Behind the Film - Inside the ILFORD factory

[George Hart]

Many thanks for letting us know about this video. I too went on the factory tour 12 years ago and I enjoyed seeing much more than there is time for in this video. I was surprised to see there that sheets of paper are counted, inspected and boxed by hand. The water treatment plant at the entrance to the coating facility is most impressive, and on the wall there is a photograph of the staff denoting a record time during which they had produced batches of emulsion without a batch having to be withdrawn because of a flaw. Oren has written about the roll film spooling machine, one of two, which look as if they are entirely home-made! Here we learned that the backing paper for 120 film is in fact more expensive than the film itself. In the video we get a glimpse of possibly the largest and newest of the 135 spooling machines, through which film passes at an extraordinary speed. And on the floor underneath the machine there are buckets that receive the bits of film which fall out of the sprocket holes, and from which the silver is recovered for making more film. Naturally they show on the video a lot of HP5 Plus in small format which was, and probably still is their biggest seller in film. Long live Ilford!

[Bob Salomon]

Many thanks for letting us know about this video. I too went on the factory tour 12 years ago and I enjoyed seeing much more than there is time for in this video. I was surprised to see there that sheets of paper are counted, inspected and boxed by hand. The water treatment plant at the entrance to the coating facility is most impressive, and on the wall there is a photograph of the staff denoting a record time during which they had produced batches of emulsion without a batch having to be withdrawn because of a flaw. Oren has written about the roll film spooling machine, one of two, which look as if they are entirely home-made! Here we learned that the backing paper for 120 film is in fact more expensive than the film itself. In the video we get a glimpse of possibly the largest and newest of the 135 spooling machines, through which film passes at an extraordinary speed. And on the floor underneath the machine there are buckets that receive the bits of film which fall out of the sprocket holes, and from which the silver is recovered for making more film. Naturally they show on the video a lot of HP5 Plus in small format which was, and probably still is their biggest seller in film. Long live Ilford!

Backing paper is a story in itself.

Back in the early 90s Kodak called me to make an appointment for a couple of their engineers to visit us and the company that did our camera repairs.

We had been questioning why we were having a problem with transport gears on the Linhof Technorama failing and stripping when Kodak film was used but not when Fuji or Ilford film was. For some reason with Kodak film the film sometimes would not release properly from the roll to get taken up on the take up spool. When this happened some users would apply too much force and strip the gears.

Kodak kept telling us it was not their problem. But the first two Technoramas sold went to Kodak to make their Colorama display at Grand Central Station. It seems that their own photographers reported the same problem to their supervisors.

So the engineers came down with lots of different Kodak, Fuji and Ilford film and spent a day with our service manager merrily running 120 and 220 film through the 617 and the 612 Technoramas as well as through the Rollei 2.8GX and the 6000 series cameras.

At the end of the day they found that Kodak rolls would sometimes not come off the supply spool while Fuji and Ilford film always did. They told us they would get back to us with their findings.

After a couple of weeks they told us that the problem was caused by Kodak backing paper. The Fuji and Ilford papers were very slippery while the Kodak paper was more gritty, and that grittiness could cause the film to not come off the supply spool without using additional force.

Another problem came with the auto film positioning with the Rolleiflex cameras. Some films had too thick or too thin a sandwich between the film and the paper and that would fool the feeler mechanism and let the entire roll run through without stopping at the first frame or, if too thick, hanging up. But hanging up was rare!

[interneg]

... while the Kodak paper was more gritty, and that grittiness could cause the film to not come off the supply spool without using additional force.

Having recently been given some well stored & long expired VPL from the early 90's & having run it through through a Pentax 67, it's good to know that I wasn't imagining things about the winding-off at the end being rather troublesome.

[Tin Can]

Maybe that's why so many MF Roll cameras can't count.

I wondered why so many are broken...

Having recently been given some well stored & long expired VPL from the early 90's & having run it through through a Pentax 67, it's good to know that I wasn't imagining things about the winding-off at the end being rather troublesome.