Survey - Kodachrome Revival Price Point?

[iandvaag]

In true B&W films, the image is made of silver (black metallic silver, not silver halide).

The problem with silver halides is that they are not sensitive to all wavelengths of light, i.e. they are not panchromatic. To solve this problem, sensitizing dyes are added to the emulsion, making the AgX sensitive to a wider spectrum of light. In the case of IR films, additional sensitizing dyes are needed to increase sensitivity into the IR range.

In color films, there are also color-couplers (which are themselves colorless) that react with oxidation products of the color developer to form the dye that makes up the final image.

 

[Nzoomed]

In true B&W films, the image is made of silver (black metallic silver, not silver halide).

The problem with silver halides is that they are not sensitive to all wavelengths of light, i.e. they are not panchromatic. To solve this problem, sensitizing dyes are added to the emulsion, making the AgX sensitive to a wider spectrum of light. In the case of IR films, additional sensitizing dyes are needed to increase sensitivity into the IR range.

In color films, there are also color-couplers (which are themselves colorless) that react with oxidation products of the color developer to form the dye that makes up the final image.

Yes your right, the silver halides are converted to metallic silver when developed.

I didnt know the sensitizing dyes were actually referred to as a dye unless it was in colour film(which the couplers will convert into the "real" dye when processed)

Technically i would have not considered it a dye until it actually had a colour.

 

[Nzoomed]

Only one person has to be interested in it if they're rich enough! Some of these techie moguls around here could revive Kodachrome for 1% of what
they spent on their last mega-yacht. But that would be counterintuitive to what they are trying to market as allegedly superior. So my guess is that
hell will freeze over first.

And dont forget that Technicolor was actually reintroduced for a short while and used in films such as Pearl Harbour, and i thought i read that The Avaitor used it also. I would have thought that this would have cost many $$$ more than Kodachrome, since there was no labs left and all the machinery was scrapped (well some of it ended up in China)

Any chance of Kodachrome coming back would be from the motion picture industry, as they have the money, especially if they were after its unique colours etc. If they did id for Technicolor, then its possible Kodachrome could, we will wait and see though, i dont hold hopes.

 

[pentaxuser]

Now we are getting near the end, as they say, of this thread's life, would any of those who believe that Kodachrome could make a viable comeback, like to outline the kind of pitch they'd make to either Kodak, Ferrania, Ilford( now run by Pemberstone), Fuji etc or any board of venture capitalists looking for a profitable venture?

I will take it as read that as the pitch is to hard-headed businessmen it will have some evidence of an eventual profit

Thanks

pentaxuser

 

[Photo Engineer]

Yes your right, the silver halides are converted to metallic silver when developed.

I didnt know the sensitizing dyes were actually referred to as a dye unless it was in colour film(which the couplers will convert into the "real" dye when processed)

Technically i would have not considered it a dye until it actually had a colour.

This is where you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the working of analog photography.

All colored materials are indeed dyes, but sensitizing dyes have color. A red sensitizer is cyan in color, a green sensitizer is magenta and etc... So, they are colored before use and after use. Often you can see them wash out of the tank when you dump the prerinse or the developer. Sometimes these sensitizing dyes stay in up until the fixer or wash. Of course, there are then the acutance and trimmer dyes used in B&W and color films alike used to improve sharpness and adjust speed. You see them wash out too.

Then, in color film, you have both colored and uncolored couplers that turn into dyes upon color development.

I suggest that you go to "how things work" and look up color film by Chuck Woodworth, a former associate of mine at EK. He has done this very well. I'm sure there are other places rather than have me write a novel here filling in your gaps.

PE

 

[DREW WILEY]

Technicolor could be revived far more easily than Kodachrome. The cameras are safely in storage, huge quantities of the dyes are too. Bollywood or the impending even bigger ventures in China, where all this is stored, would have the necessary will and capital. Not likely in the US due to stricter enviro regulations than in the past, and the greater emphasis here on silly digitized teenage-oriented action flicks. From everything I've heard (and its quite a bit), they're just waiting for the right movie. Time will tell; but glamorously colorful big-set movies seem to be steadily on the horizon in
Asia. Don't think I could personally survive even five minutes of anything Bollywood, however.

 

[Nzoomed]

Now we are getting near the end, as they say, of this thread's life, would any of those who believe that Kodachrome could make a viable comeback, like to outline the kind of pitch they'd make to either Kodak, Ferrania, Ilford( now run by Pemberstone), Fuji etc or any board of venture capitalists looking for a profitable venture?

I will take it as read that as the pitch is to hard-headed businessmen it will have some evidence of an eventual profit

Thanks

pentaxuser

I dont think its ever possible unless there was proven there was enough demand and people pre-ordered up front and prepaid processing up front even if they never shot the stuff.

 

[twelvetone12]

Technicolor could be revived far more easily than Kodachrome. The cameras are safely in storage, huge quantities of the dyes are too. Bollywood or the impending even bigger ventures in China, where all this is stored, would have the necessary will and capital. Not likely in the US due to stricter enviro regulations than in the past, and the greater emphasis here on silly digitized teenage-oriented action flicks. From everything I've heard (and its quite a bit), they're just waiting for the right movie. Time will tell; but glamorously colorful big-set movies seem to be steadily on the horizon in
Asia. Don't think I could personally survive even five minutes of anything Bollywood, however.

Weren't the two dye imbibition machines completely dismantled after the last "revival"? Technicolor is another fascinating process.

 

[pdeeh]

Now we are getting near the end, as they say, of this thread's life,

oh dear dear pentaxuser, if only we were ... but, rather like some horrid inimical unkillable creature from a Hollywood movie, I have no doubt it will spawn its filthy progeny again and again until only a handful of survivors are left on some blasted world to battle it ...

 

[Nzoomed]

Weren't the two dye imbibition machines completely dismantled after the last "revival"? Technicolor is another fascinating process.

They were shipped to china, and used up to 1993 i think.
Their quality control was poor and had alot of contamination in the chemistry etc so the prints were bad.

I dont know how they bought it back in the US without the machines.
I assume its easier than kodachrome to process is it?
I thought the dye imbition process would be more complicated than Kodachrome.

I wonder how hard it would be to make a technicolor camera if the process was available?
You could have a camera with a prism that makes 3 exposures at a time on the one piece of film.
If the process was doable, then it may be an attractive alternative to those wanting Kodachrome.

 

[Nzoomed]

They were shipped to china, and used up to 1993 for chinese films i think.
Their quality control was poor and had alot of contamination in the chemistry etc so the prints were bad.

I dont know how they bought it back in the US without the machines.
I assume its easier than kodachrome to process is it?
I thought the dye imbition process would be more complicated than Kodachrome.

I wonder how hard it would be to make a technicolor camera if the process was available?
You could have a camera with a prism that makes 3 exposures at a time on the one piece of film.
If the process was doable, then it may be an attractive alternative to those wanting Kodachrome.

 

[twelvetone12]

I thought the dye imbition process would be more complicated than Kodachrome.

There is a very nice documentary by the Eastman House on Technicolor on youtube. It is all but even remotely simple. BTW the 3-strip cameras were uses until the mid-fifties, then the three strips were made from separation of a color camera negative. Again, very fascinating, I'm actually amazed it survived to the 70ies.

 

[Diapositivo]

I suggest that you go to "how things work" and look up color film by Chuck Woodworth, a former associate of mine at EK. He has done this very well. I'm sure there are other places rather than have me write a novel here filling in your gaps.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/film1.htm
Should be this. Concise but not superficial.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Diapositivo, thanks for correcting the name of the site.

That is the explanation, but much shorter that the one I saw a few years back.

PE

 

[railwayman3]

And dont forget that Technicolor was actually reintroduced for a short while and used in films such as Pearl Harbour, and i thought i read that The Avaitor used it also. I would have thought that this would have cost many $$$ more than Kodachrome, since there was no labs left and all the machinery was scrapped (well some of it ended up in China)
.

If you refer to the IMDB.com summaries of full technical info for "Pearl Harbour" and "The Aviator", I think that you will find that all the negative and prints were on various formats of the Kodak Vision films, other than "The Aviator" prints being on Fuji Eterna-CP, while the photography was on normal modern movie cameras.

The confusion with Technicolor is probably that the processing was done by "Technicolor labs", who, for many years after the "real" Tecnnicolor was discontinued, processed and printed ordinary color negative movie films under their brand name (I beleive Technicolor still exists as a movie service company?). So numerous films are "Color by Technicolor", when negatives and prints are all on Kodak, Fuji, etc. You also often see "Color by Deluxe" (a large US lab), "Metrocolor" (MGM's own lab") and various other brands, but all were the standard Eastmancolor films and process.

 

[Photo Engineer]

George Eastman Museum has a Technicolor camera on display in the lobby right now. It is about the size of a VW Beetle.

PE

 

[Nzoomed]

If you refer to the IMDB.com summaries of full technical info for "Pearl Harbour" and "The Aviator", I think that you will find that all the negative and prints were on various formats of the Kodak Vision films, other than "The Aviator" prints being on Fuji Eterna-CP, while the photography was on normal modern movie cameras.

The confusion with Technicolor is probably that the processing was done by "Technicolor labs", who, for many years after the "real" Tecnnicolor was discontinued, processed and printed ordinary color negative movie films under their brand name (I beleive Technicolor still exists as a movie service company?). So numerous films are "Color by Technicolor", when negatives and prints are all on Kodak, Fuji, etc. You also often see "Color by Deluxe" (a large US lab), "Metrocolor" (MGM's own lab") and various other brands, but all were the standard Eastmancolor films and process.

Yes, your right, the Technicolor brand is still being used, even modems and routers by Thomson are branded as Technicolor, which i dont fully understand why!

Anyway, the process was reintroduced from 1997 until 2002 when Thomson bought Technicolor and shut the process down.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolor#Post-1995_usage

 

[falotico]

Technicolor went through three distinct phases when it was making color films and always had a willingness to innovate as well as use off-the-shelf technology. From 1920 to 1935 it produced a two-color system whose cyan/orange-red images were screened in some silents and some early talkies. All the cameras for this work were custom make by Technicolor, and sometimes some of the film stock. But the company used only commercial dyes. Dye transfer was introduced around 1928.

From 1935 to 1951, the Golden Age of Technicolor, all the product was full color, dye transfer imbibition printed on Kodak black and white release print stock, and all the dyes were commercial dyes. Every camera was custom-made and fewer than 50 were built. Of these, only about 18 can still run film through them, but I don't believe any of these cameras have exposed negatives in the last forty years. A mixture of as many as three dyes were used to produce magenta; three for cyan; and two for yellow.

From 1951, with the arrival of Dr. Goldberg as head of research at Technicolor, separation negatives were made from Eastman Color stock and printed by dye-transfer for 35mm and 16mm prints. The dyes were invented by Dr. Goldberg, one for yellow, one for cyan and one for magenta. The last commercial examples were in 2002. I believe Dr. Goldberg is still alive and controls the rights to the process.

Today Technicolor Inc. is involved in digital motion pictures.

 

[Lionel1972]

Which part of "only 43 of 80,000 die-hard analog photographers on APUG would buy Kodachrome" do you think "appears promising"?

First, those investments are often made in companies that have no tangible evidence of ever being profitable but only need to appear "hip" or working in a field that is believed to become promising one day (mostly based on current prospective fashion). Secondly, how many APUGers would have been remotely interested in a Lomography product before it became trendy to sport a Holga or Diana around one's neck? Did it prevent them from finding a market?
Personnally, I'd love to see Kodachrome make a come back in one form or another, but I know it would take nothing short of a miracle for this to happen. My true wish would rather be able to shoot an earlier version of Kodachrome (40's and 50's era, especially in 4x5 and 8x10), now it would rather take a time machine (note to myself: that could be handy too)!

 

[Nzoomed]

First, those investments are often made in companies that have no tangible evidence of ever being profitable but only need to appear "hip" or working in a field that is believed to become promising one day (mostly based on current prospective fashion). Secondly, how many APUGers would have been remotely interested in a Lomography product before it became trendy to sport a Holga or Diana around one's neck? Did it prevent them from finding a market?
Personnally, I'd love to see Kodachrome make a come back in one form or another, but I know it would take nothing short of a miracle for this to happen. My true wish would rather be able to shoot an earlier version of Kodachrome (40's and 50's era, especially in 4x5 and 8x10), now it would rather take a time machine (note to myself: that could be handy too)!

Completely agree with you, who on earth would have thought that deliberate light leaks would even be something desired??? lol

It seems somewhat ironic that people are wanting the flaws and faults that were once an undesired aspect of analog photography.

I think the retro Kodachrome would be more fun than the "modern" Kodachrome anyway.
The modern kodachrome was not hugely different than E100g.

Of course it can be done, its the $$$ at the end of the day, so i doubt it will happen unless someone was successful with a kickstarter project.

 

[DREW WILEY]

The current US Technicolor brand has nothing to do with the classic Technicolor process, of which there is a vast amount of web-accessible educational and historical information. Don't expect any secret dye formulas, however. Building any kind of new tricolor movie camera by itself would
be certainly possible, but obscenely expensive. Remaking the film would be astronomically expensive. A handful of people have refurbished old Devin
and Curtis tricolor still cameras. That's a big enough chore. But if you want better color than anything else, that's how it's done. Then print the three
respective negs using something like dye transfer or carbon printing. By the time you've mastered all that, you'll get a big grin of satisfaction of your
face, then pass away three days later from old age.

 

[mshchem]

The current US Technicolor brand has nothing to do with the classic Technicolor process, of which there is a vast amount of web-accessible educational and historical information. Don't expect any secret dye formulas, however. Building any kind of new tricolor movie camera by itself would
be certainly possible, but obscenely expensive. Remaking the film would be astronomically expensive. A handful of people have refurbished old Devin
and Curtis tricolor still cameras. That's a big enough chore. But if you want better color than anything else, that's how it's done. Then print the three
respective negs using something like dye transfer or carbon printing. By the time you've mastered all that, you'll get a big grin of satisfaction of your
face, then pass away three days later from old age.

Very well said. If I remember each Technicolor frame is like a tiny dye transfer print. Incredible. Branding something is all the rage like "Kodak" AA cells or "Polaroid" televisions. Kodachrome is gone and it ain't coming back. Unless you have 100 million people shooting 10 rolls a year, the pyramid of suppliers and talent goes away. No more likely to return than a Saturn V rocket. I just hope I can still buy Portra, Ektar and lovely black and white films for the rest of my days. I still can't help but wonder if Fujichrome is already out of production and in a freezer in Japan somewhere.
I pray that Ilford and Kodak (Who ever owns the manufacturing in Rochester) can stay alive. If there was ever an industry that should be saved by the government or by philanthropist billionaires this is it. Too bad George Eastman didn't set up a charitable trust for his own company like he did so many universities and hospitals.
Best Mike

 

[DREW WILEY]

Most of the philanthropist billionaires in this part of the world has a vested interest in destroying traditional film technology, and they've openly spoken of their strategy in various interviews. No big secret there. In one way or another, digital technology is what has made them rich and what they will therefore aggressively market, by hook or by crook. You're talking about some very big egos who want their way, period, and have the
money to create a tsunami. The other category of billionaire philanthropists are basically energy industrialists who merely want to destroy everything
beautiful many of us enjoy photographing.

 

[trendland]

I'm asking this not to provoke a new fight, but to collect feedback to bring to the existing discussion about Kodachrome. Granted this is a flawed marketing survey based on some admittedly random suppositions, but I don't think those suppositions are completely without merit, and this might help inject a dose of perspective to the discussion.

I would like to see pricing as I remember from the midt 80th and the 90th :
$ 7,85 - $ 10,50 incl.devellopement
as it seams to be impossible/unrealistic
I would first be glad to see this pricing to
normal Kodak E6.
Well - but this seams to be also impossible/unrealistic.....???
What Is to Do now......
...I realy would say we have to double this Kodachrome pricing from 1989.
After this we should add uprising costs to
E6 developement.

with regards

 

[trendland]

In true B&W films, the image is made of silver (black metallic silver, not silver halide).

The problem with silver halides is that they are not sensitive to all wavelengths of light, i.e. they are not panchromatic. To solve this problem, sensitizing dyes are added to the emulsion, making the AgX sensitive to a wider spectrum of light. In the case of IR films, additional sensitizing dyes are needed to increase sensitivity into the IR range.

In color films, there are also color-couplers (which are themselves colorless) that react with oxidation products of the color developer to form the dye that makes up the final image.

Thats a nice and easy understandable explanation.One of the best I ever read.
Sorry to come a bit late with this.
But sometimes one may say : "It is never to late".

with regards