News today from Kodak

Printers and film-production. That's it. (Assuming that they didn't put the Rochester plant in this latest deal, which seemed unlikely).
 
Sorry for the delay in responding to these questions. All manufacturing of both motion picture and still film will remain with Kodak. The film business (sales, marketing, etc) is part of the Personalized Imaging Business and part of the spin off. Kodak will supply film via a long-term supply agreement.
 
Chris - the manufacturing of paper and chemistry will go to KPP. The manufacturing of film will remain with Kodak and be supplied to the new owner via a long term supply agreement. I hope this answers the question. Please let me know if it doesn't.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Insh'Allah. The old codgers are often the ones who know how the business actually works, as distinct from the 'professional' salesmen of ladies' underwear, car radios, etc.

Cheers,

R.
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I'd replace 'often' with 'usually'. Could be the only hope for Kodak film to be around in ten years.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Insh'Allah. The old codgers are often the ones who know how the business actually works, as distinct from the 'professional' salesmen of ladies' underwear, car radios, etc.

Cheers,

R.
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"Kodak pension fund spokesman John Kiely said the pension fund won't run the businesses directly, but will put together a management team to run them."

Expect the worst.
 
Bille said:
"Kodak pension fund spokesman John Kiely said the pension fund won't run the businesses directly, but will put together a management team to run them."

Expect the worst.
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Point taken, but they probably have quite a reserve of talent upon which they can draw. In other words, professional people from the photo business (whom they will know and trust), not ladies' underwear salesmen. And I did say "Insh'Allah."

Cheers,

R.
 
Indeed Roger :) (The dutch spelling is with an "o" and I was momentarily mixing my languages, oops.)

Jamie, there are contracts for cine-film production, for the big studios etc, that "must" be honoured and those ran until next year but then also had an extension -- long term might mean three years, hopefully a lot longer? From one of the documents about the re-negotiation last year "Extension of termination dates to 2014 or 2015" and "A sunset clause allowing Kodak to exit motion picture film manufacturing with 180 days’ notice" and "there's a commitment to provide motion picture film beyond contractual expiration periods". So these extensions and contracts may themselves be extended, if there are enough cinemas still requiring release-prints to be made instead of going digital.

I recall (from APUG) that the film coating line cannot be run any "smaller", so the setting-up, material-waste, maintenance, cleaning and so on assume a larger significance as the volume of product required decreases. Eventually this will not be good news for colour neg production (how long can the huge master-rolls be frozen for?), but for black-and-white materials Ilford downsized years ago and Foma didn't grow, so we may have some future there.
 
London CDK said:
Sorry for the delay in responding to these questions. All manufacturing of both motion picture and still film will remain with Kodak. The film business (sales, marketing, etc) is part of the Personalized Imaging Business and part of the spin off. Kodak will supply film via a long-term supply agreement.
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Glad to hear that film is still in the plan. I know it won't be the market it used to be, but I think it will be around for a long time. Hopefully, some of the discontinued films will be brought back, especially Panatomic X.
 
bsdunek said:
Hopefully, some of the discontinued films will be brought back, especially Panatomic X.
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I don't think wishing for this is the way to move film forward since in order to do that, tons of money would have to be spent in order to re-formulate it, coat it and print the packaging, etc.

There is no way the people at Building 38 at Kodak Park would risk it all in coating 54" x 5,000 feet of Panatomic-X when there is not the demand for it there once was, this is why we lost it, Techpan, HIE and Kodachrome, the economy of scale simply did not work, at all...

I would suggest mastering a superb film like Tmax 100 since it is easily on par with Panatomic-X in terms of resolution and since it is a black and white emulsion, can be tailored to meet the needs of any great photographer that knows how to master his or her materials.

We *really* need to stop wishing for what we don't have and instead, make amazing imagery with what we do have. I think to do otherwise is doing more harm than good in terms of getting potential new film users excited about trying film...
 
KM-25 said:
I don't think wishing for this is the way to move film forward since in order to do that, tons of money would have to be spent in order to re-formulate it, coat it and print the packaging, etc.

There is no way the people at Building 38 at Kodak Park would risk it all in coating 54" x 5,000 feet of Panatomic-X when there is not the demand for it there once was, this is why we lost it, Techpan, HIE and Kodachrome, the economy of scale simply did not work, at all...

I would suggest mastering a superb film like Tmax 100 since it is easily on par with Panatomic-X in terms of resolution and since it is a black and white emulsion, can be tailored to meet the needs of any great photographer that knows how to master his or her materials.

We *really* need to stop wishing for what we don't have and instead, make amazing imagery with what we do have. I think to do otherwise is doing more harm than good in terms of getting potential new film users excited about trying film...
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Exactly. The only film I can think of that has 'come back from the dead' is Foma 200, which was suspended -- not discontinued -- because of the unavailability of a critical component. As soon as they got that synthesized again, the film came back.

Mind you, I'd say "a superb film like Tmax 100 or an even better film like Delta 100..."

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Mind you, I'd say "a superb film like Tmax 100 or an even better film like Delta 100..."
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LOL, of course, I was just sticking to Kodak for the sake of the original post. It's subjective too, TMX has tighter grain but is a bit harder to tame in terms of contrast and tonal curve...but man is it worth taming! I use both but favor Tmax 100, especially in 4x5...:)
 
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