No more Kodak papers

[ajuk]

Originally Posted by Bob F.

Ah, this would be the same AP that said that both Ilford and Kodak had sold more B&W film the previous year in the UK than any time before. Six months or so later Ilford went bust quoting a 25% downturn in the previous year... IIRC, Kodak have since reported similar film sales drops (not sure if they included colour).

I was surprised because I had assumed B&W sales would not be hit anything like as much as colour (wrong again; remind me never to take up betting on the horses)...

Silverprint have quotes from the new Ilford management in their news section (http://www.silverprint.co.uk/News05.htm). They say decline is now around 15-20% and they hope it will stabilize to 5-7% (one would have hoped that they would have hoped that it would stop declining completely at some point!)

Cheers, Bob.

Acording to Jeff at AP its the decline in Paper sales that hit Ilford, If you ask me companies should be more positive about there tradtional products and promote printing in a darkroom like a model plane company would promote there kits.

[tim atherton]

More on Kodak:

From the Associated Press:

Eastman Kodak is trimming its traditional film business
once again. The company is scaling back film manufacturing
in China and is closing some businesses in Rochester and
West Virginia. About 1,000 U-S jobs will be cut.
The moves are part of a dramatic overhaul begun by the
world's biggest film manufacturer 20 months ago to
eliminate up to 25,000 jobs by mid-2007.
To fortify its growing digital business, Kodak has moved
to slash deeper than it set out to do in January, 2004,
when it targeted up to 15,000 job cuts.
Kodak will consolidate color photo paper manufacturing
at factories in Colorado and in England, by shutting down
an operation in Rochester, N.Y., by the end of October.
By year's end, the company also will close a polyester
recycling plant in Rochester and next year shut down a
printing-plate factory in West Virginia.

[inthedark]

BTW, this remark may be a bit off topic, but I have a similar problem with Agfa not making production sizes of analog paper for color anyway. SO before I spent a lot of money replacing some critical glass in my shop, I tested my enlargers with a 10" roll of the laser color paper. It works just fine. Slight color adjustment, but that is likely with every new roll opened. . . otherwise it is really pretty nice. With aerial film as the source, the colors and contrast maintain as well as the "analog" paper did, and the exposure time is only slightly less than the analog paper.

Personally I think it is darn near the same stuff, but the digital branding makes it more expensive. . . but the Agfa tech swears that I should not be able to use it on the regular enlarger lights.

Anyway, my point is to investigate buying and testing some of the so called digital silver emulsion papers. Fuji has one that my digi-printer uses when I have b&w mosaics which I have liked. . .anyway, don't just assume digital laser paper means anti-analog.