Kodak discontinues three colour reversal films

[Drew Wiley]

Fuji has been top dog in the chrome business for quite awhile already, and now they'll have
a monopoly. So that will probably offset any erosion to digital for awhile at least. No sense panicking. I'm more disturbed by the loss of Cibachrome as a means of printing chromes,
but saw that coming from way back, so have been shooting parallel for awhile, with a
gradual complete shift to color neg. I still hope to do some dye transfer printing, so might
shoot an 8x10 E100G sheet from time to time. My freezer supply should keep me going just
about as long as it keeps me supplied with dye transfer film. But I'm slowly getting to be obsolete myself.

[Old-N-Feeble]

Well... let's hope for the best. After all, didn't Adobe buy Macromedia which gave them a complete monopoly in digital graphics? Hasn't that combined team continued to refine and improve their products? Let's all just... hope... that FUJI CONTINUES TO IMPROVE reversal films... and that KODAK has REAL PLANS AND VISION for negative films.

[Brian C. Miller]

The best that I hope for is that Fuji and Kodak simply keep producing film.

However, I have no doubt that Fuji is simply running the machines for what sells, and that's it. Same with Kodak. Reading what has been posted on APUG about how Kodak really makes film, and that their smaller machines were scrapped out years ago, I really don't know how long Kodak will produce film at all once the theaters go to all-digital distribution. What will Fuji keep producing? It's not like they have a big line-up of color negative film at all, just Reala and Pro 400H. For E6 they have Provia and Velvia, Astia being discontinued and all that's remaining is what's on the shelf. Kodak has Ektar and Portra in three speeds, and no E6.

Fuji may be all that's left for color film, as they were never as big as Kodak, so they never optimized for gargantuan global production. Fuji makes E6 and B&W sheet film, and that's it. If Kodak went under completely due to practically no demand for any color negative film, then I would not expect Fuji to coat C41 on sheet film. That takes significant R&D, and the investment would never be returned by market demand. We will be stuck with 6x12 and 6x17 backs.

It doesn't matter how grand your plans and visions are when there's not enough market demand to sustain producing the product. E100G is/was a really great product. But that doesn't matter when you can't sell even one master roll's worth in a year, for the entire world.

[Tobias Key]

The best that I hope for is that Fuji and Kodak simply keep producing film.



Fuji may be all that's left for color film, as they were never as big as Kodak, so they never optimized for gargantuan global production. Fuji makes E6 and B&W sheet film, and that's it. If Kodak went under completely due to practically no demand for any color negative film, then I would not expect Fuji to coat C41 on sheet film. That takes significant R&D, and the investment would never be returned by market demand. We will be stuck with 6x12 and 6x17 backs.

Brian Fuji already makes 160NS in 4x5, I bought some only last month, they just don't export it to the US. It's readily available in Europe.

[SergeiR]

Brian Fuji already makes 160NS in 4x5, I bought some only last month, they just don't export it to the US. It's readily available in Europe.

"already"? I have some Fuji 4x5 C41 that expired 24 years ago

[sully75]

Brian Fuji already makes 160NS in 4x5, I bought some only last month, they just don't export it to the US. It's readily available in Europe.

Yeah I don't get that. I've seen pictures done on Fuji negative that looked just as nice (in a different way but similar quality) as stuff done on Portra. Seems like they could move a good bit of 4x5 film here.

[Drew Wiley]

Brian, one very important fact that you're overlooking is that both EK and Fuji are still very
much in competition for the RA4 paper market, along with a couple of other players. How
would that be helped if there were no companion films? There is still a lot of conventional
enlargement from color negs going on around the world, and even the alternative (scanning
from either chromes or negs, then onto something like Lightjet) requires a film image to start with. Some dumb things might have been done in the past, but I don't see any way
thery're going to be that dumb. Direct digital capture is probably going mostly to inkjet rather than to chromogenic paper. So what's the point in all that paper still being made if there's no film to go with it?