10 businesses facing extinction in 10 years (Film)

[QT Luong]

11. Professional photography ?

[Steven Barall]

Maybe the horse is just sleeping...yeah that's it, sleeping... That is a pathetic article. I have many gay friends and I hear all the time about their adventures in gay bars. From what I understand, it has less to do with feeling unwelcome elsewhere than with feeling welcome somewhere. Thanks for the post.

[jetcode]

There are two E-6 labs left in our state. Our local lab, the best one (once one of Kodak's exclusive Q Labs and with a national clientel), is now down to running 3 half days a week. E-6 had a 2 hour turn around two years ago, now has potentially a two day turn around.

I talked to NewLab in S.F. recently, their peak was 2001, they are processing 1/3 of that today.

[Charles Carstensen]

Besides having to watch 45 minutes of commercials with a TV show we get this out of touch drivil? No crop dusters? What are they thinking?

[QT Luong]

I talked to NewLab in S.F. recently, their peak was 2001, they are processing 1/3 of that today.

And this is despite of being the only E6 pro lab left in the SF Bay area (or one of two if you count Santa Cruz in the SF BA).

[scott_6029]

right, but the ones people like were all made decades ago, during tubes' heyday, and people now pay ten times to hundreds of times the original price for "new old stock."

let's hope film has a brighter future than this. i'm not excited by the thought of buying "vintage" tmax from internet dealers for hundreds of dollars a box!

tubes don't have expiration dates. they can also be used more than once.

No older tubes are not necessarily better. Their is mistique to older tubes and yes they can sound great - I own some, but to blanketly discount tubes today is a mistake. VAC uses newly manufactured tubes and their gear is fantastic. Tubes will last longer than film for sure, but the mere fact that a lot of NEW tubes are being made today says something still.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I've swapped some of the tubes in our Hammond A101 organ, and the new Russian tubes sound pretty good, but our Hammond repair guru recommended avoiding Chinese tubes.

[Gene McCluney]

I've swapped some of the tubes in our Hammond A101 organ, and the new Russian tubes sound pretty good, but our Hammond repair guru recommended avoiding Chinese tubes.

The Chinese tubes got a bad reputation early on for low quality, but they have drastically improved their quality in the last half-dozen years. Your repair guru is just not up-to-speed on current quality levels. In fact, all new tubes are improved in quality as demand continues to grow in hi-fi and guitar amp use.

[jetcode]

And this is despite of being the only E6 pro lab left in the SF Bay area (or one of two if you count Santa Cruz in the SF BA).

We have a lab here in Marin County but for 35mm and MF only. And they have diversified like all others in order to survive.

[paulr]

I've heard some decent sounding new tubes and some terrible sounding old ones. But I haven't heard any great sounding new ones.

For a while I was using modern russian tubes in my bass amplifier; i found a particular one that sounded good. But eventually I switched to much better sounding NOS tubes. In my stereo (tube preamp, not power amp) none of the modern tubes sounded good. Lucky for me in both cases my favorites have been fairly unexotic tubes from the '60s and '70s, so I don't have to pay a fortune for them. Yet!

The issue is one that could be similar in the film world. When the big tube companies stopped making tubes, a whole constelation of supporting companies stopped making the parts or went out of business entirely. Of particular interest was certain types of plated wire that were manufactured by specialty companies and that had no use outside the tube world. The knowledge of how to make it has been lost.

There has been a great tube revival in the audio world (well, mabye not great, but impressive...). Unfortunately, because of all the lost parts suppliers and lost knowledge, the industry has been unable to pick up where it left off. Even when someone has purchased the designs and facilities of an old tube company (like Mullard), they don't have access to all the supporting bits and pieces. So the modern tube companies have been forced to reinvent many wheels. It's no surprise that the new tubes have only slowly gone from terrible to decent. I'm sure they'll get better, but it will take a while. And I don't know if they'll reach their previous high water mark. There's nowhere near the r&d going into them as there was back when every piece of electronics was glowing with tubes!