"Kodak claims to be going back to it's roots with film"Originally Posted by John Kasaian
is that something you read online? what a joke!
roots like pulling all 8x10 b+w film from stores roots, or the last round of discontinued products roots?
hey, it's not all their fault, fauxtographers are the ones who aren't buying film.
Why don't they/didn't they try to divest this aspect of the business?
Removing it seems to be yet another dickhead decision by their management. Surely it's a potential asset, even if they only get a few mill for it.
Lachlan.
You miss 100% of the shots you never take. -- Wayne Gretzky
I don't think reversal film has been profitable for some time now... Who would they sell it to?
No competition? Ever heard of Fuji?
Ok, I liked E100VS better than Velvia, but preferred Astia to E100G, though I learned to like E100G almost as much. Provia is a decent compromise if I want to shoot E6, but it's too contrasty for many subjects.
Figures, my favorite, Astia, was the first to get canceled, then in one fell swoop my replacement for that AND my pick for highly saturated film goes.
Glad I'm mostly into black and white with some color neg and mostly only shoot E6 to use up film I got bargains on along with something else.
There was probably just no way for Kodak to compete with Fuji in this category without subsidizing it at a net loss. Same reason Fuji killed Astia - it was a great film if you understood what its range fo applications, but few people did. Most just want saturation.
E100G was the best and last of Kodak's offerings, but cannot realistically stand on its own
in terms of overhead. But color neg film is a different subject, and one in which Kodak still
realistically dominates. With Ciba having diminished significantly in recent years, and now
itself cancelled, and with scanners and neg film becoming more and more compatible, a
full shift to color neg film just makes sense for them. C-style papers still have a huge market, though it's hard to say how long the minilab snapshot side of that will hold up.
Getting a chrome look from neg film is a whole different story and it's been fun learning
the ropes and boundaries.
I read somewhere else that slide film sales have been less than 10% of Kodak's color film production in recent years. Hard to argue with dropping it if there isn't a better market than that. I'm frankly surprised its lasted as long as it has.
Brian Ellis
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
Since they can custom cut and package 8x10 now, they could always go back to it as a standard offering if there was sufficient demand. More likely, some large dealer will just place the min order and stock the 8x10
themselves, like B&H is doing right now, or we will have to make group orders like ULF shooters have been doing all along. No big deal with a bit
of planning. What is way more important is that Kodak succeeds at something in the film category, and it looks like they're betting on the right
horse. They can't be everything to everybody anymore.
I get what you're saying Drew.
Kodak is probably going to have to be a very limited company!
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
All the big auction houses in NYC and several major retailers shoot 8x10 chromes on a daily basis. Two large clients like this are what keeps one of my labs doing E6 LF processing. They have told me once those clients go away, they will stop doing 8x10 E6 processing. I am guessing that this announcement will begin the transition for those clients to look for other ways of getting the multiple format archive-ability they currently have. Doubt if any will choose Portra or some other neg film that can't be examined as-is without a scanner operator or printer doing an interpretation.
But yeah, no one else is shooting E6. So the profitability is probably zilch worldwide.
There was a time in the not so dim and distant past that in the world of Advertising photography that every thing was shot on E6 film, I used to spend a horrendous amount of money on the stuff, then came the Phase one back and in essence that was the death of E6, in my area of London there were 5 large processing houses now there are two very small ones, one of which runs a E6 line, the art market uses neg and it is C41 and digital printing that is keeping them alive, as for E6 film, in the studio it could not be bettered and still the quality from 10x8 E6 film is infinitely better than any available digital product , though the endless wait for film, the colour tests , batch variations and sheer waste are not things that ever filled me with joy.
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