No more home for Ektachrome

Shame, but I think Kodak struggled against Fujifilm for quite a while before digital. If this gives Fujifilm more sales, and Kodak can focus on their strengths in negative film, then it can become a positive.

In all honesty, I only ever bought EliteChrome as it was cheap, always preferred Velvia.
 
thegman said:
Shame, but I think Kodak struggled against Fujifilm for quite a while before digital. If this gives Fujifilm more sales, and Kodak can focus on their strengths in negative film, then it can become a positive.

In all honesty, I only ever bought EliteChrome as it was cheap, always preferred Velvia.
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I think you are correct. Hope that Kodak can continue its color neg and b&w emulsions. I still miss Kodachrome. Fortunately, the Kodachrome slides I have will probably outlast me. It was durable stuff. The Fuji slide films seem pretty nice too. I just wonder if they'll be able to continue them for too long.
 
ChipMcD said:
I guess it's no surprise. Digital excels at color, although I've heard that projected slides beat beamers.
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It has nothing to do with color vs. bw. The fact is that nowadays that most film gets scanned there's little reason to shoot slides. Hardly anyone projects slides anymore.
 
Jamie123 said:
It has nothing to do with color vs. bw. The fact is that nowadays that most film gets scanned there's little reason to shoot slides. Hardly anyone projects slides anymore.
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We do project slides. We just don't use slide projectors with the 500 watt bulb. We use a projector connected to our computer to project digitized scans.

Your point is correct though. Why would anyone shoot slides (vs color film)? I have thousands of Kodachrome slides and they're beautiful - and I'm scanning the best ones. Can't remember the last time I hauled out my Kodak projector and screen to show slides. I cringe at the thought of them "popping' due to the heat of the lamp. And if you think the cost of color film and processing is bad, check out slide film and processing.
 
Jamie123 said:
It has nothing to do with color vs. bw. The fact is that nowadays that most film gets scanned there's little reason to shoot slides. Hardly anyone projects slides anymore.
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I doubt that projection ever accounted for a significant amount of reversal film - commercial projection mostly has been through duplicates, which are created in negative/positive processes, and private projection had been on a continuous decline ever after colour prints got affordable in the early seventies.

The mainstay of slide was professional use - among professionals, CN only had a small niche in applications where the final product was a C-print, like portrait and wedding or archival documentation. The bulk of professional colour work was done for halftone printed media (newspapers, magazines, books, catalogues, posters, billboards etc.) - and their publishers almost entirely requested E6 reversal film, to avoid the intermediate paper print step and as colour proofing processes off slide film are well standardized.
 
sevo said:
The mainstay of slide was professional use - among professionals, CN only had a small niche in applications where the final product was a C-print, like portrait and wedding or archival documentation. The bulk of professional colour work was done for halftone printed media (newspapers, magazines, books, catalogues, posters, billboards etc.) - and their publishers almost entirely requested E6 reversal film, to avoid the intermediate paper print step and as colour proofing processes off slide film are well standardized.
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That's true and I actually almost edited my post to mention the professional use aspect. I don't think you're right in saying that CN only had a 'small niche' in the professional world. The mainstay of E6 was indeed professional use but CN was widely used aswell at least in the world of editorial portrait and fashion photography. I'd hardly call that a niche.

In any case, the point remains that it's not really about color vs. bw. Most of the pros who have switched to high end digital backs use them for both color and bw. It's just that for the people (pros and amateurs alike) who still do use film there's little reason to shoot slides.
 
batterytypehah! said:
Wow, that's a blow. And I don't buy their "hard to make a profit" argument. I don't think Fuji and "Rollei" (Agfa-Gevaert) are losing money on theirs.
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Fuji must be doing a bit better in the slide department as their slide films are more popular but even so they've been discontinuing a lot of them, too. And let's remember, Kodak has filed for bankrupcy protection so it's not like they have to make up reasons for dropping products from their line-up.
 
I once bought a huge stash of expired elitechrome, EPP and E100G in 135 (60-70 rolls). I'm not thru with them and I really like that material.
I doubt I'll buy a lot of "professional" slide films when I'm thru with this stash tho. The prices are just too high (9-10 euros per roll of E100G).

I think I'll continue buying slide in MF tho. Although I'm shooting C41 for 70% of the color stuff.
 
Even though I don't buy Kodak slide film, this sucks, and it shows how slide film's days are numbered if it's now down to one manufacturer. Hopefully Fuji will continue making E-6 for at least a few more years, and it will buy enough time for digital cameras to stop sucking so much for nature photography* so that I can replace my Pentax film SLR outfit.

* This might have already happened, actually. Since I'm not in financial shape to make major purchases at this point, I haven't checked out the latest EVIL cameras for some time to see if EVF's have gotten to the point where they will suit my purposes as well as optical ones. (All the Pentax DSLR bodies I've handled are unacceptably larger and heavier than my film SLR bodies, and have sucky dim viewfinders because the autofocus system -- which I almost never use -- robs half the light.)
 
jsrockit said:
Why would they lie? If it was really profitable, they'd still make it.
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Plenty of reasons, if you're Kodak and fighting for sheer survival, or at least a decent funeral. Anything that helps their stock price, whether true or a smokescreen.

Still waiting for somebody to explain to me why Rollei Digibase at less than 3 euros per roll (before tax price at Macodirect) is worth it for Agfa, if Kodak can't make a profit at nearly twice the price.
 
batterytypehah! said:
Plenty of reasons, if you're Kodak and fighting for sheer survival, or at least a decent funeral. Anything that helps their stock price, whether true or a smokescreen.
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Still doesn't answer why they'd kill it if it were profitable.

Day's Range:$0.3280 - $0.34

Not helping the stock price much... not a ton of volume either. I just don't see its explanation as a smokescreen... just fact.

I think some just need to realize that we will keep seeing this over the next few years by anyone still making film. We will see whole product lines discontinued every year.
 
batterytypehah! said:
Plenty of reasons, if you're Kodak and fighting for sheer survival, or at least a decent funeral. Anything that helps their stock price, whether true or a smokescreen.
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Just ask around at pro labs and you'll find that they're not making it up. Most of the pro labs in my town have dropped E6 from their services because it's just not worth it. Where I live there are only two labs left that still do E6.
 
However, says a spokeswoman, Kodak will continue to support its other lines of films

That's what they say everytime they discontinue another film they were going to support. I don't know nor can I understand what Kodak is doing. Other companies seem to be able to make enough profit to continue manufacturing film. So apparently it is possible. Kodak just doesn't seem interested in doing what it takes to keep making film. Profitably.

Sad.
 
batterytypehah! said:
Still waiting for somebody to explain to me why Rollei Digibase at less than 3 euros per roll (before tax price at Macodirect) is worth it for Agfa, if Kodak can't make a profit at nearly twice the price.
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Obviously Gevaert has (or had, within the time to expiration) some government/military client that still buys (or bought) enough of Aviphot. Besides, they are not under Chapter 11, so don't need to explain to anybody why they are cross-subventioning a lossy product, if they should choose to do so - Kodak on the other hand is in no legal position to perform acts of loss leadership right now, unless they can bring forward pretty solid evidence that it is only very temporary.
 
And now it seems B&H just upped the price by 2 bucks a roll. I swear it was $8.50 a roll earlier 😕. Now its's $10.29.
I was intending to use this in the summer as I had like the look of it in reviews
 
That's complete blow and a surprise since the word was always that the film division was profitable. I had just decided to standardise on 100G for medium format since I discovered it pushed well and is the best tranny film out there. I prefer transparency to negative so keeping a negative line is of no solace.

Mind you with Kodak pricing policy I was wondering whether they were trying to engineer a lack of sales in order to drop it. At one time the film was up to 50% more expensive than Fuji offerings.
 
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