by
whatever length - no minimum stated", they would consider examining
production in terms of the economics involved. Future production would
primarily be on an "on demand" basis."

I dont know if the type of "single" coater is the same type as their research coater, but it
appears she is talking about a much smaller coating machine.
Its possible she is perhaps talking about a different type of coating head, but if Kodak believe in the future of film,
I expect we will see some more changes to their machinery hopefully.

 

[Nzoomed]

It is the finishing and packaging costs that killed 220 film.

And the same factors make Kodak bulk 35mm film rolls so pricey that they are basically never purchased by anyone anymore.

As long as you are willing to pay much, much more money, it can all be done.

220 film is a totally different ball game with the way its backing paper is applied, that and there is far less demand for 220 since pretty much all 220 cameras can still shoot 120.

It also bought me to question how the large scale converting equipment for Ferrnaia could into Ferrania's LRF, but they told me it easily fits in the bottom story, so it looks like they are confident they can make it work.

 

[Roger Cole]

Now, if you asked me about Kodak HIE, then I would play!

Me too!

Me three, and I suspect many more. And making a deep-IR sensitized black and white film is child's play compared to Kodachrome, AND most of us here could process our own just fine. There's really nothing but lack of demand keeping this from happening. Simon had said that Harman could easily do it, and even presented it to the board, but they judged there was not enough demand.

I'm not holding my breath for this but it is many, many times both more plausible and more likely than a return of Kodachrome. The return of something like HIE (probably not HIE itself, but a deep IR film of similar characteristics) seems to me unlikely but far from impossible. While it would surprise and delight me, it wouldn't really shock me. And I'd buy and use a fair amount of it if it were any good.

Let us be truly realistic about this. The emergence of digital killed Kodachrome and most of the other transparencies stone dead. Whilst they still have a long way to go, projected digital images, especially the ones requiring the image to be sized at 1400pixels are almost as good as transparencies were in their heyday.
We as keen photographers can be, and usually are as picky as ever about quality, but the average Joe/Josephine in the street only wants instant gratification from their piddly little camera phones. The takeup of slide film will never ever reach the heights that it once was say 15/20 years ago. This means the vast cost of setting up a new plant to process Kodachrome will never happen. Especially as the cost of film will rise all out of proportion to the quantities used.

This. So this.

And even people who do care - I posted this before, I think in a different thread, and it isn't popular but it happened this way: I'm part of a group that does monthly hikes on Mount Arabia just outside Atlanta. I normally shoot slide film and it's become tradition to have a slide show with our end of year holiday party. Last year I shot less film than ever because the weather was so often rainy and I didn't want to risk my Pentaxes so I was short on slides for the show, but even on the rainy weekends I'd shot images with my iPhone. I also have an Epson Home Cinema projector / home theater set up in my basement. I chose some of the iPhone images to supplement the slides, did some very minor touch up on them, copied them to a USB stick and did the show with projected 35mm slides from my Carousel to start then switching to the Epson and the iPhone shots. If you walked close to the screen of course the film images blew the others away, due to the 1080p resolution of the projector as well as the original images. But from back at what I'd call a normal viewing distance, they were surprisingly close. The iPhone ones were, for my tastes, a bit over sharpened and over saturated, but shot with a (slightly) more complex camera in RAW the former could easily be fixed, and I could have fixed the latter in these easily just didn't take the time. They were very, very close, and I'm into photography. I doubt anyone else preferred one batch over the other.

We care. Most people don't. The prevailing non-film tech is more than good enough for the vast mass market majorities.

 

[Nzoomed]

For me, negative films dont interest me much.
Yes they are good for prints etc, but i like the effects of reversal films better than what i see with negative.

 

[Photo Engineer]

This is coming from the horses mouth from Kodak R&D Chemist, Beverly Pasterczyk:

"Regarding consumer films, she said that they are considering restructuring
a new approach aimed at producing these at a reasonable cost in much
smaller volumes than in the past. She said that new technology will
permit them to continue to produce these in "boutique quantities" using
single coating machines rather than the huge multiple coaters of the
past. She said that basically, as long as they had sufficient orders for
a minimum of a single master roll "54 inches (almost 1-1/2 meters) wide by
whatever length - no minimum stated", they would consider examining
production in terms of the economics involved. Future production would
primarily be on an "on demand" basis."

I dont know if the type of "single" coater is the same type as their research coater, but it
appears she is talking about a much smaller coating machine.
Its possible she is perhaps talking about a different type of coating head, but if Kodak believe in the future of film,
I expect we will see some more changes to their machinery hopefully.

Do you think that I don't know what she said?

Of course EK could do it with enough money. Figure it out... Seventy inches by 5000 ft turned into 35mm film. Now, figure the cost.

That is a promise that can be said but guaranteed never to be realized.

BTW, I did not know this person while I was at EK. IDK what her background is/was. I know mine.

PE

 

[alanrockwood]

There was a time when Kodachrome had advantages over Ektachrome in terms of image longevity, graininess, and maybe color. This was during earlier generations of the products. Regarding the most recent generations of these defunct products (and also in comparison to other E6 products) were/are there any advantages to Kodachrome over E6 films, aside from esthetic factors?

 

[Theo Sulphate]

... Kodachromenistas ...

I have no dog in this fight, but similar words could've been said about Polaroid's integral films (SX-70, 600, Spectra) and yet Impossible exists.

Would love to have HIE back.

 

[RPC]

What saddens me more than the lack of interest for Kodachrome is the lack of interest for color transparencies in general. Not only among the mainstream public but among photography enthousiasts like the members of APUG.

Whereas I like other aspects of photography, my main interest is shooting and developing color negative film and printing it in the darkroom. 10 years ago when I joined APUG there were plenty of threads and discussions about it. Now there is very little, which is disappointing to me. It too, is vanishing with little hope of stopping or reversing the trend.

Whereas many are still shooting and home processing b&w, more and more are simply sca**ing their color negatives, or switching to that other medium for color. At least this is what I infer from reading this and other forums. This is sad because developing and printing color negative films is easier today than ever before, and when done right, gives very high quality.

In time, more and more will go away, so make the most of it while you can!

 

[Nzoomed]

Do you think that I don't know what she said?

Of course EK could do it with enough money. Figure it out... Seventy inches by 5000 ft turned into 35mm film. Now, figure the cost.

That is a promise that can be said but guaranteed never to be realized.

BTW, I did not know this person while I was at EK. IDK what her background is/was. I know mine.

PE

Sorry, dont take it personally, wasnt sure if you had read that statement or not.

"she said that they are considering restructuring
a new approach aimed at producing these at a reasonable cost in much
smaller volumes than in the past."

That to me tells me that they are looking in to it currently, hopefully they are doing just so and are probably trying to get enough funds together.

Anyway, the point is that Kodak could have easily made this transition and planned well ahead before things turned to crap for them.

 

[Roger Cole]

There was a time when Kodachrome had advantages over Ektachrome in terms of image longevity, graininess, and maybe color. This was during earlier generations of the products. Regarding the most recent generations of these defunct products (and also in comparison to other E6 products) were/are there any advantages to Kodachrome over E6 films, aside from esthetic factors?

Stability in dark (but not light) fading. I think Kodachrome is still more stable and archival when carefully stored in the dark than even current E6 films, but I could be wrong about that.

It's light fading characteristics are not good, though. Even back in the day people used to make Ektachrome dupes to project.

 

[RPC]

The Kodak announcement was made over four years ago. Has any progress been made toward that end? As far as Kodachrome goes, nothing was said about processing it.

 

[pdeeh]

One difficulty we face in having rational discussions about subjects like this, is that some people seem to believe "thinking a thing" is a sufficient condition for that thing to be (or become) true ...