The expense of shooting film

BMbikerider · Mar 19, 2023

Don Heisz said:
dThe time period you describe, when you bought so many digital cameras, the basic technology was in a heavy development period. But everything that's done at present is simple nuance. Frankly, there's no reason to buy the latest camera unless you just want to spend money.
And you can buy a 10-year-old digital camera with a couple of lenses for a couple of hundred dollars and use a 10 or 15-year-old laptop to mess with the photos using GIMP or a cheaper (but not free) photo editor like Affinity.
Digital is as expensive as you make it.
Film is as expensive as the amount you use.

A 10 year old digital camera is a rare beast indeed. once the electronics start to falter who is going to repair them with few spares available. Or batteries start to fail with new ones (from Nikon or even 3rd party) costing anything between £35- £75 then the price of technology rears it's not so pretty head.
Yes my F100 or F80 will die 'cos they are battery dependant. (no spare parts) My Nikon F2a and my FT3 are purely mechanical and will probably be repairable a lot longer than any of todays current digital's. as good as they are Even my Minoltas which are battery dependant each take 2 x 1.5v silver oxide which are used for more than cameras, so will be available for quite a while. Also low tech and very durable

I forecast that electric cars are on the same trajectory too. How long will they last and what cost to replace them. Gone are the days of home maintenance you almost need a degree in electronics to work on one. My small petrol hatchback is now in it's 11th year having done over 90,000 miles with almost perfect reliability. My next door neighbour has a car provided by his employer with barely 9000miles and it has been into the agency for over the half the time he has had it. Oh yes, it is a Tesla which cost over 21/2 times what I paid for mine when new 11 years ago.

Don_ih · Mar 19, 2023

BMbikerider said:
A 10 year old digital camera is a rare beast indeed. once the electronics start to falter who is going to repair them with few spares available.

Good luck finding a 10 year old digital with failing electronic parts, where the failure isn't due to abuse. And batteries for any Nikon, Minolta/Sony, or Canon digital from the past 20 years are cheap and easy to get - one battery will cost about the same as a roll of Ektachrome.
Even if it wasn't the case, it still won't matter. Almost no one needs any photographic needs greater than what can be provided by a cell phone.

Pieter12 · Mar 19, 2023

BMbikerider said:
A 10 year old digital camera is a rare beast indeed. once the electronics start to falter who is going to repair them with few spares available. Or batteries start to fail with new ones (from Nikon or even 3rd party) costing anything between £35- £75 then the price of technology rears it's not so pretty head.
Yes my F100 or F80 will die 'cos they are battery dependant. (no spare parts) My Nikon F2a and my FT3 are purely mechanical and will probably be repairable a lot longer than any of todays current digital's. as good as they are Even my Minoltas which are battery dependant each take 2 x 1.5v silver oxide which are used for more than cameras, so will be available for quite a while. Also low tech and very durable

I forecast that electric cars are on the same trajectory too. How long will they last and what cost to replace them. Gone are the days of home maintenance you almost need a degree in electronics to work on one. My small petrol hatchback is now in it's 11th year having done over 90,000 miles with almost perfect reliability. My next door neighbour has a car provided by his employer with barely 9000miles and it has been into the agency for over the half the time he has had it. Oh yes, it is a Tesla which cost over 21/2 times what I paid for mine when new 11 years ago.

I have a couple of over 10-year old DSLRs that are still going strong, and batteries are still available. I have never had a relatively high-end digital camera fail or go bad on me. They have never been into the shop except for sensor cleaning.

Today's cars may require specialized equipment and knowledge to work on, but they need far less maintenance than the old purely mechanical ones. I have owned many cars that required periodical tune-ups every few thousand miles, spark plugs that would only last 10,000 miles (vs close to 100,000 today), fan belts, valves, points, distributer caps, coils, solenoids, etc. that would have to be adjusted, repaired or replaced much more frequently than today's cars. Yes, the downside is when newer cars need repairs, they can be outrageously expensive. But cars today are much more capable--although they can be loaded with too many features that can be subject to failure--they seem to be more reliable and require less frequent maintenance than those of previous eras. Of course there are lemons out there, there always have been. And lemon owners, too.

wiltw · Mar 19, 2023

Patrick Robert James said:
They say the second best day of boat ownership is the day you buy the boat, the best day is the day you sell the boat. The few people who I've known that have owned boats makes me believe that is true.

I will confirm the truth of that statement. A concientious owner will find a constant need for days at the boat simply for routine maintenance(cleaning, lubricating), and then there is the maintenance to repair/replace parts that have deteriorated with time. I found the axiom of 'one day of maintenance for each day of use' to be a good generaliztion (when not utilizing a boat on a daily basis). Sail one weekend, do maintenance another weekend, Repeat.
So ending the necessary 'work' of inspecting for needed maintenance and then performing it, even when you did not use the boat for sailing, was definitely a happy day when selling the boat. It was amazing to see the amount of deterioration that could happen in 10 years, even in a boat purchased new, in a boat in the salt water environment!

BMbikerider · Mar 19, 2023

Don Heisz said:
Good luck finding a 10 year old digital with failing electronic parts, where the failure isn't due to abuse. And batteries for any Nikon, Minolta/Sony, or Canon digital from the past 20 years are cheap and easy to get - one battery will cost about the same as a roll of Ektachrome.
Even if it wasn't the case, it still won't matter. Almost no one needs any photographic needs greater than what can be provided by a cell phone.

Except I use my phone to speak to people not take pictures! I want quality not poor quantity!

Pieter12 · Mar 19, 2023

BMbikerider said:
Except I use my phone to speak to people not take pictures! I want quality not poor quantity!

You use a phone to make calls? How quaint.

markjwyatt · Mar 19, 2023

Pieter12 said:
You use a phone to make calls? How quaint.

One ringy dingy... two ringy dingy...

cmacd123 · Mar 19, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
"Eastman Business Park segment is not a reportable segment and is excluded from the table above."

Eastman Business park is basically the parts of "Kodak Park" that eastman is no longer using. some part are rented out to contractors who supply Kodak, and much is rented to totaly unrealated firms. One I keep watching is LiCycle { https://li-cycle.com/ } of Kingston Ontario who is working on a plant at Eastman Park to extract Lithium battery materials from "Black Mater" that they extract by grinding up dead Lithium batteries. So eastman Business park is really an embeded real estate company.

I suspect that the Film operations are lumped in elsewhere.

yes here is the film business in the form 10K annual report ....

---------------------------------------------------
Advanced Materials and Chemicals
The Advanced Materials and Chemicals segment is comprised of three lines of business: Industrial Film and Chemicals, Motion Picture and
Advanced Materials and Functional Printing. Kodak Services for Business (“KSB”), which provided business process outsourcing services,
was sold to Swiss Post Solutions in December 2020. Kodak’s Advanced Materials and Chemicals products are distributed directly by Kodak
and indirectly through dealers. Kodak Alaris, a professional and consumer still photographic film and chemicals customer, represented
approximately 32% of total Advanced Materials and Chemicals segment revenues in both 2022 and 2021 and 30% in 2020. Products and
services included in Kodak’s offerings are described below.
The Advanced Materials and Chemicals segment includes the Kodak Research Laboratories which conduct research, develop new product
or new business opportunities such as Kodak's growth initiatives of printed electronics, light blocking treatment for fabrics and diagnostic test
reagents and file patent applications for its inventions and innovations.
The Advanced Materials and Chemicals segment also manages licensing of its intellectual property to third parties and is a supporting
participant for any licensing of Kodak intellectual property to a third party. Kodak maintains a large worldwide portfolio of pending
applications and issued patents.
•
Industrial Film and Chemicals:
•
Offers professional and consumer still photographic film, as well as industrial film, including films used by the electronics industry to
produce printed circuit boards.
5
=================================================

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 19, 2023

MattKing said:
They still have interests in the land around their location. That is known as the Eastman Business Park, and they run that business separately, with separate income, expenses and financial statements.

Their coating business, including film, and their chemistry business, including motion picture film chemistry, as well as their business related to manufacture of polyester based materials - including Estar film base - is all included in the Advanced Materials and Chemicals numbers. So the businesses that are related to film and coating are between 1/6 and 1/7 of their business (based on gross revenue).
Included in that are all sorts of interesting things that are related to their coating expertise and their very specialized coating equipment. As an example, they coat a lot a lot of flexible circuit boards.
And of course, with still film, they have almost no marketing or distribution costs. They make it, and then sell it to one customer at wholesale. Kodak Alaris has the substantial cost burden of marketing and distributing still film worldwide.
Before the bankruptcy, the vast majority of Eastman Kodak (and its subsidiaries)'s costs relating to still film, including its staff costs, were related to marketing and distribution. As a result of the bankruptcy settlement, all of those costs were transferred to Kodak Alaris.

Does Eastman drop ship to final sellers like B and H? I can't imagine that they ship everything to Great Britain for Alaris to re-ship.

cmacd123 · Mar 19, 2023

and here is what they mean by Eastman Business Park :

The Eastman Business Park segment’s core operations are commercial real estate management activities including real estate leasing and
related facility management services. Kodak also leases underutilized portions of its other real estate properties to third parties under both
operating lease and sublease agreements. Payments received under operating lease agreements as part of the Eastman Business Park
segment are recognized on a straight-line basis over the term and are reported in Revenues in the Consolidated Statement of Operations.
Payments received under lease and sublease agreements for other underutilized space are recognized on a straight-line basis and reported
as cost reductions in Cost of revenues, Selling, general and administrative (“SG&A”) expenses, research and development (“R&D”) costs and
Other charges (income), net.

cmacd123 · Mar 19, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
Does Eastman drop ship to final sellers like B and H? I can't imagine that they ship everything to Great Britain for Alaris to re-ship.

I would imagine that Alaris has warehousing and arrangements with distributors to have fairly effective flow of goods. Only products to be sold in the UK likely would be shipped to the UK. (unless they still have pre-brxit contracts where stuff for Europe travels via the UK.)

if you look on some packages, Alaris lists an address in Rochester.

on the web site they have the following locations in teh US and Canada listed, but that is proably office space with warehousing at undisclosed locations:

Building 15, Suite 13,
1401 NE McClain Road,
Bentonville, AR 72712

9952 Eastman Park Drive
Windsor, CO 80551

4301 Vineland Road
Orlando, FL 32811

1100 Perimeter Park Drive
Suite 108
Morrisville NC 27560

336 Initiative Drive
Rochester, NY 14624

67 Yonge Street, Suite 701,
Toronto, Ontario M5E 1J8

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 19, 2023

Kodak Alaris did $500 million in sales in 2022, not all of it was film.

https://www.kodakalaris.com/getmedia/69f8221a-9591-45d0-adb2-4bbbf9b6d051/FY22-Annual-Report-and-Accounts-Final-and-Signed.pdf.aspx

TJones · Mar 19, 2023

BMbikerider said:
A 10 year old digital camera is a rare beast indeed. once the electronics start to falter who is going to repair them with few spares available. Or batteries start to fail with new ones (from Nikon or even 3rd party) costing anything between £35- £75 then the price of technology rears it's not so pretty head.
Yes my F100 or F80 will die 'cos they are battery dependant. (no spare parts) My Nikon F2a and my FT3 are purely mechanical and will probably be repairable a lot longer than any of todays current digital's. as good as they are Even my Minoltas which are battery dependant each take 2 x 1.5v silver oxide which are used for more than cameras, so will be available for quite a while. Also low tech and very durable

I forecast that electric cars are on the same trajectory too. How long will they last and what cost to replace them. Gone are the days of home maintenance you almost need a degree in electronics to work on one. My small petrol hatchback is now in it's 11th year having done over 90,000 miles with almost perfect reliability. My next door neighbour has a car provided by his employer with barely 9000miles and it has been into the agency for over the half the time he has had it. Oh yes, it is a Tesla which cost over 21/2 times what I paid for mine when new 11 years ago.

I won’t worry about the electronics on my 8-year old Canon digital camera failing until the electronics on my 45-year old Canon A series camera fail. And even at the unrealistic prices you quote, a battery that’s good for tens of thousands of exposures costs no more than a few rolls of film plus processing.

Teslas are for Musk fanboys, not for people who want a car they can trust. But a well-built electric vehicle, with hundreds fewer moving parts, should be at least as reliable as your ICE car.

MattKing · Mar 20, 2023

Alan Edward Klein said:
Does Eastman drop ship to final sellers like B and H? I can't imagine that they ship everything to Great Britain for Alaris to re-ship.

Eastman Kodak doesn't, but Kodak Alaris might very well coordinate with the local distributors it sells to to arrange for product to be picked up at Rochester and delivered directly to a retailer.

Agulliver · Mar 20, 2023

Early digital cameras up to 2008 or so were unreliable and impossible to repair. I have to say, since then I've not encountered one that seemed particularly problematic in that regard. Last year I went on a last minute trip and couldn't find the charger for my Nikon D7200, so i dragged my old D50 (from 2005) out, charged it's battery and it performed flawlessly with the battery still indicating it was full after 400 shots. The only post-2010 digital camera I have used which failed was a little Samsung compact which fell out of a bag on a very sandy beach (Matala, Crete) and the sand got inside. It was a good 9 years old at the time, and would probably still be working had it not fallen out of the bag.

Sure, when one of these digital cameras fails....that's likely it. It cant be repaired. And I do see EV's with terrible reliability records already among the few friends who have tried one. Our 2011 Skoda petrol car is still going strong, only repair it's needed other than the usual occasional oil change and one brake disc change was the rear wiper.

That said, I would assume all my classic/vintage cameras long ago paid for themselves even if the original purchase price was high compared to average wages at the time. I do have a Praktica BCA from circa 1989 with a dodgy exposure meter. That *could* be repaired, and as the camera has no manual mode it would need to be repaired to be used properly. I imagine a repair wouldn't be cheap. But, there's currently a plethora of used Praktica B-series cameras about....as well as other film SLRs. The issue comes when that supply dries up, and I think we've already reached a point when it's a crap shoot as to whether a camera you buy second hand actually works as intended.

Don_ih · Mar 20, 2023

BMbikerider said:
Except I use my phone to speak to people not take pictures! I want quality not poor quantity!

The trailer below is for a movie shot using an iphone 5s.

If someone can't take a "quality" photo using a phone, it may have more to do with attitude than the phone.

snusmumriken · Mar 20, 2023

Don Heisz said:
The trailer below is for a movie shot using an iphone 5s.

If someone can't take a "quality" photo using a phone, it may have more to do with attitude than the phone.

I suggest it’s more to do with expectation than attitude. The quality that’s acceptable in a budget movie is rather less than you’d expect for a 20x16 still print hung on the wall.

That’s not to deny that smartphones are remarkable, especially in eliminating focus and exposure errors and camera shake, and dealing with colour balance. With all that help one should be able to get a decent shot, but there are still plenty of limitations.

Europan · Mar 20, 2023

The expense of shooting film

The difference is that films are objects. You have something you can touch. Work on it is payed, the object is still there. The original camera negative of a major film production, say of 100 minutes run time, is not less than 9,000 feet of stock, net. About 20 kilogram, five cans, cores, tape, bags.

TJones · Mar 20, 2023

snusmumriken said:
I suggest it’s more to do with expectation than attitude. The quality that’s acceptable in a budget movie is rather less than you’d expect for a 20x16 still print hung on the wall.

That’s not to deny that smartphones are remarkable, especially in eliminating focus and exposure errors and camera shake, and dealing with colour balance. With all that help one should be able to get a decent shot, but there are still plenty of limitations.

The fraction of people who need or want a 20x16 still print on the wall is extremely small. A significant % of photographers probably don’t do that. A smartphone is a compact, easy to use, reliable, multipurpose tool that more than meets the needs/wants of the vast majority of people. Besides, it’s the photographer, not the camera, right?

TJones · Mar 20, 2023

Europan said:
The expense of shooting film
The difference is that films are objects. You have something you can touch. Work on it is payed, the object is still there. The original camera negative of a major film production, say of 100 minutes run time, is not less than 9,000 feet of stock, net. About 20 kilogram, five cans, cores, tape, bags.

In other words, film is a lot more expensive and takes up a lot more space.

snusmumriken · Mar 20, 2023

TJones said:
The fraction of people who need or want a 20x16 still print on the wall is extremely small. A significant % of photographers probably don’t do that. A smartphone is a compact, easy to use, reliable, multipurpose tool that more than meets the needs/wants of the vast majority of people.

Exactly. So if their expectation of quality is modest, they’ll be satisfied with their phones. Else not.

TJones said:
Besides, it’s the photographer, not the camera, right?

In terms of technical quality, the equipment sets the limit. In terms of artistic expression within that constraint, it’s 100% the photographer.

TJones said:
In other words, film is a lot more expensive and takes up a lot more space.

If you are convinced of that and those are important considerations, you presumably prefer digital. But I imagine the reason for this thread was to highlight the cost of film for those of us who wish to stick with it, not to start another film vs digital row.

Don_ih · Mar 20, 2023

snusmumriken said:
I suggest it’s more to do with expectation than attitude. The quality that’s acceptable in a budget movie is rather less than you’d expect for a 20x16 still print hung on the wall.

Richard Prince rather infamously took screenshots of Instagram photos (with some comments underneath) and blew them up fairly large.

You can't get a 16x20 print you can view close-up from an iphone. But you can get one that looks ok above the couch in a living room - something which satisfies most people.

Don_ih · Mar 20, 2023

snusmumriken said:
So if their expectation of quality is modest, they’ll be satisfied with their phones.

Except the quality provided by the phone camera is not actually modest when you take into consideration the needs of most people. Most people want prints no bigger than what can fit in a photo book, and most new cell phones can take photos that can be printed at 600dpi for up to 8.5x11, easily.
Many photographers seem to think 35mm looks like garbage when printed bigger than what will fit on an 8x10.
You'll never get a consensus on what "quality" actually means.

VinceInMT · Mar 20, 2023

snusmumriken said:
In terms of technical quality, the equipment sets the limit. In terms of artistic expression within that constraint, it’s 100% the photographer.

I agree 100%. While I understand the attraction to various pieces of equipment, unless the piece is a requisite for acquiring the picture, it’s just hardware.

TJones · Mar 20, 2023

retina_restoration said:
You clearly don't know what you're talking about. I have owned a Tesla since 2015 and it has been - by far - the most reliable, trouble free vehicle I have ever owned. You're just speaking from a place of suspicion and hate for change, not bothering with facts.

"Hate change"? LOL. As soon as the supply of EVs catches up with demand, I'll be buying one. Unfortunately, Teslas run into the same manufacturing issues that other cars do, with the added bonus of software that isn't nearly as capable as advertised. When the person in charge tells the engineers to enable full self-driving, while at the same time cutting costs by removing the radar sensors that make it possible, I'll look elsewhere. But thanks for your fanboy anecdote.

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