George Eastman would be really pissed off.
George Eastman would be really pissed off.
"The topic has changed from will Kodak cut this film in 4x5 to why Kodak will not cut it and how they came to that decision so late in the game."
Just my thoughts with back story of the exploration of ASA 25 4 x 5 a year or so back. ASA 25 exploration ended at a number of $15K - $17K to pay for the roll of master film stock to be coated up front. Sheet film is sliced by precision rollers as a strip from a master roll. The slice roll is then cut and packed in a separate operation. Kodak masters rolls are a mile long and 51 inches wide if I remember right. So our request for Double X 4 x 5 meant a 3 mile loss of 35mm movie stock at its current market price. (4 in vs 35mm times 3 cut width)..
Validation of sorts: 250 box minimum, 50 sheets, say 4 inch slice. 5 inch of roll per 4 x 5. 250 of 50 x 5 inches divide by 12 for feet. So approximately 5208 feet of roll. Looks like a length match to me.
Eastman is saying buy the whole slice.
An entire master roll of 4 x 5's would be about 150,000 sheets (12 slices)
Why so late. Top management saw a 4 inch slice of Double X
that was 3900 feet long sitting forever unsold.
I'm done making stupid guesses now.
So for me.. We asked them to risk slicing our bit out of a very valuable master roll.
I am glad Eastman responded. I hope we become a larger market.
The question was, why didn't they start out saying "the box order minimum is 250 boxes", instead of saying "the box order minimum is 60 (or whatever it was" and then after people spent time and money to organize an order, they come back with, oh we meant 250 not 60.... It's kinda BS...Originally Posted by gleaf
"The topic has changed from will Kodak cut this film in 4x5 to why Kodak will not cut it and how they came to that decision so late in the game."
Just my thoughts with back story of the exploration of ASA 25 4 x 5 a year or so back. ASA 25 exploration ended at a number of $15K - $17K to pay for the roll of master film stock to be coated up front. Sheet film is sliced by precision rollers as a strip from a master roll. The slice roll is then cut and packed in a separate operation. Kodak masters rolls are a mile long and 51 inches wide if I remember right. So our request for Double X 4 x 5 meant a 3 mile loss of 35mm movie stock at its current market price. (4 in vs 35mm times 3 cut width)..
Validation of sorts: 250 box minimum, 50 sheets, say 4 inch slice. 5 inch of roll per 4 x 5. 250 of 50 x 5 inches divide by 12 for feet. So approximately 5208 feet of roll. Looks like a length match to me.
Eastman is saying buy the whole slice.
An entire master roll of 4 x 5's would be about 150,000 sheets (12 slices)
Why so late. Top management saw a 4 inch slice of Double X
that was 3900 feet long sitting forever unsold.
I'm done making stupid guesses now.
So for me.. We asked them to risk slicing our bit out of a very valuable master roll.
I am glad Eastman responded. I hope we become a larger market.
They might have thought of a way to make a shorter roll or use some leftover from movie stock and after trying to figure it out came out without a way. And then just jumped to the WHOLE master roll. My guess.
After all they are working to make money to pay off the Pension Plan in the UK which are the new owners.
I think what really happened is that they gave a monetary figure as the minimum based on normal figures for cutting something like TMY-2, which probably costs roughly $100/box for some special size, and would produce X boxes, when they realized that having to cut it would cost a lot more money they never changed the total amount of money needed and so it was assumed that the box count didn't change just the price per box.
So when the order was submitted, Kodak was like "well, wait a minute, this just isn't enough boxes to cover our minimum run" and so somebody dropped the ball there and didn't realize that both figures had to change.
That's my guess anyway, it still sucks a lot, and frustrates me, but it is what it is...
Oh well... you could take your mind off of it by shooting film that exists... like TMY-2... or it'll be gone, too.
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i think you probably have it backwards.
maybe ... they DID make samples and cut them
and they realized it was a thin base
that was more trouble than it was worth .. ( for THEM and the BUYERS )
rather than jack the price up even higher,
and knowing how difficult it was to get the minimum
they just increased the minimum order.
i think it is kind of naive for anyone to think that a company
who treasures their QA and knowing people say they offer the
best film on the market today, would squander their reputation
on a boutique order of a nice film on a oddball substrate that has
the potential to be a problem ... soon after they went bankrupt and
as they try to get back on their feet ...
its not much different than their position for other things, potential PR nightmare doesn't do well
for a long time i tried to get them to sell master rolls of their film
( as ilford used to do ) to photowarehouse, so they would cut to custom sizes
and people wouldn't have to wait for yearly special orders or buy a pallet of film, win win ? ..
nope, they refused and as i was told, it was because if people paid money for kodak film
and there was a dead zone or a problem with the emulsion that the cutters didn't avoid
(there are maps of the film that show areas NOT to cut ) then it would damage kodak's reputation.
my poor guess is that they realized selling a this MP substrate LF film might have been a recipe for disaster,
and i am maybe by boosting the minimum order it was just an easy way to
dodge the bullet ... and a QA/ PR nightmare ...
but then again, maybe *I* am naive and they are a bunch of slackers who waited
until the last minute to realize they didn't get enough film orders to manufacture + cut a roll...
kind of like the mars probe scientists forgetting to convert imperial back to metric ..
Best answer yet, and this post changes my negative opinion of 'new' Kodak.
Except he's got his information wrong and again forgot to read the full reply from Keith, they didn't cut anything, they realized they didn't have enough orders to not have wasted film.
It had nothing to do with the thin base.
+1
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