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Kodak Ends Production of Acetate Base For Photographic Film
McGruber writes "According to a report by Rochester, NY CBS affiliate WROC Kodak has ended in-house production of the cellulose acetate base that is the primary component of photographic film. Popular Photography magazine adds that, for more than 100 years, Kodak has made the acetate in house in bulk, providing the structural basis for the company's film. Now, with Kodak in bankruptcy, the company is firing 60 workers and shutting down the acetate machinery. Citing the decline in interest in film photography as a primary cause, Kodak will no longer undertake the time intensive process of acetate production. Thankfully, the company has large stockpiles of the material, and once that runs out they will source it from elsewhere."
...when the last commercial film runs out, we'll be coating glass plates with home-mixed emulsions!
But no film.
.. News at 11.
But no film.
Kodak moment.
Already happening. My local bookstore, unable to make much of a profit on books alone and therefore offering all kinds of hipster items, does a brisk trade in the retro film cameras from Lomography. Lord knows where they develop the film, though. (Unless setting up your own darkroom is a hipster fad I've overlooked.)
Who else has money that Kodak will go under first before they exhaust their stockpile?
Granted, they're only in bankruptcy protection, but unless they can kill CCD/CMOS imaging with a new device of their invention, they've got little chance of coming out.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Interestingly, the former chemicals division of Eastman Kodak, spun off in the 1990s as the Eastman Chemical Company, is still one of the major producers of cellulose acetate. While its usage as a film base usage is declining, its usage for lots of things, ranging from cigarette filters to LCD screens, is increasing.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Lord knows where they develop the film, though. (Unless setting up your own darkroom is a hipster fad I've overlooked.)
Most surviving photography shops I've been in process 120 film. You can also mail it in, but a lab is probably closer than you think.
I am not a crackpot.
Well, doesn't it make sense that, assuming they have a method for developing film, you've never heard of it?
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I agree. There's a quality to film that digital has yet to produce.
As a medium for documentation, digital photography is superior, but for artistic purposes, film is still a strong contender. There's something charming about the darkroom process, as well.
" Thankfully, the company has large stockpiles of the material, and once that runs out they will source it from elsewhere."
Thankfully, in 20 years we'll have rich trust-fund hipster-kids developing on film "before it was cool."
-- Ethanol-fueled
Thankfully, today's economy should result in fewer trust-fund-hipster-douche-bags.
One thing is for certain, there's alot of things that are alot easier and cheaper to do in digital. I did alot of long exposures and night photography. Trying to get a balance between grainyness and being too dark is challenging when the feedback you get on your settings is a couple weeks later. You can go through a whole roll trying different settings. One time I went to pick up prints and the lab gave me the negatives and said they didn't turn out. I had to point out to them a couple shots on the negatives that were of a little bio-luminescent grub. They were skeptical but went and printed them for me and they turned out fine. That was an entire roll of film just for two pictures.
I also got alot better because I was getting immediate feedback when using manual settings.
It also makes doing timelapse photography feasible on an amateur budget.
What's really odd to me is the digital cameras are not any better at capturing light. I saw a documentary on a large telescope that talked about how much light is not captured by film, and what a huge amount more is captured by a CCD, which is important for imaging faint objects. Maybe they have a better CCD than what you get in cameras.
Also, having analog films is still a proven way of storing media. Despite the fact that digital archives should be transferrable between sotrage technologies as time goes on, we still have little real-world experience with trying to use them to preserve stuff as long as possible (and you know what happened with all those NASA data tapes) so having those things on film can't hurt.
Ezekiel 23:20
Lord knows where they develop the film, though. (Unless setting up your own darkroom is a hipster fad I've overlooked.)
You don't need a darkroom to develop film and scan it. You just need a changing bag, which is basically a black bag with arm holes. It's designed to keep the light out while allowing your hands to work with whatever's inside. It takes a little practice, but it's easy enough to wind the film around a reel and put it inside a light-proof canister. From there you just pour in whatever developer you're using through a tiny hole at the top.
What you would need a darkroom for is making prints from your negatives. I have actually never done that.
Negative film has much superior exposure latitude to digital. There wasn't a need for HDR techniques with negative film - you could capture the dynamic range on the film. (Granted there were few ways to get all that range on paper, but there are now thanks to digital manipulation.)
Also, there's the issue of archivability. Black and white negative materials are inherently archival if processed at all well. Furthermore, this archivalness is passive, requiring little to no effort on the behalf of the photographer. Digital requires migration from device to device on a certain schedule, or data loss is inevitable. (Of course, if you do actually migrate it, you have a perfect copy of your data, but you actually have to do it.)
There are a lot of older technologies that have serious advantages over modern ones - I'm not a big fan of vinyl records (CD was more than good enough for me) but I buy CDs in preference to downloaded lossy formats, and even use fountain pens because of their superior anti-fatigue properties compared to ballpoint and gel pens (and their environmental superiority). Just because something is new doesn't mean it's better.
The particular form today's economy is taking will probably actually produce more of them. It's mostly the poor and middle classes who are being hit, while the rich are doing very well, perhaps better than ever before. Trust-fund hipster kids come from rich families, not poor or middle-class ones, so this market segment looks bullish. As long as the S&P 500 keeps climbing and bonuses keep coming in, their trust funds will stay bankrolled...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Agreed.
I still mainly shoot film, but I'm quite happy to shoot digital when needed (there's no denying the convenience, ability to work at low and high ISOs, and that the quality is good nowadays, particularly for full frame).
But I prefer the tonal reproduction of film (colour negative still handles highlights better than the top-of-the-range Nikon fullframes, having just recently used the D3 and D4 for a couple of weddings), the existence of only one artefact - which can be quite likeable, and much preferable to digital noise, and the spot-on colour accuracy.
I think the overall look with film is more realistic, objects have more depth. Digital gives a more controlled look, which looks like a painting of the scene. Film looks like the actual scene with a thin film of graininess in front of it.
(the problem is getting it processed and scanned somewhere good that will show the full qualities of the medium)
I've done C41 in a bathroom in an average low-rent apartment,no problem. I've set up several tank-based gallon labs for E4 and E6. the only element that is really critical is the color developer, and after that the first developer. everything else can run just fine at room temp, rated temp of 85-105 Fahrenheit, or anything in between.
a temperature/pressure regulated water flow is a must in a larger scale operation. since you can't get one any more from Calumet, get a closeout bath/shower no-scald control. with a good thermometer in the bath, get it to temp and start processing.
on the gallon lines, I used a laundry washtub, PVC pipe for the reels, and an immersion heater on a stick to help pre-heat the bath. at that point, start the water, and go for it.
it is nowhere as hard as you say, unless you are machine processing, and then the temp control will be part of the machine. you can still push-process up to 3 F-stops by fiddling the processor speed.
Kodachrome was a whole 'nother critter, and that's why it's no longer around.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
And I guarantee you could tell the difference with black and white film. A digital shot will look like the sensor used to take the shot. Unless you use Photoshop to apply 'grain' and tonal changes to the shot it will lack character. That's not to say it will be a bad shot, just that it will be clean, the grain will be digital in nature, and it will have fairly predictable tonal characteristics.
When using film I have massive amounts of control over how my image is reproduced. Using combinations of negative and developer, push and pull processing or even cross processing I can achieve effects that you can only achieve in Photoshop and only as a reasonable approximate assuming it even has an analogue for the process I've used. I can further vary this via my selection of printing paper and even toners within the development baths.
Photoshop has only very basic settings for applying a 'film' grain to an image. B&W negatives on varying film stock developed at differing temperatures in varying developer baths can produce a vast array of results you can only dream of.
e.g. Ilford Delta 400 Pro developed with Rodinal at 20 degrees and printed onto a matte paper stock.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Tube amps do have a distinct sound that silicon doesn't. It is nothing akin to ridiculous videophile claims.
Some people like their artifacts. What can you say?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Eh, 'hipster fad' is just code for 'people doing stuff I do not care about', so if someone likes digital cameras and other people dare to not, well, they must be following a hipster fad otherwise they would do what the speaker is doing.
Personally I have seen quite a bit of interest in film around, some people just happen to really enjoy the process.. and when it comes down to it that is what hobbies are all about, doing what you enjoy. Though I have seen a pretty good economic argument for sticking to film when it comes to medium format stuff. For the price of a digital back you can get a whole lot of film+chemicals and a damn good scanner.
The whole process isn't even that expensive, so long as you don't mind improvising a bit for an enlarger.
...assuming you want them on paper. Why not scan the negatives?
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