What film should have been?

[thegman]

Has been done. 5" and 9 1/2" bulk rolls still are available - these are the regular sizes aerial cameras use. And 3 1/4" (QP) to 5" wide roll film types on wood/metal rolls similar to 120 were not that odd early on in the history of film. Kodak had some dozen variations on the topic of roll films wider than 3") - the last, 122, was cancelled not that far away, in the early seventies.

I guess I'm thinking of something easier for lazy people like me, just a roll of large format film I can stick in the back of a camera. Rolls of Portra 400 or whatever just like 120 but twice as long, and twice as expensive.

 

[sevo]

I guess I'm thinking of something easier for lazy people like me, just a roll of large format film I can stick in the back of a camera. Rolls of Portra 400 or whatever just like 120 but twice as long, and twice as expensive.

As I said, it had been done, but nobody wanted it any more, long before digital even existed. 122 was a 120 style roll, but 3 1/4" (quarter plate) wide. Similar things also existed in 4" and 5" width, but already became extinct in the twenties to fifties.

 

[willie_901]

The physics of organic and inorganic chemistry essentially dictate the sensitivity of film to visible light. There's a reason it requires increased dye particle size to increase film's sensitivity. That reason is you can't make the molecules more sensitive to visible light so you have to use more molecules.

Kodak had a huge investment in emulsion manufacturing which created a strong bias against emulsion improvements that required a radical change in their processes. So the emulsion technology was hard to modify.

At the same time an entirely new approach to analog, emulsion-based light sensitive technology could have evolved. I know for a fact Kodak had an army of extremely talented organic chemists working on film during the 1980s and 1990s. I visited their Rochester labs as part of an organic chemistry analytical technology exchange program run by a consortium of U.S. corporations. I can assure you very smart people were trying hard to improve dramatically increase film's performance. But the fact that digital imaging became the dominant technology is not due to Kodak's incompetence or lack of investment. The problem was the fundamental limitation in the response to visible light by organic and inorganic molecules. Specialty companies like Adox (Silvermax) have improved some aspects of film performance. Perhaps a radical, unanticipated breakthrough in analog light sensitive media would have occurred too.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Physics? C'mon. this is a fantasy thread...

Though there were some interesting late Agfa patents on positive hole traps...

Cheers,

R.

 

[nikon_sam]

Lint-Free...
Nothing, and I mean nothing would stick to it and any lint would fall right off...plus static-free too...

 

[shadowfox]

Lint-Free...
Nothing, and I mean nothing would stick to it and any lint would fall right off...plus static-free too...

+1

Also I'd expect an alternative to silver for light-sensitive agent.
Maybe something made out of whatever it is on the banana peel that made it brown if you just look at it the wrong way. That's light sensitivity right there 🙂

 

[clayne]

+1

Also I'd expect an alternative to silver for light-sensitive agent.
Maybe something made out of whatever it is on the banana peel that made it brown if you just look at it the wrong way. That's light sensitivity right there 🙂

Consider too though that there's multiple variants of silver being used - silver bromide, silver chloride, and any ratio of both. They even react to light and development differently.

Fact is, AgBr/AgCl are great light sensitive mediums - they're non-linear analog, they naturally saturate, they hold images for quite a long while, and when processed appropriately they last a damn long time.

 

[DNG]

Lint-Free...
Nothing, and I mean nothing would stick to it and any lint would fall right off...plus static-free too...

+1

Also I'd expect an alternative to silver for light-sensitive agent.
Maybe something made out of whatever it is on the banana peel that made it brown if you just look at it the wrong way. That's light sensitivity right there 🙂

And you use a caffinol developer to be totally green 😀
except for film base :bang:

 

[Rob-F]

I'm still waiting for Kodachrome-X to come back.