Kodak Retires Kodachrome Film

[accozzaglia]

Well, I'ma pull out the three PKR120 rolls I have in the freezer and shoot them. I'll shoot it as if I'm shooting a b/w film, except that my subjects will be both highly textured and vividly coloured. At worst, I'll have three rolls of interesting b/w shots from 2009. Leaving them there for eternity makes little sense. It's film, and it can be exposed and processed (one way or the other). Hoarding it now is just silly.

Hey, don't knock it: it's better than shooting digital.

[TerryM]

... Setting up a direct Internet sales channel that only covers limited market products, can be annoying for customers. For example if I can order Ektachrome 100GX, then why can't I order Tri-X or Ektar 100. Opening up that channel to all products, will likely see a lot of existing dealers, switching their yellow boxes for green ones. ...

Paul, I never said that Kodak shouldn't sell ALL of their Film products directly, but rather the opposite. They should directly sell everything, or connect their customers to Dealers who carry the specific Film they want -- as the JVC Website does for their products. I don't think that you'll see Dealers or Stores dropping Kodak products which are selling well.

... So we have an expensive sales channel for minimum market products, for a company that isn't set up for the manufacturing of small market products. ...

Kodak already IS making Ektachrome Films. My pre-paid ordering system would make it MORE profitable than the current method of Kodak making a Master Roll, and then waiting two years or more to sell it all off. If they could sell half of it through pre-paid orders, they would have enough money to cover the entire cost of making it! I'm afraid that you don't seem to care about Films that you don't use, and you sound like you want the Ektachrome line of Films to disappear. I don't use these Ekta Films, but I still don't want to see Ekta users lose their Films! Any Film user worth their salt will support their fellow Film users to the full. There are the defeatists who've already accepted that Film is dead. These are the same people who said thirty years ago that communism will never be defeated! How did that prediction work out?

... remember that a coating alley that is 1 mile long requires that the machine be threaded with 1 mile of leader at startup, then the startup film, then the good stuff, then the shutdown and then the 1 mile of leader that threads the machine when you are done with the run. If the machine is to continue running, this becomes a complex ballet of changing head and tail end rolls using huge fork lifts and splicing machines. ...

Ron, I'm trying to understand the design of the Coating Machine from the incomplete descriptions you've provided. Let me see if I now understand it correctly. The machine's production line is 5000 feet long. 5000 feet of Film Base is needed to "lead" another 5000 feet of Base for "coating". Then there is another 5000 feet of Base which "follows" the 5000 foot portion of Base that is coated. This totals 15,000 feet. After coating is finished, the 5000 feet of leader is thrown out. The 5000 feet of follower becomes the leader for the next run, and the coating starts all over again. So, for every 5000 feet of coated Film Base, 5000 feet of unused Base gets thrown out. Do I understand this correctly?
If so, why don't they re-use the same 5000 feet of leader and 5000 feet of follower by simply heat molding it to the beginning and end of the 5000 feet of new Base that is to be coated? This would eliminate a lot of waste.

... I am sitting here reading over several pages of comments purporting to "teach" Kodak, written by people who apparently have no business experience, no scientific background, and who have no concept of what the coating machine does or how it does it. And this does not factor in the merging timelines with tracks of intermediates and everything else such as boxes for packing, cans for packing, time on the slitters and perfers and other things subordinate to what have been discussed this far.
Don't get me wrong though. There are some excellent comments here, and very much to the point, but a lot more is sophomoric and misses the real issues by a country mile.
So, I say kudos and sorry guys. You figure out who I am talking about.

Well, I know you're talking about me. HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!
The simple fact is that it's possible to make a profit at anything as long as you charge enough money. Where there's a will there's a way! However, people with a "defeatist" mentality don't have the "will", and they will always fail.

[Photo Engineer]

Terry;

The leader is used as long as possible if left uncoated, but consider this... In continuous production, which is the best of all possible worlds, the "leader" is the support for the last product and the trailer is the support for the next product. This is possible if all products have similar coating speeds and structures as well as similar slide or curtain seup. Kodachrome does not. It is the outlier.

In fact, in some vague ways, Kodachrome is more similar to Eastman Color Print film or some E6 films but not to color neg or B&W. In other ways, Kodachrome is similar to B&W.

Now, imagine a huge siunsoidal loop of film just as in a Kodachrome processing machne or a minilab. It is composed of a head with the coating hopper, the cooling section (if applicable - some compaines do not chill set), then the drying section with many many stages of loops at varying temperatures. The entire path that the film travels in this sinusoidal loop is up to 1 mile, but the total size can be quite small in comparison.

Now, this assumes that you have looked at a Kodachrome processing machine and seen the loops (pictures posted many times on APUG) or that you have looked inside of a minilab machine when it was idle. Being the film enthusiast you espouse to be, I have to assume that you have done both of these simply for education purposes. That is, so that you know what you are talking about.

And don't tar yourself with any imagined brush. I mention no names.

PE

[wogster]

Paul, I never said that Kodak shouldn't sell ALL of their Film products directly, but rather the opposite. They should directly sell everything, or connect their customers to Dealers who carry the specific Film they want -- as the JVC Website does for their products. I don't think that you'll see Dealers or Stores dropping Kodak products which are selling well.


Kodak already IS making Ektachrome Films. My pre-paid ordering system would make it MORE profitable than the current method of Kodak making a Master Roll, and then waiting two years or more to sell it all off. If they could sell half of it through pre-paid orders, they would have enough money to cover the entire cost of making it! I'm afraid that you don't seem to care about Films that you don't use, and you sound like you want the Ektachrome line of Films to disappear. I don't use these Ekta Films, but I still don't want to see Ekta users lose their Films! Any Film user worth their salt will support their fellow Film users to the full. There are the defeatists who've already accepted that Film is dead. These are the same people who said thirty years ago that communism will never be defeated! How did that prediction work out?

The simple fact is that it's possible to make a profit at anything as long as you charge enough money. Where there's a will there's a way! However, people with a "defeatist" mentality don't have the "will", and they will always fail.

Dealers will drop products if they feel the direct sales channel is infringing on their business. Now I think that this may not be the real way to go, here is an alternative. Make it easier on the dealer channel.

Lower the minimum order sizes on films that are not big sellers to dealers, a dealer may be willing to stock a 5 roll brick or a 10 roll brick, where as he would not risk a 20 roll or a 50 roll case of a film that isn't a known big seller. Of course the customer sees that he has 5 rolls of EX150GL and takes the whole lot, asking if he can get more, he surfs over to Kodak and adds a 10 roll brick to his next order. then tells the customer to come back on Tuesday. Kodak ships the film on Friday for delivery on Monday.

Nothing against Ektachrome, I hope they can sell the stuff by the trailer load, but reality is that slides are not a big business anymore, but if they can get more of the stuff on dealer shelves and in dealer fridges, that's a good thing. Kodak, whether they like it or not, needs to become leaner and meaner, and that may mean things like using web selling to dealers, shipping tiny orders to dealers more often. It may even mean using logistics to ship film directly to international dealers from Rochester, instead of shipping stuff to a warehouse in country and then shipping to the dealer. It may in fact mean that a master roll is made on Monday, the film is slit and packaged on Tuesday, checked in on Wednesday, and shipped out on Thursday and in the dealers hands Friday for weekend sales.

It's true, given enough money and time, anything is possible, the only time it gets interesting is when the price is higher then the market will bear, and you get stuck with unsold product.

[aldevo]

Dealers will drop products if they feel the direct sales channel is infringing on their business. Now I think that this may not be the real way to go, here is an alternative. Make it easier on the dealer channel.

Lower the minimum order sizes on films that are not big sellers to dealers, a dealer may be willing to stock a 5 roll brick or a 10 roll brick, where as he would not risk a 20 roll or a 50 roll case of a film that isn't a known big seller. Of course the customer sees that he has 5 rolls of EX150GL and takes the whole lot, asking if he can get more, he surfs over to Kodak and adds a 10 roll brick to his next order. then tells the customer to come back on Tuesday. Kodak ships the film on Friday for delivery on Monday.

Nothing against Ektachrome, I hope they can sell the stuff by the trailer load, but reality is that slides are not a big business anymore, but if they can get more of the stuff on dealer shelves and in dealer fridges, that's a good thing. Kodak, whether they like it or not, needs to become leaner and meaner, and that may mean things like using web selling to dealers, shipping tiny orders to dealers more often. It may even mean using logistics to ship film directly to international dealers from Rochester, instead of shipping stuff to a warehouse in country and then shipping to the dealer. It may in fact mean that a master roll is made on Monday, the film is slit and packaged on Tuesday, checked in on Wednesday, and shipped out on Thursday and in the dealers hands Friday for weekend sales.

It's true, given enough money and time, anything is possible, the only time it gets interesting is when the price is higher then the market will bear, and you get stuck with unsold product.

Kodak already seems plenty lean and mean. PE has outlined how flexible their coating and finishing operations are in numerous posts.

But it needs a certain sales volume to sustain it. It doesn't seem very likely that Kodak could find additional capital at this stage to reimplement it along the lines you have described.

Your point about getting stuck with unsold product is a legit one. Unfortunately, given the lousy state of the economy, moving an inventory of discretionary consumables is tough. So that price point doesn't have to be very high at all, I'm afraid.

Mind you, for all the "doom and gloom" I've been posting today, let it also be know that I just plunked down $500 for a Bronica SQ-Ai kit from KEH...

I do think B&W film & paper will be around for quite some time (though probably not from Kodak or FujiFilm) for the simple reason that these materials are much simpler to produce and there are smaller manufacturers out there who have modest-size production infrastructure. Color faces a much tougher road.

[aldevo]

Every industry that has gone digital, has seen it's traditional technology take a steep falloff, then bounce back to create a small, but healthy market. I think that we are pretty much at the bottom of the falloff for traditional photography, it will then bounce back, heck I think that's starting already.

The still image market will divide into 3 sub-markets, the largest will be digital only, as phone-cameras get better, more people will use them, these are the people who used to buy disposables and box cameras. . Professional photographers will use digital where speed is of the essence. I expect journalists and some others will be digital only as well.

The second market will be the traditional film only market, this will be those who do not need the speed of digital and/or digital output, and where image quality and paper display output is the primary requirement.

The third is the cross-over market, people who shoot digital when they need digital and film when they want the quality film provides. I put myself in this group.

I expect of the remaining camera companies, at least one, will return to making film cameras as their front line product. At least one will produce film and digital cameras for people who want a system that uses both and shares lenses and other parts between them. At least one will go out of business. A number of the companies that make cameras along with other things will lose interest.

I should have specified analog printing paper, do you know how many people there are that treat the memory card like a roll of film, they pop it out of the camera, hand it to the lab and get prints made, seriously.

wogster,

I like your view of the world much better than my own...especially as I just paid $500 for a Bronica SQ-Ai kit.

[wogster]

Kodak already seems plenty lean and mean. PE has outlined how flexible their coating and finishing operations are in numerous posts.

But it needs a certain sales volume to sustain it. It doesn't seem very likely that Kodak could find additional capital at this stage to reimplement it along the lines you have described.

Your point about getting stuck with unsold product is a legit one. Unfortunately, given the lousy state of the economy, moving an inventory of discretionary consumables is tough. So that price point doesn't have to be very high at all, I'm afraid.

Mind you, for all the "doom and gloom" I've been posting today, let it also be know that I just plunked down $500 for a Bronica SQ-Ai kit from KEH...

I do think B&W film & paper will be around for quite some time (though probably not from Kodak or FujiFilm) for the simple reason that these materials are much simpler to produce and there are smaller manufacturers out there who have modest-size production infrastructure. Color faces a much tougher road.

There is a solution for Kodak, without replacing plants at an amazing level of capital expense, simply do what almost all other manufacturers in the US have done, farm out production over seas. We know that Fujifilm has the production facilities in Japan, depending on the production level, they could get colour product coated by Fujifilm in Japan, and B&W product could be coated by Harmon in The UK, we know they can do cubic grain film (not sure if Fujifilm can). Keep the slitting and packaging plant they have in Mexico.

[wogster]

wogster,

I like your view of the world much better than my own...especially as I just paid $500 for a Bronica SQ-Ai kit.

Nice camera, good luck with it.

[Photo Engineer]

There is a solution for Kodak, without replacing plants at an amazing level of capital expense, simply do what almost all other manufacturers in the US have done, farm out production over seas. We know that Fujifilm has the production facilities in Japan, depending on the production level, they could get colour product coated by Fujifilm in Japan, and B&W product could be coated by Harmon in The UK, we know they can do cubic grain film (not sure if Fujifilm can). Keep the slitting and packaging plant they have in Mexico.

Reminds me of a James Bond theme song.

No one can do it better...................

There is a thread here on photomaterial quality. It is important to consider that thread in this context.

Kodak could not farm out production. When they tried, they found quality to be inferior to the US/France/England production.

PE

[Sirius Glass]

Wait, wait, I got an idea!

Lets all become independently wealthy and by lots of film and photo supplies!

Then Kodak will start advertising film and how great film is!

And new film cameras will be made!

[Gee, these pills really make me feel really happy!]

Steve