Kodak discontinues all but 4x5 TMAX films

[Bruce Watson]

Someone will always be making B&W film...

That might be true, but none of those that follow will likely be able to equal Kodak's amazing quality control, nor their R&D efforts. Without Kodak, the best we can hope for is stagnation.

The bottom line here isn't that Kodak is deserting the part of LF above 5x4, it's that the part of LF above 5x4 deserted Kodak. If the 10x8 crowd isn't buying the film, then Kodak *should* reduce it to special order status. It's the only thing that makes sense for them.

But it would be nice if they'd do better at facilitating the special orders like Harman/Ilford does.

[Frank Petronio]

Well maybe the story isn't the BS I thought it was... but regardless, Kodak Tri-X in 8x10 and 5x7 is still better than anything else offered by the competitors so far.

If you want to keep a great film around, maybe you should buy it instead of saving a few bucks some spotty discount brand.

[Drew Wiley]

When Ilford got in trouble, I put FP4 and Ilfochrome in the freezer. I'm using up the last
of it now. By splitting off the color from the black-and-white divisions and selling each to folks genuinely interested in a specific niche, they resurrected both. Now I'm packing in TM400 and TM100 8x10 sheets. My 8x10 Fuji Astia and ACROS unfortunately are almost gone. When something of quality disappears, a vacuum arises
and someone eventually fill its. That's certainly been the case with high-quality printing
papers and large-format films. Someone will probably be in the film game long after the
current generation of digital products has all been sent to the recyling bins. Just another annoyance. Favorite films and papers have been disappearing from time to time as long as I've been shooting, but new ones manage to come around.

[Sal Santamaura]

...Harmon Technologies dosen't own the land thier film factory sits on and that the lease is coming up soon...

AFAIK it's somewhere in the range of 15-20 years from now.

It's 5 years down and 15 to go. I verified directly with the HARMAN Managing Director that it was a 20-year lease before starting my Ebony SV Wholeplate project, which depended (at that time) on Ilford's special-size film program or cutting down 8x10.

ADOX PAN 400 will likely provide an additional option some time next year. Mirko has posted that only 25 25-sheet boxes will be required for any given sheet film size to be practical.

[Sal Santamaura]

...If you want to keep a great film around, maybe you should buy it instead of saving a few bucks some spotty discount brand.

And it's worth noting that, despite Frank's lobbing of grenades at Ilford around the Internet, Ilford films are neither "spotty" nor "discount." They're first-tier quality and fairly priced.

I anticipate similar quality and pricing from ADOX when its ADOX PAN 400 is introduced.

[Brian C. Miller]

I was just searching the news again, and I found a post about Kodak discontinuing Plux-X for 16mm and 35mm (link). A petition to bring it back got over 40,000 signatures. How many emails have LFes generated to Kodak? 10? 20?

[Frank Petronio]

Nah after several bad batches of Ilford I'll never buy it again, I'll shoot anything else.

[Walter Jakubowski]

Kodak stock rose 11% on Thursday fueled on some sort of speculation. The Rochester news media mentioned rumors that Kodak might be selling it's Film business. A sad but possibly realistic possibility considering that the top core of Kodak management are ex-HP managers. They maybe want to sell it while it's still profitable. Kodak had no comment. Gulp!

[theBDT]

TMY2 has always been so much more expensive, I never bothered to try it when I learned film. Then again, most of my lenses come from the 20th century, so I've always felt my glass can't quite reach the 21st century film limits, anyway.

I've been very happy with the "discount" Arista EDU 100 ISO film. I learned 4x5 on that and HP5+; never once did I try Kodak for black-and-white large format. Maybe my negs aren't as sharp as they'd be with TMY2, but I love the look, the grain, the tones, etc. (And HP5+ is still quite sharp.)

It's the sunset era for film as a technology, but not as an art. Expensive, cutting-edge technologies in film quite frankly SHOULD be the first things on the cutting block; Kodak charges a premium for the kind of sharp, clear results you get from TMY2, yet basically they're competing with digital there. Arista EDU (aka Foma) is the opposite end: they use outdated technology and happily sell it for what it's worth. Digital Hasselblad backs are running rings around TMY2; in the meantime my silly friends are spending hundreds of dollars on grain simulation software to get that "vintage" grainy look I get naturally with my "discount" film.

Film is no longer the arena for the best mankind has to offer in terms of tone and sharpness.

Let that sink in for a second.

Film is still a very strong statement for a kind of "look," and if you use medium format or better you can go toe-to-toe with any "professional" digital system of ANY format costing less than $40,000. So, to an artist, there is still a lot of life left in film. To a technician, film hasn't been interesting for at least a few years now.

I don't anticipate film to go anyway in my lifetime (I'm 34). I can see clearly, however, that it is no longer the "bleeding edge" of photographic technology. This is simply a fact. Since I consider my photography to be more of an art than a science, and since I value the "look" of grain beyond its technical qualities, I am very happy with film. But I fully expect the "technology" of film to become irrelevant: trying too hard to be "perfect" is trying to beat digital at digital's own game. Films designed to do just that are destined for the dustbin of history.

[Ben Syverson]

Film is no longer the arena for the best mankind has to offer in terms of tone and sharpness.

Haven't shot much 8x10, have you BDT?