• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

Where has Foma gone?



Can I stop panicking now? Should I switch to bitchin' that the film companies raise their prices so that they can financially destroy me? Why do these companies hate their customers so much?
 
They have put a message of inconvenience and apologize for some technical faults.

*A 50cent - 1 euro price raise does not affect much but it will help Foma, in case they want to raise the price.
 
Sirius Glass said:
Can I stop panicking now? Should I switch to bitchin' that the film companies raise their prices so that they can financially destroy me? Why do these companies hate their customers so much?
Click to expand...

But you know that Foma loves you, forever.
 
Sirius Glass said:
Can I stop panicking now? Should I switch to bitchin' that the film companies raise their prices so that they can financially destroy me? Why do these companies hate their customers so much?
Click to expand...
That is hysterical, thanks!
 
Foma 200 does not love me, and I don't love it, so we decided to call it quits. I'm great friends w/ the 100 and 400 though, and thanks to them and Ilford Delta 100, it's a rare occasion when I put anything from a yellow box in a camera anymore. I wonder if we could merge the Foma threads, the high cost of film threads, the film is better for the truth threads, and also include the high cost of legacy lenses?

That might be better than a visit to the shrink for unloading all that frustration. However, actually reading the threads might send you to the shrink.
 
Kodak has too many Ferraris and Porsches and big Luxurious mansions built into their pricing for my tastes.
 
NB23 said:
Kodak has too many Ferraris and Porsches and big Luxurious mansions built into their pricing for my tastes.
Click to expand...
Fortunately for Kodak, sales of Ferraris, Porsches and big luxurious mansions all set records last year. So the fact that your taste doesn't support such things doesn't matter to any of those product lines. Those who want and can afford Kodak film will buy it. No matter how much moaning and complaining happens on PHOTRIO.
 

kodak’s pricing is way too polluted with non-related costs. Thanks to gross amateur mismanagement.

carlos perez did try to turn kodak into xerox, though. It was such a circus.
 

this is from a web info site run by Netcraft. as you can see the local area is far from Ukraine.
 
NB23 said:
Kodak has too many Ferraris and Porsches and big Luxurious mansions built into their pricing for my tastes.
Click to expand...

Custom made organic chemical components can make a Porsche look very cheap indeed. Foma have essentially said that if you wanted them to make qualitatively and quantitatively equivalent films to Kodak, they would not be cheaper.
 
NB23 said:
kodak’s pricing is way too polluted with non-related costs. Thanks to gross amateur mismanagement.

carlos perez did try to turn kodak into xerox, though. It was such a circus.
Click to expand...


This is based on what exactly? Any real data or facts of pollution in the last twenty years? What you had for breakfast?
 
Lachlan Young said:
Custom made organic chemical components can make a Porsche look very cheap indeed. Foma have essentially said that if you wanted them to make qualitatively and quantitatively equivalent films to Kodak, they would not be cheaper.
Click to expand...
Yes, this makes sense, Lachlan. Can you give us what Foma said that leads to your conclusion

Thanks

pentaxuser
 
momus said:
Foma 200 does not love me, and I don't love it, so we decided to call it quits. I'm great friends w/ the 100 and 400 though, and thanks to them and Ilford Delta 100, it's a rare occasion when I put anything from a yellow box in a camera anymore.
Click to expand...

Neither it loves me. But it is just a small scratch in this love-relationship. I can forgive Foma for producing the 200.
 
If this thread is to continue, maybe the Mods can consider changing the thread title. The original title just makes no sense now. Foma is back as a site

pentaxuser
 
Seems their instagram account is still unavailable. I wonder if their accounts had been compromised as somebody suggested earlier.
 
Jonno85uk said:
Seems their instagram account is still unavailable. I wonder if their accounts had been compromised as somebody suggested earlier.
Click to expand...
It is possible. If it has happened then no-one from Foma is going to admit it and rightly so. I am somewhat surprised that a state cyber attack had not been attempted before. There may be no connection but Foma is a company from the Czech Republic and that country as I understand it from BBC News has sent arms to assist the Ukraine. Neither do I know if Instagram has been cyber attacked or if it is simply Foma's Instagram account but I'd be amazed if in the next few weeks we do not learn of other more ambitious cyber attacks on more "Western" companies

pentaxuser
 
A attack, if happened at all, could also be vandalism or criminal.
 
Lachlan Young said:
if you wanted them to make qualitatively and quantitatively equivalent films to Kodak, they would not be cheaper.
Click to expand...
That's maybe the last thing most people want. Developer and fixers that are brown, reps that say they will refund your money and don't. Who needs Kodak?

Ilford films are very good, Kodak has nothing that can compare to the Delta 100 films. I can get equivalent images to Tri-X w/ Foma 100 and 400 in 35mm (I believe it was just the 120 rolls of Foma that had issues), maybe better. Those films look beautiful in many developers, and I use Foma papers at times w/ no issues.

Where's the Kodak papers? If they made them they'd probably be brown too. Even if they did work well, Kodak would abandon them just as people got them dialed in.

Kodak: the company that was. Foma: the company that is. The only reason Kodak films are so expensive is because they're totally incompetent at running a company. That's what you're paying for, their mistakes.
 
Last edited:
momus your quote has reminded me that I asked Lachlan for his source of Foma's admission that it would be as expensive as Kodak if it made films that were qualitatively and quantitatively the equivalent of Kodak but I have seen nothing so far. It struck me as a strange admission to make. It's the equivalent of Ilford admitting that its D400 is cheaper than TMax 400 because it cannot or will not for cost reasons make its D400 to match Kodak TMax 400 qualitatively

I remain unsure what quantitatively means in this contest

pentaxuser
 
Foma was around long before the internet or instagram. With all the possibilities in the world we are living in that could slow production, Instagram is probably near the bottom of the list.
 
lecarp said:
Foma was around long before the internet or instagram. With all the possibilities in the world we are living in that could slow production, Instagram is probably near the bottom of the list.
Click to expand...
Indeed, it's not important to me as all it really did was repost other peoples post. Just thought it was interesting that both it and the website dissapeared seemingly at the same time.
 
Jonno85uk said:
Indeed, it's not important to me as all it really did was repost other peoples post. Just thought it was interesting that both it and the website dissapeared seemingly at the same time.
Click to expand...
Jonno85uk, My post was not meant to be a derogatory statement about your post, apologies if it came across that way. What I'm saying is, I believe social media is overvalued in the world today and that Foma is so much more than the sum of its internet presence.
 
pentaxuser said:
Can you give us what Foma said that leads to your conclusion
Click to expand...

I recall it was after doing some searching to see if there was much known about Fomapan 200's high-aspect-ratio grain structure & camera incompatibility in 120 - and that there was some reasonably well-sourced commentary to the effect that while the factory was highly aware of these and other issues, upgrading the materials to equivalent standards of sharpness/ speed/ overall quality control would raise their retail prices to the level of Ilford/ Kodak - and that a fairly large percentage of Foma's film market was in quite price sensitive markets, so they felt they were (at the time) stuck making only minor changes rather than full-scale reformulation (which could need to be done to change the hardener etc). The other rather important point I remember was that the existence of Foma 200 (and 800) was apparently due to Foma having licensed certain technologies originally for the production of X-ray materials (and indeed, over the years there has been quite a bit of evidence of Foma piggybacking certain materials off the back of X-ray material production). You also have to remember that most of Ilford's films have essentially amortised their fundamental R&D costs long ago - and that the recent rises are likely (at least in part) to cover future-proofing/ investment in new emulsion research.


All you're telling me is that your confirmation bias is blinding you. I can live with some of Fomapan's shortcomings, and their specific aesthetics can be a strong point for a particular kind of 'look' - but under no properly rigorous industry-standard measure (and we're not talking about the developer-tasting garden-shed-test-chart amateur-grade rubbish here) are they in any way equivalent or better to Kodak or Ilford etc in speed/grain/ sharpness - and Foma are honest about that.

Kodak could build a Delta type emulsion if they wanted - epitaxial emulsions seem to have been in Kodak X-ray materials for longer than Delta has existed - but there seem to be good reasons not to do so too (not financial - if it was purely financial, making epitaxy work would have happened) in particular from a perspective of dealing with problematic end users who cannot understand the basics of process control despite owning enough grey cards (and photographs thereof) to paper the walls of several rooms.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register