Those little yellow boxes

[John Kasaian]

Did anyone else see the article in Black and White magazine(the British one) about Kodak? It is in the current edition on Border's racks in the U.S. I was just leafing through it---its an expensive import and I'm still paying off the Christmas American Express, soooo....---the gist of it being that the Great Yellow Father in Rochester is no longer investing in R&D in film, which we already know, and will be manufacturing film for other private labels. It also reports that Kodak has taken the silver out of Tri-X. Huh? Interestingly enough, if true, there are some exciting/ominous possibilities. Imagine the possibilities of getting T-max-oid or Plus X-oid Arista or Ultrafine or J and C Classic? On the other hand(the one behind the back, holding the dirk) Kodak deciding to only make black and white film from that C-41 compatible bull pucky. What are your thoughts?

[darter]

"On the other hand(the one behind the back, holding the dirk) Kodak deciding to only make black and white film from that C-41 compatible bull pucky."

I ran this sentence through Altavista's translation program into Spanish, and then ran it back again into English. This was the result:

"In the other hand(the one behind the buttock, carrying out dirk) Kodak that decides to only make the black and white film of that one compatible bull C-41 pucky."

I think I understand it now.

[John D Gerndt]

Shoot first, make prints later, film may be gone tomorrow.

Big Yellow Brother will do what it must to make loads of money and nothing else. Have you tried to buy a vinyl record lately? (By the way, good vinyl records still sound better than digital recordings, but who really cares?) Film may end the same way. Phillips and Sony just bought up the record presses and destroyed them. There is no one company that stands to gain as Sony and Phillips did in that digital conversion so I give it another twenty years. The big guys have to sell their stuff to someone who will squeeze the rest of the life out of it and then we will be left with nothing but files we may or may not be able to interpret come mid century. Aren’t I a cheerful guy?

Cheers indeed!

[tim atherton]

Not sure about the silver stuff - I think there's a lot of hocus pocus about silver in films anway...

As for

"Great Yellow Father in Rochester is no longer investing in R&D in film"

I believe Kodak recnetly announced that it was no longer investing in R&D in CONSUMER films (of course it may well have stopped R&D in pro B&W films years ago, so they wouldn't announce that anyway - who knows!). But they did specify "consumer" film

[Frank Petronio]

Living in Rochester, the rumour is that Kodak has thousands of film improvements and decades of research waiting in the "vault" for the right marketing opportunity. That would be whenever Fuji or a competitor introduces a better film than Kodak makes - until then, why release an improvement when Kodak already dominates the B&W film market?

Kodak is still a leading producer of patents and R&D - but with such a small market (large format B&W film) I doubt that they will make any more significant improvements.

[Ralph Barker]

Having switched to Ilford B&W films (and Fuji for color) a few years ago, I no longer worry about when Kodak will discontinue particular products, John. You should try it. It's very liberating. ;-)

It seems to me that Kodak is driven by what the financial folks in management think Wall Street wants to hear. Certainly, it is no longer the pre-eminent photographic R&D house that it once was. Exactly when that took place is subject to debate.

[jnantz]

heyjohn

i have a shelf full of film and when i run out - won't be buying any more of that yellow stuff ... doesn't matter to me if they stop production ... i'll be buying film from j&c and photowarehouse, until they stop selling, and then i'll be coating dry plates from emulsion i make myself, until i can't get the ingredients anymore and then i guess i'll learn how to draw using my enlarger projecting an image onto paper ... should keep me busy

btw john g. - you can still buy laquer plates ( blanks ) from transco in elizabeth new jersey, and a recordio on FEEbay .. to cut your own vinyl i had a recordophone (like a recordio but 33rpm instead of 78) that i bought at a junque store and re-tubed. got some plates from transco and did the lo-fi for a while. nothing like recording music on a record player

"hiss-pop"

[John Kasaian]

jnanian,

Recordophone? I've got one of those somewhere. Didn't they take those yellow discs and they played from the inside out instead of starting at the edge of the disc? How cool is that? I've got my stash of 9-1/2" and 5" aerial film in mom's freezer and thanks to ebay, a passel of glass plate holders for the 5x7, so I've got my own photographic version of the "Ruby Ridge" thing if need be;-)

Ralph,

I shoot a lot of Ilford-oid and Forte, as well as Tmax for night photography and Aerographic for aerials, so Kodak's well being is of interest, at least to me. Besides, I used to fly a Piper Cub so I'm inordinately fond of that particular shade of yellow.

Frank and Tim,

Interesting notion. I hope somewhere in Rochester there is a "Holy of Holies" unknown to the corporate "Suits" where lab coated sentries are prepared to lay down thier lives to keep the Eastman family jewels preserved for the LF posterity.

John,

Get a recordophone man!

Phil,

I always knew there was a reason why I liked spaniards!

[james mickelson]

Don Quixote lives. When is beating up on the so-called "big yellow father", which is like fighting the wind, going to cease? Do any of you really think the rest of us care? This parrying has gone on since I started in photography and yet large format film is still here and Kodak still makes it. Yes someday they will cease to manufacture it but someday we will die too. Until then, just shoot film and make good images. And quit thrusting your verbal swords at the wind.

[David F. Stein]

The real threshold for 35mm color negative film will be passed when motion picture films are no longer shot in REAL FILM-which is conceivable. We forget that many advances in B&W emulsions were driven by the quest for better motion picture films in the days when films were shot in B&W. I was watching a film in the theater the other day and one of the last credits was "FILMED ON EASTMAN KODAK FILM." I take that as a credit that really stands for a genuine desire for quality; in translating the world (or movie sound stage) into the magic of cinema. The target audience for the T-Max films (advertising and commercial photographers shooting 35mm or 120 "need or want only black and white" assignments) is largely moving on to digital, I expect. The commercial and advertising photographers drive (or drove) 120 film (and corresponding 4x5) emulsions in the same way. Scientific? Medical? What are the real drivers of emulsion technology today-certainly not fine art photographers or hobbyists. THANKS.