Celluloid no more: distribution of film to cease by 2013 in the US
A report projects movie studios will go completely digital in the near future.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/...All+content%29
Celluloid no more: distribution of film to cease by 2013 in the US
A report projects movie studios will go completely digital in the near future.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/...All+content%29
hooray!
If that's true, acetate film base production will be a very small niche market. We may be coating our own glass plates sooner than I expected.
Another superficial article, they talk about distribution and therefore print film - it has nothing to do with acquisition (not even the same stock) or still photography.
Vinny, I've made this argument time after time, our types don't even figure in the marketing strategy. Kodak at one time had annual capacity of 750 MILLION square yards if film. Divide that by the amount of sheet film we use and see how many people it would take to keep Kodak lines going..Astronomical, so running out to buy 100 extra sheets won't make much difference...
Anybody know how long it's been since still film was made on celluloid base - nearly a hundred years?
It already got unpopular before WW I after a series of disastrous cinema fires. It was widely banned as a consumer material by the twenties, and phased out as a professional projection material by the fifties (indeed, there had been moves to make acetate security film obligatory in the thirties, but celluloid saw a comeback due to wartime economies). As process film and motion picture taking stock it kept around until polyester bases became widespread - for multi-strip colour processes and optical masking effects its dimensional stability sometimes was still needed up into the seventies.
There seems to be some confusion running through the thread...
Cellulose nitrate film was the highly flammable film, and the reason it was illegal to yell "Fire!" in a movie house. It was the first flexible film (used in the first Kodak), introduced in 1888 and phased out in the 1930's. It was replaced by "Safety Film", the non-flammable cellulose acetate. This was later replaced by an improved version, cellulose triacetate, which was used on photographic films into the 1970's. Polyester polymer film bases came in during the 1960's, and as far as I know, have been the only film bases used since the late 1970's, but it's entirely possible that small manufacturers used cellulose triacetate longer.
But we've been on polyester quite a while now...
Last edited by Mark Sawyer; 15-Jun-2012 at 13:38.
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
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