Great Progress at Ferrania

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fdarnell

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Nice post over on petapixel with videos of Ferrania team cleaning "Little Boy". They've got a lot of work to do. This looks like a small lab-scale coater, which would be good for making runs of small films without major investment in materials - sort of to prove out emulsions.

check it out:

Litttle Boy is Prepped!


I'm moving to Italy - great coffee and they'll need a coating engineer!:D
 
"Little Boy" is (or was) indeed an experimental coating machine. These days it's large enough to sustain a good size film business. There is a "Big Boy" somewhere in the Ferrania premises too. This is a fascinating story in many ways. I wish Ferrania the best of luck and will be the first in line to buy their products when they become available.
 
I'm waiting for the film I got with the Kickstarter. That should be shipped out sometimes soon I think?
 
The prospect of a "new" slide film is also whetting my appetite. Aside from a day trip to Venice in the early 1980s, I've never been to Italy - so I'm also thinking about a holiday over there and seeing if they'll let me have a look round the place - sometime later this year or early 2016. I'm fascinated by this.
 
fdarnell said:
Nice post over on petapixel with videos of Ferrania team cleaning "Little Boy". They've got a lot of work to do. This looks like a small lab-scale coater, which would be good for making runs of small films without major investment in materials - sort of to prove out emulsions.

check it out:

Litttle Boy is Prepped!


I'm moving to Italy - great coffee and they'll need a coating engineer!:D
Click to expand...

Yes, great news!
I am looking forward using their new color reversal film!

Cheers, Jan
 
Ferrania Machine

Ferrania Machine

Ferrania was part of 3M back in the 80's. My ex father-in-law travelled over there to set up their finishing operations. They will need help with this since there's slitting, rewinding, perfing and packaging still yet to do and maybe restart. He's still around, fixing things in his house - maybe 80+ now.

3M made the cool grainy 640 ASA slide film. It was an E-6 emulsion I believe.

Guess I'll need to get a Contax G to be able to sample what they produce from this line. Even at lab coating scale it can be 1000's of rolls. We generally considered one roll of 36 exp 35mm to equal 1 sq. ft of film. It will also be easier for them to restart a smaller coater than the big boys. Our old air knife lines at duPont were three stories - it was a long climb to figure out a bad bearing on a drying system fan causing chatter.
 
Way back, I did not find Ferrania better than the pastel colours of Agfa CT18 or the brutal saturation of Koachrome. If they provide better emusions now, I will buy when in Rome.
 
ph. said:
Way back, I did not find Ferrania better than the pastel colours of Agfa CT18 or the brutal saturation of Koachrome. If they provide better emusions now, I will buy when in Rome.
Click to expand...

I loved the palette of Agfachrome CT18, though the grain wasn't as fine as that in other films of comparable speed.

- Murray
 
I've been getting updates from them. I am glad they are sending out regular updates (unlike the Travelwide Kickstarter which I am incredibly excited about as well).

But one thing here fellas - when they come out with film... you better buy it! I'm gonna buy lots of rolls of the 800 iso whenever it comes out and you better buy some too! We need to support these guys :).
 
I saw an update yesterday or the day before. They've had a number of problems, setbacks, al contributing to a substantial delay. But they're keeping on it. Check the Kickstarter site for details.

G
 
Stuff happens. They seem committed to making a go of it and I like the transparency of their communications. Restarting a film production plant is a major undertaking. I support their efforts!

G
 
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