Who is who in the world of film manufacturing?

Photo Engineer · Oct 15, 2007

Jana;

I am aware of that. I was not going to be the first to disclose that here. However, if color products are not made, the technology will be lost.

And, on another line of thought, where are the chemists who will make the couplers and addenda. These are not off-the-shelf items.

PE

JanaM · Oct 15, 2007

Photo Engineer said:
Jana;

I am aware of that. I was not going to be the first to disclose that here. However, if color products are not made, the technology will be lost.

And, on another line of thought, where are the chemists who will make the couplers and addenda. These are not off-the-shelf items.

PE

Perhaps Agfa-Gevaert will be more active in the future concerning colour film. There are some small hints yet, like the Rollei Digibase 200 CN film. AG still has colour aerial film in their programme. Only future will tell....

Only one year ago nobody could imagine a resurrection of the Agfa BW materials...

Best regards,
Jana

imazursky · Oct 16, 2007

There used to be a company in India called Sterling. I think they only made B&W papers I dont know about film.
They sold the land to a software company.

Best,
-ian

PHOTOTONE · Oct 16, 2007

imazursky said:
There used to be a company in India called Sterling. I think they only made B&W papers I dont know about film.
They sold the land to a software company.

Best,
-ian

The plant burned down, they decided not to rebuild, but rather sold the land.

imazursky · Oct 16, 2007

Wow! I didnt know that.
To bad. I liked there contact paper.

Thanks
-ian

AgX · Oct 25, 2007

Ian Grant said:
Chemists & technicians are quite capable of taking their know how elsewhere. Companies even before the current downturn benefited from cross-fertilisation.

Sacked film manufacturing experts once having found a job elsewhere in the (chemical) industry are likely not to came back to film making. Their expertise will be lost.
Those three Agfa experts most probably left the ship before it sank, and are, I guess, the exception to the rule.

Photo Engineer · Oct 25, 2007

One former Agfa color paper engineer now works for Schoeller and is no longer in the emulsion or coating field except as it applies to titanox or baryta.

But, in any event as posted elsewhere, Agfa was not known for having the best color films or papers. This rests with Kodak and Fuji. If that is lost, it is lost!

PE

JanaM · Oct 25, 2007

Photo Engineer said:
.... This rests with Kodak and Fuji. If that is lost, it is lost!

PE

Hallo Ron,

....in theory, yes, it could be lost. But that will not happen in reality. Why? Simply because the majority of the digital photographers who want to have prints are using the great laboratories and online picture services. And these services are printing on analogue color paper, because it is the best solution for mass production. High quality at extrem low costs. Inkjet printing is not suitable for this market: Too slow and extreme costs in comparison.

The future of mass production digital printing is the classic colour photo paper. Have a look at Fuji's sales numbers of colour paper in Q.3/2007: They are significantly increasing.

Best regards,
Jana

Ian Grant · Oct 25, 2007

When did Foton in Poland stop manufacturing films ?

Ian

Photo Engineer · Oct 25, 2007

JanaM said:
Hallo Ron,

....in theory, yes, it could be lost. But that will not happen in reality. Why? Simply because the majority of the digital photographers who want to have prints are using the great laboratories and online picture services. And these services are printing on analogue color paper, because it is the best solution for mass production. High quality at extrem low costs. Inkjet printing is not suitable for this market: Too slow and extreme costs in comparison.

The future of mass production digital printing is the classic colour photo paper. Have a look at Fuji's sales numbers of colour paper in Q.3/2007: They are significantly increasing.

Best regards,
Jana

Jana;

Your theory is good, but may be incorrect sad to say.

You see, color film may vanish due to digital, even though printing remains, and Kodak and others are hard at work to make production printing by digital means a realistic venture.

PE

David A. Goldfarb · Oct 25, 2007

I hunted around a bit, and it seems that Foton Bydgoszcz was bought out by Foma. This page describes them as a "Member of the Foma group"--

http://www.foton.pl/lokalizacja.htm

According to this page, it looks like the firm changed hands as of 1 January 2007--

http://www.foton.pl/

There is a "Foton" shop in Bydgoszcz where the factory is, and they are advertising film under the Foma label.

There seems to be a separate Foton Warsaw factory, and that doesn't seem to have been part of the deal with Foma, but this page describes them as in bankruptcy--

Dead Link Removed

Most of the pages I've found about the Warsaw factory describe it mainly in reference to X-ray film. If I turn up more, I'll report back.

Ian Grant · Oct 25, 2007

Thanks David, do I take it you can read Polish

I had found the Foton company, and the separate Foton shop but then came across the language barrier. Seems Foton were manufacturing HP3 or 4 under license from Ilford.

Ian

David A. Goldfarb · Oct 25, 2007

Ian Grant said:
Thanks David, do I take it you can read Polish

I had found the Foton company, and the separate Foton shop but then came across the language barrier. Seems Foton were manufacturing HP3 or 4 under license from Ilford.

Ian

As it happens, yes, I read Polish.

There is also a Polish label called "Equicolor," which seems to package 35mm color neg films for the local market, some of which were made by Foton--

Dead Link Removed

Photo Engineer · Oct 25, 2007

Can David read Polish? Is the Pope Catholic?

David wrote the book!

PE

JanaM · Oct 25, 2007

Photo Engineer said:
Jana;

Your theory is good, but may be incorrect sad to say.

You see, color film may vanish due to digital, even though printing remains, and Kodak and others are hard at work to make production printing by digital means a realistic venture.

PE

Ron,

I don't think so:
1. People, who prefer analogue photography, will use color film as well as BW in the future. Amateur film enthusiasts and pros.
2. I've read here on apug that in the U.S. alone over 160 millions (!) of single use cameras a year are sold (please correct me if I'm wrong). So worldwide we probably have more than 250 mio. single use cameras sold each year. Even here in Germany, where these cameras are rather unpopular, the sales numbers are increasing from year to year (last year 5,7 mio.). Robert Vonk said, that even in the small Benelux countries more than 17 millions are sold every year.
As far as I know, the sales numbers of the single use cameras are separately published and not included in the figures of the film sales. At least it is so in Germany. Therefore we probably must add them to the film sales numbers.

For single use cameras alone mass production of colour film is necessary.

3. Printing and Inkjet technology: AFAIK you need only some milliseconds to expose classic color paper in a Laser printer like the Durst Lambda. Machines like this are used in the great laboratories for mass printing. I can't imagine that inkjet printing can catch up with this technology in the future concerning speed and costs. Sometimes we have technological borders which are impossible to cross.
Inkjet is the way to go for very large prints, classic color prints for mass production at very low cost levels.

Best regards,
Jana

Photo Engineer · Oct 25, 2007

Jana;

1. Color film coating for amateur use is being supported, for the most part, by motion picture film production. If the motion picture industry converts to digital, there will be no compelling reason to continue to make the relatively small volume of film for other uses. Now, I admit that 100 - 200 million cameras full of 35mm film may seem a lot, but consider that this came from a 42 inch (~3.5 meter) roll which is 5000 ft long (sorry, I'm tired converting). At current coating speeds this could probably be made in less than a day! So, supporting a facility that is to be open 24/7/365 becomes problematical.

In fact, the figures you quote are a fraction of the motion picture production of Kodak, at least IIRC.

2. Research on digital printing is directed towards solving the problems you cite.

Our youngest daughter is an engineer at Xerox in the color printing area of R&D. She cannot talk about her work, but I know just enough to tell you that this is the main thrust of her work, and I was present at a Xerox demo of high speed color printing about 2 years ago that would have knocked your sox off!

3. (not in your list above but important to note)
In the 100 or so years since Lumiere cease production of Autochrome, about a half dozen people have tried each year to reproduce the Autochrome process without success! This includes the actual people involved using the original equipment! There were 'secrets' that went unrecorded in the production of this film. Therefore, if color film production is stopped for any reason and the teams are disbanded, it will be difficult if not impossible to restart production.

I have coated Ektacolor Paper and Kodacolor Gold 400 film but I do not know the entire formula. I just know that XYZ100 goes into it at 400 mg/mole of silver in the magenta layer, but only at 200 mg/mole in the yellow layer, and etc.... Someone else had checked out XYZ and ABC and DEF and suggested XYZ to me without naming it. I used it. It worked. I used emulsion 4420, 3129 and 1010, 1:1:1 in the magenta layer with dye B-11111 at 300 mg/mole but I might not know the emulsion formula, nor the dye formulas. This will vanish!

You simply do not understand.

Sorry.

PE

Changeling1 · Oct 25, 2007

bogeyes said:
Late one night whilst surfing the net I'm sure that I saw a thread somewhere that discussed who made all the films available today and what films had ceased to be made. Did a search but can,t find it. So my question is, who are the manufactures and what films are the same under different brand names? Does anyone know who makes the colour neg film "colorama" sold by colorama?

IIRC, "Colorama" was actually a movie film that a company named Colorama processed in their own labs via mail from the photographer. The photographer got back BOTH slides and proof prints. They may have called their film RGB-35.
The film, processing and mailing was also very cheap and was popular with highly prolific amateurs and travelers. I did a quick google which proved fruitless so I'm not certain about the above information as I'm just going by memory from 20 years ago... :confused:

Photo Engineer · Oct 25, 2007

Colorama was trademarked by Kodak and was used for the gigantic color pictures that they displayed around the world. The most famous and largest was in Grand Central Station in NYC.

The most famous of the pictures was the group of babies which was reshot for the last Colorama. Sam Campanero, a personal friend, shot that pic, and has offered to make a limited signed set available to APUG members. See the post under product availability.

Colorama was discontinued a while back.

PE

PHOTOTONE · Oct 25, 2007

Changeling1 said:
IIRC, "Colorama" was actually a movie film that a company named Colorama processed in their own labs via mail from the photographer. The photographer got back BOTH slides and proof prints. They may have called their film RGB-35.
The film, processing and mailing was also very cheap and was popular with highly prolific amateurs and travelers. I did a quick google which proved fruitless so I'm not certain about the above information as I'm just going by memory from 20 years ago... :confused:

Back many years ago there were several "labs" that sold their own "special" color film where you got back negatives and slides. This was nothing more than movie color negative film, usually made by Kodak, but could have been sourced from Fuji or Agfa, and was processed in the standard cinema color negative film process of the day, and before it was cut down into strips, it was put on a contact printer and positives were made on standard color positive release stock., again could have been sourced from Kodak, Fuji or Agfa.

PHOTOTONE · Oct 25, 2007

Photo Engineer said:
Jana;

1. Color film coating for amateur use is being supported, for the most part, by motion picture film production. If the motion picture industry converts to digital, there will be no compelling reason to continue to make the relatively small volume of film for other uses.
In the 100 or so years since Lumiere cease production of Autochrome, about a half dozen people have tried each year to reproduce the Autochrome process without success! This includes the actual people involved using the original equipment! There were 'secrets' that went unrecorded in the production of this film. Therefore, if color film production is stopped for any reason and the teams are disbanded, it will be difficult if not impossible to restart production.

You simply do not understand.

Sorry.

PE

I agree that consumer film production is supported by movie film production, however I do see one possible "flaw" in your argument in regards the loss of knowledge.

Autochrome was a process made by a single company for a relatively short period of time, and the technology was not licensed to other manufacturers. C-41 process color negative film, and E-6 color transparency film have been made by quite a few manufacturers, and while there are certainly differences between brands, the fact is that the general knowledge on how to make workable color negative and color transparency films is much much more widespread, worldwide, than Autochrome ever was, and therefore with the dispersion of knowledge across the globe it is more unlikely that the "art" will be forgotten, as long as one "botique" manufacturer continues to practice the art. This is not to say that one should just go along "hoping" that "someone" will record the process. There should be some active effort to preserve the techniques of manufacture.

Photo Engineer · Oct 25, 2007

Phototone;

While your comment has merit, in some ways Kodak products and Fuji products are as similar to each other as Autochrome and Dufay color. The latter two used screens of one sort or another but were vastly different otherwise.

Photo products are vastly different in some cases using these two as answers. My friend at GEH can duplicate Dufay, but no one can duplicate Autochrome and its subtle nuances. So........

PE

bob100684 · Oct 25, 2007

JanaM said:
Ron,

I don't think so:
1. People, who prefer analogue photography, will use color film as well as BW in the future. Amateur film enthusiasts and pros.
2. I've read here on apug that in the U.S. alone over 160 millions (!) of single use cameras a year are sold (please correct me if I'm wrong). So worldwide we probably have more than 250 mio. single use cameras sold each year. Even here in Germany, where these cameras are rather unpopular, the sales numbers are increasing from year to year (last year 5,7 mio.). Robert Vonk said, that even in the small Benelux countries more than 17 millions are sold every year.
As far as I know, the sales numbers of the single use cameras are separately published and not included in the figures of the film sales. At least it is so in Germany. Therefore we probably must add them to the film sales numbers.

For single use cameras alone mass production of colour film is necessary.

We had one day at the lab a couple years back, 100 some odd rolls, all but two were disposable cameras.

Photo Engineer · Oct 25, 2007

bob100684 said:
We had one day at the lab a couple years back, 100 some odd rolls, all but two were disposable cameras.

This is misleading in three aspects. First is that the film in all cameras might have been the same. Second in that these were all just for a single lab representing amateurs and third, it did not cross the entire market range.

IDK. It is hard for anyone to take a single point in space and predict the composition of the universe.

PE

bob100684 · Oct 26, 2007

Photo Engineer said:
This is misleading in three aspects. First is that the film in all cameras might have been the same. Second in that these were all just for a single lab representing amateurs and third, it did not cross the entire market range.

IDK. It is hard for anyone to take a single point in space and predict the composition of the universe.

PE

True. But after having worked in four different labs in two different states, often times there is a seemingly disproportionate amount of film coming to the lab via OTUC instead of 35mm or even aps rolls.

AgX · Oct 26, 2007

OTUC = One Time Use Camera

Who is who in the world of film manufacturing?

Photo Engineer

JanaM

imazursky

PHOTOTONE

imazursky

AgX

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JanaM

Ian Grant

Photo Engineer

David A. Goldfarb

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AgX

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