How long does film have?

How long does film have?

  • Film? Film is already dead! Long live digital.

    Votes: 5 1.4%

  • A few more years.

    Votes: 38 10.8%

  • A few more decades.

    Votes: 123 35.0%

  • Film will be around forever!

    Votes: 185 52.7%
  • Total voters
    351
If I dare say it, Walmart is also a distortion of the overall picture. If you can get the figures for the sale of film throughout the chain, it would be a true reflection of the sales but, then again, only in the US. Already in this thread, there are a range of answers on the amount of film stocked in different areas. Because one store is closing it's minilab doesn't mean that the chain is.

I can't speak for the whole of Europe but the situation in the UK is quite different. Every large new Tesco store (UK equivalent to Walmart), that has opened recently has had a Fuji minilab installed. Similar story for ASDA (owned by Walmart) and many of the others. The prime selling position is on the aisle ends opposite the checkouts. Just about every big store has one of these dedicated to film with just a few memory cards on it. The UK can't sustain the film market and sales are decreasing but perhaps not as rapidly. I haven't been to Europe this year yet but the last time it was similar. The biggest change is that now nearly all the boxes are green.

It could be interesting in the next couple of years. The yellow giant is probably still top in the US and it is still by far the biggest player in the movie industry. However, in those places where film is declining more slowly, it is no longer the big player haveing lost out to Fuji some time ago. I wouldn't like to lay odds on which stops film first.

Kim
 
JTK said:
A big investment bank representing Bahrain or Singapore will buy Kodak while the dollar's weak (it'll instantly get stronger both when interest rates rise and we get out of Iraq). IMO 🙂

Investors own Kodak specifically wanting them to quit film. A big part of the stock's current value is baked into the potential for terminating film: share price increase, caused automatically by firing people and trashing/writing-off machinery iis eagerly anticipated by shareholders. The production capability, people and factories, hold down price.

Investors buy troubled companies for potential, not for current earnings and they typically demand dividends...and dividends work against company investment in new technology.

If Kodak 's film-side went private , that might preserve fillum...Levi Strauss did that in similar circumstances. But the new owner would have to find a genuinely stupid investment banker that would give them the money to do that., like Leica did. Levi Strauss's original family did that buyback, didn't need to see wonderful results. Maybe George Eastman's family's been doing silver recovery?
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Was it not Agfa-Gevart's strategy? Spin off Agfa Film to let it stand on its own? Some thought that was brilliant. I recall saying something about them spinning it off to die, like cutting off a diseased limb. We know what happened. Of course, some still deny this and claim that Agfa is manufacturing film again. So, even the evidence of manufacturing plants blown to rubble is not enough to convince some.

Remember the Monty Python movies? A couple of scenes come to mind...

The first is the knight who has his limbs cut off and still insists he can fight - "Come back here and I'll bite your kneecaps off!"

The second is the 'Bring out your dead' sketch, "I'm not dead yet! " "Shut up, old man, you soon will be."
 
It will be around forever, but film has already become an 'alternative process' to 'regular (digital) photography' like shooting glass plates or tintypes have been for a long time.
 
endustry said:
When Kodak calls it quits, film enthusiasts will have few choices but to spend their money on Fuji, Ilford, etc. thus improving the stakes of both firms.
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For a time, yes. The thing about declining markets is that they decline.

Who knows, maybe Kodak will sell their emulsion formulas and machinery to a firm in China and we'll just have Chinese Tri-X and numerous threads reminiscing about the old American Tri-X.
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Did you fail to read my post about Lucky? No Chinese firm is going to buy Kodak's machinery - the biggest film maker in China has been forced to buy Kodak's interest out (the one they lost a billion dollars on) and are now standing alone - like a boxer who has taken one to many shots to the noggin. They're done.

If they can't make it with Kodak's billion-dollar infrastructure upgrade, they can't make it. Period.

This is already happening with AGFA brands such as Vista which is now being manufactured in Eastern Europe by a licensee.
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What? Where did you get this info?

Perhaps I missed it. Seriously, if I did, someone fill me in. Last I heard, a company had purchased the rights to Afga's name and logo on Vista-brand film and was selling actual Agfa Vista film - WHAT WAS LEFT OVER. No new production. No new manufacturing plant. No new film at all. Did that change?

I recall a huge argument on PN over their use of the word "produce." To 'produce' film is not to 'manufacture' film. People who cannot actually read English took it and ran with it, and it ended up becoming "Agfa is making film again" when they are making no such thing. Agfa Film is no longer being manufactured by anyone.

But if that has changed, someone let me know, please.

To say that the film biz will become reduced dramatically is obvious. To argue that it will become totally, absolutely and completely extinct is foolish. Kodak is quiting slowly. Fuji, on the other hand, continues to design new film bodies and new emulsions for the Japan market which is still WAY into film. Fuji even manufactures seasonal E-6 film with a color caste developed specifically to bring out the reds during cherry blossom festivals.

So long as I have access to the internet, I can always order film from Japan. To suggest that there won't be one single person still developing C-41 or E-6 somewhere in this country who I can send my stuff to for processing is implausible. Where there's a will, there's a way and film users have a lot of will.[/QUOTE]
 
JoeV said:
So perhaps we'll have some silver gelatin materials being manufactured, not in large industrial-scale factories, but in cottage industry scale operations, in small batches. Sure, there will be quality and consistency issues. This is pretty much where photography started at in the 19th century.
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That's what Fotoimpex is doing. At the moment they do some research with the former Agfa laboratory equipment, i.E. they have the machines Agfa used for testruns.

When they are satisfied with a product, they outsource production to Efke and Foma and probably elsewhere.
They will produce smaller batches on anything which is in low demand and what can't be outsourced. Or in case any of their suppliers fails, like Forte did and Efke and Foma ....

As far as I know, Efke survives on Fotoimpex orders at the moment.

They recreated Agfa MCC paper, but brighter than it used to be, Fotoimpex can't afford to buy the Schoeller paper needed for the original MCC colour. Schoeller doesn't produce that regularly and there is not enough demand for a whole production run.

So we will have film and paper as well as chemicals, but not all we want or a bit different to what we where used to. And probably more expensive.
 
endustry said:
Chinese Velvia!
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Wow.

See, in 2003, Kodak and Fujifilm were both bidding for rights to buy parts of various Chinese film manufacturers. They both thought the same thing - that the rising Chinese middle class would want cameras (correct) and that they would purchase film cameras before they would be interested in digital cameras (wrong). They thought they could find a cash-cow market for their aging technology before the doors got shuttered in Europe and the USA.

Kodak won the bidding war, and sunk billions into Chinese film companies, including purchasing 20% of Lucky, the largest company.

By 2005, they had figured out that the newly-wealthy Chinese were not buying film cameras. In a move familiar to cell-phone companies, the newly-affluent were technology-jumping straight from no camera to digital cameras - no film at all.

Kodak ended up sacking their entire management team in China, and spent most of 2006 cleaning up the damage. In 2007, they complained that they had been hoodwinked and demanded some of their money back. They got something like 43 million back from Lucky, which had to sell a pile of worthless bonds to do it, and in the last few weeks, they are finally free and clear of China.

No new film manufacturing plants will be built in China. China knows that film is dead - they have no use for it and don't want it.
 
wilt said:
Black & white has not been a mass consumer product for decades. It is still around.
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When a film company like Kodak or Fuji shut the door on color film, B&W will be part of the deal. One tugs the other along in its wake.
 
endustry said:
Chinese Velvia!
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I caught your last comment before you deleted it. If you wish to retire from the field, please feel free. If my information is incorrect, I stand ready to be corrected. Stating that I'm wrong because my post count is high is a bit silly, and smacks of being a poor loser.
 
I live in Monterrey Mexico and I was just talking with the owner of a local -with 30 years in the market- store of photographic equipment. He still has his big film freezer, now packed with fresh soft drinks for the clients. Instead now he has on existence no more than 15-20 rolls of assorted film, and of course the lack of demand has send the prices to the roof. Now a 36-Tri-X costs aprox 7dlls and 10 extras for developing it. And, you have to wait days (sometimes 2 weeks) until they get enough rolls from different clients to make the developing session worthy.

At this rate I don't why film won't have the same destiny as many other technology products now obsolete, like LP's, cassettes, 8mm film cameras and CD's in the near future.
 
"It's only still around because the mass consumer film market subsidized it."

I've pretty much completely switched over to using Eastman B&W 35mm film, the XX and +X used by the movie industries. I'm confident they'll be around, if and when the consumer market for Kodak B&W bites the dust. Emulsions they intorduced in 1959, are still superior in "look" (to my eyes) to anything available to the mass market. The downside is loading the cassettes, ala Barnack.
 
Nokton48 said:
"It's only still around because the mass consumer film market subsidized it."

I've pretty much completely switched over to using Eastman B&W 35mm film, the XX and +X used by the movie industries. I'm confident they'll be around, if and when the consumer market for Kodak B&W bites the dust. Emulsions they intorduced in 1959, are still superior in "look" (to my eyes) to anything available to the mass market. The downside is loading the cassettes, ala Barnack.
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Where do you get that stuff? What's the minimum quantity? Do you load it like a 100-foot bulk roll of Tri-X? I'd be willing to do that.
 
I just checked Kodaks Q4 2007 numbers. The good news: Their margins for the full year for "traditional products" are far better than digital for the full year. The (obvious) bad news: Earnings in that sector are shrinking fast, though I do think the company said somewhere recently that the pace of decline is abating.

I can see Kodak selling off its film division at some point, rather than closing it down. Slimmed down, unemcumbered by any debt, and with a good two tier marketing strategy -- to pros and the mass market -- it could be vialble. The fat margins cld be salvageable to a degree.

Maybe if they hurried up with that 36,000 ASA film, it'd save them!
 
endustry said:
I'm not the one who identified you guys as trolls.
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If my presence here is unwanted, there is an easy way to get me to leave. All a mod has to do is ask me to go - or throw me out, I guess.

Let's not have the mods talk through the users. I await input asking me to leave.
 
Bill,

It comes from Eastman in NYC, in a 400' or 1000' roll. I order directly from them, they take VISA. Or, you can buy "short ends", "long ends" or "recans" from the sources that supply the industry, they unload the left-overs from the Hollywood cameras.

I would suggest you check out the somewhat long thread running currently "Shooting Eastman 5222 in the Leica". The images you get from this film, are like stepping back into the '60's. Fantastic if you are wanting a "retro" quality in your work.

And........ It's Cheap!

-Dan
 
sitemistic said:
Krosya, in the end, it isn't going to matter how many people are left shooting film. Both Fuji and Kodak are losing money in their film divisions. Investors are not interested in nostalgia, they are focused on the bottom line. And any company that wants to keep those investors is not going to keep a losing division around for long, despite their protests to the contrary.
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Sorry if someone pointed this out, but this thread had gone too long for me!

The film divisions actually make money-even the loss at Fuji's film division last year was due to charges due to re-structuring. Film is, in fact, the only profitable part of Kodak. And a pretty good one, too.

Anyway, I just wanted to say to you that you have been very civil and entertaining in all this. Even if I disagree with you on this point, it's always a pleasure.

And, of course, Mr. Mattock-again, we may disagree on this whole "film is dead" thing, but I do appreciate your wit and excellent writing. I'm very glad to see you back.

Now-I just can't read 100 new darned posts a day!
 
Consistent with another business tactic...

Consistent with another business tactic...

sitemistic said:
I'm always entertained when a company says, "if we hadn't written off $60 billion dollars we would have made a profit." The fact is they wrote off all that money to restructure the division...because it was losing money.

If Kodak is making such a profit on their film division, why are they trying so hard to divest themselves of it?
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Well, it's true that we lose a little money on every transaction, but our plan is to make it up on volume.

If you work as a lending officer in commercial loans, you eventually hear them all.
 
I think that the question you should be asking is how long will film be A) affordable to shoot and B) able to be easily processed?

I don't see traditional process B&W going away within the next three or four decades but I do see it becoming very expensive. Also, I can see a time when chemistry becomes hard to get, limiting the number of developers commercially available and forcing us to mix our own soups from scratch. I can see a point in the next 7-10 years when a roll of tri-x will cost $6-$8 and a 20 pack of VC RC 8X10 paper will cost $50.

there will always be traditional photographers, but there are still guys doing wet plate process to. the point is that at some point if you are not selling prints for $3000 or $5000 then shooting film wont make any financial sense.
 
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