I really don't know anything about coating machines or chemical engineering, but (and this is a thought pulled from the "Kodak vs. Ilford" thread) as film production inevitably declines, what sorts of film, paper, and chemistry products are going to lend themselves to small-scale boutique manufacturing?
I'm assuming that once Kodak and Fuji give up on film making that they might sell their technology inexpensively to a group of employees or perhaps benefactor with deep pockets (like Leica was fortunate enough to find). But the scale of Kodak's film operation is massive, and no sane investors would want to buy their giant machinery.
So what will be left? I can see where some smaller manufacturers like Efke, Lucky, etc. might be able to keep some lines open but what do you think? I'm assuming old style B&W (Tri-X, FP-4, etc.) should be doable on a smaller scale, but what about T-grain B&W and Color Neg? (Who cares about E-6 anyway?) And what about chemistry -- while traditional B&W chemistry should be do-able forever, is color chemistry going to be difficult to make in smaller batches? How much of the technology is proprietary?
Ultimately will people have to handcoat papers with silver emulsions like Platinum printers do today?
How do you see it going over the next 20-30 years? I read that Kodak is committed to film through 2015 but that could well be it, depending on demand.
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