The end of Fuji film?? NOPE - False Alarm

grainhound said:
Not a bad price for colour neg stock, but 5 rolls are double what I paid for 470 feet. I'll continue to roll my own and sort out the rem jet problem. I'd love to know more about their "very custom "Premoval" (patent-pending) process" too.
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The price is not too bad for me, as I don't shoot that much, but the shipping to the UK is remarkably expensive. I'll end up getting some anyway, I just know I will...

For me the extra cost to have the remjet removed, and loaded into 35mm canisters is worth it. If I was planning to shoot it all the time, maybe not.
 
Pickett Wilson said:
So the argument that the movie film business was propping up the still film business wasn't correct. The movie film industry was actually irrelevant.
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Yes, for most of the photo film market movie film is indeed irrelevant.

This myth, or better said "forum fairy tale" that if movie film production may be stopped one time, then photo film will be stopped, too, is nonsense.

That is a myth circling around in photo forums for years. Lots of people copy that without critical thinking about.
It is so easy to see that it is wrong:
Just look at the different film manufacturers and see what type of films they are producing. And then you see that most of them do not manufacture motion picture film at all!
Nevertheless they are producing photo film!

Only Kodak is more dependent on that market. But not the others, which either have never produced movie film, or have already stopped production of it some time ago, but continue to produce other types of film, or only have a very small percentage of movie film products in their portfolio.

Fujifilm has clearly said this autumn at Photokina, that the production stop of most of their motion picture films will not affect the production of photo films.
They even re-introduced Neopan 400.
And they introduced a new Instax camera for their growing Instax instant film business.
And they introduced new RA-4 papers.
 
I don't see why people have a problem with these threads about the future of film being under threat.

There's a lot more useless purile threads around here than these 'potential demise of film' ones!
 
I still think the end of film for the various makers will depend more on the life of existing equipment than the absolute amount of film they are selling. Of course, they could simply keep raising the cost of film to cover these replacement costs. There is a theory that at this point, many current film users would pay any price for continued access to film. So, that's the wild card. Interesting times.
 
Keith, lots of folks get very defensive when the end of film is discussed. A mod even thought he had to change my title, suggesting it was a false alarm, when my title only asked a question. I just wondered if the demise of motion picture film for Fuji would lead to the end of film production in general for them (notice the two question marks at the end of my title).

The mod obviously thought I was threatening to single handedly kill film production. 🙂
 
@Keith: I don't have a problem personally with the "film is dead" posts, but I don't like the jumping to conclusions and scaremongering. On APUG a while back I saw some guy ask if Ektar was dead, as B&H were out of stock. If my local corner shop did not have coffee in that day, it would not cross my made that it had stopped being made.

The film makes don't help themselves by having such terrible PR, especially Fujifilm, and Kodak tries to keep in touch, but that seemed to die a death and just confuse more.

@Pickett: I don't shoot a whole of film, maybe 1 - 4 rolls a month, so if XP2 or Portra 400, or Fujilfilm 400H doubled in price, in would not effect me that much, so you may have a point. The roll-a-day guys might think differently I expect.
 
The laughable thing is Pickett ... that from what I gather about your PJ past you probably shot more film in a year back in the eighties than some of these defenders of the faith will see in their lifetimes!
 
Pickett Wilson said:
Keith, lots of folks get very defensive when the end of film is discussed. A mod even thought he had to change my title, suggesting it was a false alarm, when my title only asked a question. I just wondered if the demise of motion picture film for Fuji would lead to the end of film production in general for them (notice the two question marks at the end of my title).

The mod obviously thought I was threatening to single handedly kill film production. 🙂
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It is just a question, and in a reasonable world/forum/newspaper that should be fine, but these are just questions too:

Is Obama's birth certificate fake?
Are immigrants stealing our jobs?
How often do you beat your wife?

There is nothing wrong with what you asked other than the place you asked it. The Obama question can be dismissed in sensible discussion, but on Fox news?
 
thegman said:
@Keith: I don't have a problem personally with the "film is dead" posts, but I don't like the jumping to conclusions and scaremongering. On APUG a while back I saw some guy ask if Ektar was dead, as B&H were out of stock. If my local corner shop did not have coffee in that day, it would not cross my made that it had stopped being made.

The film makes don't help themselves by having such terrible PR, especially Fujifilm, and Kodak tries to keep in touch, but that seemed to die a death and just confuse more.

@Pickett: I don't shoot a whole of film, maybe 1 - 4 rolls a month, so if XP2 or Portra 400, or Fujilfilm 400H doubled in price, in would not effect me that much, so you may have a point. The roll-a-day guys might think differently I expect.
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Whatever your stand on this is the potential demise of film is a relevant point and if there is a little over reaction to that possibility occasionally that's fine with me ... because I sure as hell don't want to lose it! 🙂
 
Pickett Wilson said:
A mod even thought he had to change my title, suggesting it was a false alarm, when my title only asked a question.
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Don't forget that the majority of the readers will not be native speakers, and that a fair amount of them have a first language where question marks have different semantics or come from countries where tabloid-style suggestive titles are less common.
 
Actually, as so many here have moved, at least partially, to digital, discussions on the topic have become generally less hostile. For a lot of us who do not live in or near large cities, dealing with film has become too much of a hassle. So the whole thing has become a moot point.

None of our group of newspapers have even had a darkroom in over 10 years. We don't physically print even digital photos. Everything is straight to the computer, and from the computer to the press.
 
Keith said:
Whatever your stand on this is the potential demise of film is a relevant point and if there is a little over reaction to that possibility occasionally that's fine with me ... because I sure as hell don't want to lose it! 🙂
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Indeed, that is the important thing, I don't either, I've only been taking photos a few years now, and I'd hate to lose film just as I was getting started.
 
Keith said:
I don't see why people have a problem with these threads about the future of film being under threat.
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No one has a problem with a rational discussion.
The problem is that the digital marketing guys and fundamentalistic "doom and gloom preachers" permanently start such threads spreading misinformation.
Most of all these doom and gloom theories have been proven wrong.
Nevertheless they were repeated again and again.
 
Skiff said:
No one has a problem with a rational discussion.
The problem is that the digital marketing guys and fundamentalistic "doom and gloom preachers" permanently start such threads spreading misinformation.
Most of all these doom and gloom theories have been proven wrong.
Nevertheless they were repeated again and again.
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Geez ... you're all common sense and logic!

Where's your irrational passion man? 😀
 
Pickett Wilson said:
I still think the end of film for the various makers will depend more on the life of existing equipment than the absolute amount of film they are selling.
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No, definitely not, because that don't make economic sense.
If they sell the amount of film needed, they have the the money to keep their lines running.
Fujifilm has invested in the last years, Ilford has (they now even can make 135 cassettes by themselves!), Agfa-Gevaert has, Foma has. Impossible has renewd their factory.
InovisCoat even build a complete new modern factory for coating and emulsion making. And Adox build a complete new modern factory for film / paper converting and emulsion making.
The investments in modern manufacturing are there, that are the facts.
 
They said the same thing about records and turntables, back in the 80's that CD's
would replace them, well records are still here and Turntables are too!. So will be
film as long as us guy's keep using it and try to teach the next generation about
it, they should keep making it (I hope).

Range
 
I'm certainly no evangelist. In fact, I'm pretty platform agnostic. I've burned many thousands of rolls of B&W film, and shot hundreds of thousands of frames of digital.

I do think that film, in some capacity, has a chance to survive because it has found a market where price is no object (Impossible Project being a good example), which makes possible some smaller scale production. The threat will come when that market moves on to something else.
 
Keith said:
Whatever your stand on this is the potential demise of film is a relevant point and if there is a little over reaction to that possibility occasionally that's fine with me ... because I sure as hell don't want to lose it! 🙂
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Keith, if you really want to keep film alive, then change your behaviour!
Because you often told here that you have (almost) stopped shooting color film. Therefore you are part of the problem. If you don't shoot film by yourself you have no right to complain about the current film market.

Only shooting some BW films is not enough to keep film alive!

You like Neopan 400, right?
If you want Neopan 400 in future production then the best you can do is not only shooting Neopan 400, but also using Fuji Provia, Velvia, Superia, Pro 400H etc.

Why that? Because the BW film production at Fujifilm and Kodak is dependant on the color film production. 90-95% of the photo film production at Kodak and Fuji is color film, BW is a niche in comparison. Color film is needed to run the lines at their planned capacity.
With only BW film that is not possible.

Therefore for all of you Kodak and Fuji BW film shooters: Shoot also color film to keep BW film alive.
 
Pickett Wilson said:
None of our group of newspapers have even had a darkroom in over 10 years. We don't physically print even digital photos. Everything is straight to the computer, and from the computer to the press.
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I thought the press was dying? I doubt it will be too long before we get rid of paper copies...🙂

That's what I read on 'da interwebby thing on my iPad !
 
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