Buy film, not equipment.

Tom Phillips wrote:
: In article , David Nebenzahl
: wrote:

: On 10/3/2004 3:00 AM Tom Phillips spake thus:
:
: In article , "Magdalena W."
: wrote:
:
: U?ytkownik "Geoffrey S. Mendelson"
:
: The author suggested that if you wanted monochrome films to continue to
: be produced, you should avoid spending your money on "illusionary
: upgrades" and spend it on film.
:
: And he was damn right too :-) I just need a bigger fridge, because mine
: is stuffed to the limits. Mainly with Tri-X, Neopan and Astia ;-)
:
: I'm in fact considering boycotting Kodak, since their CEOs are such
: fricking idiots and have discontinued too many of my favorite films (Pan-X,
: KM 25, and now Tech Pan.)
:
: I'm sure such a boycott would be at least as effective as the famous "gas-out"
: boycott of recent memory. We all know how great an effect *that* had on gas
: prices.

: You miss the point. It's not about penalizing Kodak, but rather not
: investing *MY* photographic efforts in film products that Kodak will
: not support long term.


dak will support films that there is a market for.
--




Keep working millions on welfare depend on you
-------------------

Tom Phillips wrote:
: In article , David Nebenzahl
: wrote:

: On 10/3/2004 3:00 AM Tom Phillips spake thus:
:
: In article , "Magdalena W."
: wrote:
:
: U?ytkownik "Geoffrey S. Mendelson"
:
: The author suggested that if you wanted monochrome films to continue to
: be produced, you should avoid spending your money on "illusionary
: upgrades" and spend it on film.
:
: And he was damn right too :-) I just need a bigger fridge, because mine
: is stuffed to the limits. Mainly with Tri-X, Neopan and Astia ;-)
:
: I'm in fact considering boycotting Kodak, since their CEOs are such
: fricking idiots and have discontinued too many of my favorite films (Pan-X,
: KM 25, and now Tech Pan.)
:
: I'm sure such a boycott would be at least as effective as the famous "gas-out"
: boycott of recent memory. We all know how great an effect *that* had on gas
: prices.

: You miss the point. It's not about penalizing Kodak, but rather not
: investing *MY* photographic efforts in film products that Kodak will
: not support long term.


dak will support films that there is a market for.
--




Keep working millions on welfare depend on you
-------------------

Mark Fohl wrote:
"BBarlow690" wrote in message
...

The real issue isn't to buy more, it is to use more.

Maybe we should each declare one day a week a Newsgroup Free Day, and go

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

HERESY! Heaven forbid!


Actually he is right......

W

Mark Fohl wrote:
"BBarlow690" wrote in message
...

The real issue isn't to buy more, it is to use more.

Maybe we should each declare one day a week a Newsgroup Free Day, and go

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

HERESY! Heaven forbid!


Actually he is right......

W

Gregory Blank wrote in message ...
I really like some of Kodaks E6 films, for certain applications.

The maker of the E6 films that I really loved (Scotchchrome 1000) have
gone out of the film business entirely, unfortunately. Oh well, I
don't shoot E6 anymore anyway.

Agfa 1000-speed E6 is no more either.

Tim.

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
I just got the Sept 18th edition of AP (a British magazine) and there was
an interesting guest editorial in it. The author suggested that if you
wanted monochrome films to continue to be produced, you should avoid
spending your money on "illusionary upgrades" and spend it on film.


The author is, in many ways right, this doesn't apply only to monochrime
films. Suppose your film maker S for a moment, you need to make 200
Hectares of a film, to be worth setting up the line and do a production
run. It costs you $150,000 in materials and labour to do the
manufacturing run.

Now you have one film that a production run takes 4 weeks to get out the
door, another one takes 4 years. Are you going to continue a film,
where your paying interest on the costs for an average of 2 years? Not
when money is tight, so you decide to discontinue that product, and use
the production time to make more of the other one.

W

"Tim Shoppa" wrote

The maker of the E6 films that I really loved (Scotchchrome 1000) have
gone out of the film business entirely, unfortunately.

I thought that was Ferrania, though it seems they only make a 100 these days.

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com
psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/

Donald Qualls wrote:

Tom Phillips wrote:

Hey, if William Henry Jackson could do it successfully
under the most difficult circumstances (in the wilderness
or on the tops of 13,000 foot mountains with no food or
water for plate processing), it can't be that hard today :-)

And a second take on this -- Jackson was using, IIRC, wet plates, which
means he was also carrying along a full darkroom for coating and
sensitizing as well as developing, including both collodion (only
slightly less explosive than guncottong) and ether (the only solvent
common prior to the 20th century that would dissolve collodion). And
the plates he created weren't even orhtochromatic, they were as
blue-sensitive as graded printing paper. No thanks, I'd rather deal
with mercury vapor.

I'm simply talking about photographing difficulties using
plates vs. film in a less modern era than our own. Jackson,
btw, continued to photograph beyond his survey days and used
lots of dry plates and later film...

...And continuing to have film means not walking away
from the only film company still producing B&W that looks likely to
still be in good shape this time next year. Okay, I don't like the
product line contraction, either -- but in the face of falling demand,
it's inevitable,

That's not why...and it's BS. Large format photography is NOT
in the "falling demand" category at all. And large or small
plenty of people use film. As Kodaks own Daniel Carp has
himself said and well knows, there are 250 million 35mm film
cameras out there (US alone.)

Heck, the last trip I was on (with a bunch of college students)
those using digital had constant problems, including a whole
trips worth of pictures lost due to failed storage cards. Those
shooting film had no such problems. And as soon as people realize,
like these students did, digital is unreliable as far as
permanent photos go they'll go back to film. Question is, when
will kodak start making an effort to market film to those 250
million camera owners as the better choice and save their own
market?

and the specialty items like Tech Pan pretty well have
to be the first to go.

Sounds like you actually might work for Kodak...

Ilford, OTOH, is dropping *all* sheet film, last
I heard,

someone want to confirm this?

Donald Qualls wrote:

Tom Phillips wrote:

Hey, if William Henry Jackson could do it successfully
under the most difficult circumstances (in the wilderness
or on the tops of 13,000 foot mountains with no food or
water for plate processing), it can't be that hard today :-)

And a second take on this -- Jackson was using, IIRC, wet plates, which
means he was also carrying along a full darkroom for coating and
sensitizing as well as developing, including both collodion (only
slightly less explosive than guncottong) and ether (the only solvent
common prior to the 20th century that would dissolve collodion). And
the plates he created weren't even orhtochromatic, they were as
blue-sensitive as graded printing paper. No thanks, I'd rather deal
with mercury vapor.

I'm simply talking about photographing difficulties using
plates vs. film in a less modern era than our own. Jackson,
btw, continued to photograph beyond his survey days and used
lots of dry plates and later film...

...And continuing to have film means not walking away
from the only film company still producing B&W that looks likely to
still be in good shape this time next year. Okay, I don't like the
product line contraction, either -- but in the face of falling demand,
it's inevitable,

That's not why...and it's BS. Large format photography is NOT
in the "falling demand" category at all. And large or small
plenty of people use film. As Kodaks own Daniel Carp has
himself said and well knows, there are 250 million 35mm film
cameras out there (US alone.)

Heck, the last trip I was on (with a bunch of college students)
those using digital had constant problems, including a whole
trips worth of pictures lost due to failed storage cards. Those
shooting film had no such problems. And as soon as people realize,
like these students did, digital is unreliable as far as
permanent photos go they'll go back to film. Question is, when
will kodak start making an effort to market film to those 250
million camera owners as the better choice and save their own
market?

and the specialty items like Tech Pan pretty well have
to be the first to go.

Sounds like you actually might work for Kodak...

Ilford, OTOH, is dropping *all* sheet film, last
I heard,

someone want to confirm this?

Donald Qualls wrote:

Gregory Blank wrote:
Or you could just coat the glass with some colloiden
nitrate and fume that.

In article ,
Donald Qualls wrote:

snip interesting stuff on plates...

Point being, however (back to original topic), if enough people boycott
film producers, we hasten the day when film isn't produced any more.

I'm merely talking about going to Kodak's competitors.

Like I said, Kodak needs to wise up. They've been
consitently moving towards marginalizing their film
and photo products/services in favor of digital, which
does not make a profit for them. It's all about stocks,
rather than being committed to being a company that
offers photographers good products and good services
which will in fact keep them in business. Kodak is simply
letting the film end of their business slide instead of
making an effort to market to the millions of people
who would otherwise buy film instead of digital IF kodak
made the marketing effort.

Tech Pan was a beautiful film. It produced simply classic
curves and outstanding pictorial results, and Kodak has
very few black and white film offerings left. I can't even
get Plus-X in 4x5 anymore (another good film.) It appears
Kodak won't be happy until they've eliminated virtually all
choice and variety in their film offerings and we're all
shooting T-Max (decent film though it be...) like a bunch
of cloned rabbits. Why? CEO and stock related decisions.

Come to think of it, all they have left for me to shoot _is_
T-max or tri-x...