Kodak on digital and film future

It is not a color emulsion. It is a black-and-white emulsion with a filter
layer made of alternating red, green, and blue globules of dyed starch,
rather in the manner of a color TV screen.

It produces remarkably true color because the same dyes are used for
producing the picture and for viewing it.

I have no idea how stable the dyes are.

 

Ever hear of an autochrome? To my knowledge some examples
still exist, was the first color emulsion, in the late 1800's
early 1900's. Anybody else know more?[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I'd heard of Autochrome. It's not a modern
color emulsion, hasn't been made since the 1930s,
and I really don't know how stable the starch globules
+ dyes are. But it's not really relevant to the
mainstream discussion of film vs. digital, since
autochrome has not seen consumer use since the
1930s. One might equate it to the Exatron
stringy floppy or Kansas City standard data
cassettes...

Dana K6JQ

 

Botched up inkjet prints, inkjet cartridges, printers and
computers. Oh, and we shouldn't forget about the digicams which needs
to be replaced about every 2~3 years.

Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.darkroompro.com
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

 

ROTFLMAO !

That's good !


Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.darkroompro.com
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

 

I can only read what you write. Sorry, reading between the lines and
making assumptions about what you write is extra

But given you restate to mean color only, I have one word: Kodachrome,
1933. At room temperture Arrhenius model shows excellent stability over
a 100 year period. It's the most stable color dye film ever produced,
and I think it was the first. Color film has in fact de-evolved from
there in stability, though again with proper storage there is no dye
fading or dye fading is stopped in all color films. But of course
Kodachrom is a unique process where the film itself contains no color
couplers, but is more inconvenient to process.

Well it doesn't break of course, but I'm not aware of any comparisons
with glass. The advantage of polyester over acetate is it's chemical
stability. But I think it's safe to say nothing is more chemically inert
than glass.

it's still an issue to a degree, but with color film dye fading is the
major issue but is easily prevented.

 

Sure there is ! Scarpitti's brain !


Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.darkroompro.com
Please remove the "_" when replying via email

 

Actually I think it was used to some extent into the 1950s. As to it's
being archival, it's just as archival as any other film as _long_ as
it's properly stored. Not being chemically inert, it was the storage in
tightly sealed, hot, dank canisters and vaults a profit-conscious movie
industry tossed the reels into that caused spontaneous decomposition
(burst into flames.)

 

Yeah, I'd heard of Autochrome. It's not a modern
color emulsion, hasn't been made since the 1930s,
and I really don't know how stable the starch globules
+ dyes are. But it's not really relevant to the
mainstream discussion of film vs. digital, since
autochrome has not seen consumer use since the
1930s. One might equate it to the Exatron
stringy floppy or Kansas City standard data
cassettes...[/QUOTE]


It's relevant. Just because the "cheaper, faster, not-so-better" crowd
at Kodak or other companies discontinue a better, more stable, archival
product or method (like dye transfer or Kodachrome or even Autochrome)
doesn't lessen it's relevance. It's what *can* be achieved, not what's
mass produced for the sake of profit.

Such mass production for the sake of profit is likely one reason digital
storage media is so poor. Manufacturers are more concerned with
maximizing short term profits and marketing new technology than in
providing consumers with the best possible product. That's the history
of most color films as well. And that is relevant to issues of archvial media.

Autochromes, BTW, are by all estimates extremely stable since they've
been in existence for 100 years yet their color subtlties are still well
preserved. Iford put out an Autochrome calendar for 2003. Quite beautiful.

 

What makes you think that the mainstream future of digital
is entirely tied up in consumer-produced inkjet prints?

What makes you think there's one iota of difference between
a consumer-produced inkjet print and a consumer-produced
B&W print?

What makes you think that home darkroom printing waste
isn't 1000x more toxic than home inkjet printing waste?

The surprisingly rapid deployment of Frontier and Noritsu
digital printing machines is making it much more cost-effective
to get prints done at a lab, whether they're from color negs
or digital files.

Why? I have a digicam pushing 6 years old that is
still in frequent use. It's not much different than
a 35mm point-and-shoot, really.

Dana

 

profit margin.

A recent thread here on "archival inksets."

it's not.

Cost effective for the lab, not the consumer. Frontiers are not
C-print's equal. Light Jets maybe, but they're more expensive than c prints.

That's what I do to ensure permanant images. point and shoot.

 

Tom Phillips wrote:

I believe Kodachrome reversal and Agfa color-negative film were
both developed around 1935-1936, I'm not really certain which
one was invented and/or commercially realized first. It is clear
that Agfa's color-negative technology was a World War II spoil
given to Kodak.

The original Kodachromes were not terribly permanent, it took
some development to achieve this, I believe it wasn't until
after WW II that Kodachrome had become as good.

Color negative film did not regress, it's progressed, too. Kodachrome,
of course, does not incorporate color dyes, they're introduced during
processing. Color negative film was the beginning of chromogenic
emulsions, those which contain their own dyes, and this technology
has also been applied to reversal films. But it's important to
remember that Kodachrome and color negative films are quite different
and were originally developed in parallel.

Imagine, in 1948, having a debate about the permanence of Kodachrome.
It's not that different than today debating the permanence of recordable
digital media. The problem was solved with film, it'll be solved with
digital media.

Dana

 

But, you've been telling me that color films, negative and reversal,
are essentially permanent, so I'm not quite sure what to make of
this statement. Despite being profit-motivated, manufacturers
still managed to make decent products. It's easy to carp about
Kodachrome's disappearance, but to do so is to ignore the reality.
It turned into a niche product that didn't sell well enough.
It would go bad, past expiration date, on the retailers shelves.
No one could make money selling it.

That's reality, for better or worse.

At the same time, to open another can of worms, manufacturers,
driven by profit motive, developed alternative reversal films
that better suited what consumers wanted, and now we have a
series of excellent chrome films, that you repeatedly insist
are essentially permanent. So what's been lost? Nothing.

So, it's not faith on my part that compells me to believe
that those greedy, short-sighted manufacturers will also
develop similarly permanent means to store images on digital
media. If the market wants it and will pay for it, it will
be developed. The technologies just aren't that different -
dyes, chemicals, emulsions, layers, process control, you name
it. The technology to make CD-Rs is not that far from the
technology to make film. The technology to make integrated
circuits isn't that far afield, either.

While you've tried to differentiate digital as an "invented"
technology and silver halide photography as a "discovered"
technology, this distinction does not exist in reality. In
both cases, digital and silver halide are grounded in the
laws of physics. In both cases, modern realization of
these technologies doesn't just happen by accident. No
one just discovered Kodachrome - it was invented all the same
as digital, just on a lower order of sophistication. It's
easy to ridicule digital as being based on "imaginary"
1s and 0s, but electrons really aren't different that photons
in this case.

I love film, I love working with film, but film does
not make an image. Film is a way to capture an image,
the same way digital technology is a way to capture
an image. Fixation on the artifact of the capture
(the film itself) is fixation on the means rather than
the end.

Dana

 

maybe, maybe not. if you measure the advancement of digital media by the
advancement of film, it'll be quite a while...

 

I do not believe it even remotely makes sense to measure the
two in similar terms. CD-R was first commercially produced in
1989; that would put us in approximately 1915 in terms of
photographic history. Digital storage media is advancing at
a considerably greater rate, which makes sense given that
the basic technologies and processes are relatively
similar. Given the importance of making sure that the
reflective layer doesn't fall off of a CD-R, it's a certainty
we'll figure out how to achieve it.

Dana

 

No. That proper storage preserves them permanantly.

I shoot professionally, and because of that I have to shoot ektachrome.
If Kodak had offered kodachrome in 4x5, I'd have shot it. Just as I did
thousands and thousands of rolls of it in 35mm.

Kodak doesn't seem to discontinue products based on niche markets, but
based on either favoring the introduction of new products or cutting
less profitable products out to save red ink caused by overall bad
management decisions. And Kodak has made some bad business decisions.
But film is Kodak's bread and butter even today.

A more stable color film. The point is they introduce and market
products they think they will make the most money on, not those that are "better."

Yeah and we could all be driving cars that run on water or electricity
and require virtually no parts and service! So why aren't we?

Sure it does. Digital is 100% dependent on technology and sophisticated
industrial manufacturing. OTOH, one can make a photograph with just some
basic chemistry, some paper or other substrate, and a light tight box
with a pinhole. And if digital takes over the world, and Kodak
shortsightedly discontinues all film products, that's what I'll be doing
-- espeically when the lights go out and hard drives fail and a
zillion computers are sitting in trash dumps leaking mercury into the environment.

Sure, one is photochemical and one is photoelectric. But the difference
is silicon requires extensive industrial processing and doping to even
be sensitive enough to light to capture the photons necessary to
generate a voltage representing an image. If they were both the same and
the same physics applied, we'd have had digital 180 years ago instead of
photochemical photography.

Digital is a child of late 20th century technological manufacturing --
semi-conductors. Photography is a child of 18th century chemistry. You
don't need a power grid and refined technology to make a photograph. But
you do to digitize. Big difference.

Again, digital is a completely different medium. What you get is a
voltage that's converted to digital signals that's stored as binary
code. That's not an image, it's an electronic representation of the
image formed by the lens. Even the ISO says so. A digital image is a
representational image, at least until output in some tangible form --
onto a negative or print. That's not ridicule, it the fact. It only
becomes ridicule when digital geeks try to pass it off as being the same
as real photography

With silver halide imaging, photons are literally transcribed into
silver through photolysis-- a permanant physical image through chemical
decomposition on the film. That's literally what the word photography
means, "phos-graphos" or writing with light. That's what scientists and
researchers in the 19th century coined the term to mean. It doesn't mean
"photoelectric." Digital doesn't write with light, it regenerates
signals through a purely technological process. It's an imaging process,
but it's not photography.

technically, the optical image is formed by the lens. But film
transcribes that optical image into a latent image. Film does create an
image, not just pass along a signal for further regeneration and output.
Film is an end product, and especially in the case of transparencies the
final product. The same optical image is formed with digital camera
lenses, but rather than creating a mirror optical image, silicon creates
a voltage -- the electronic conversion of photon energy. No actual image
is created until that voltage is converted, digitally processed, and
then output to a printer of some kind. That's the difference.

Digital produces no image. Film is an image and end product.

 

I believe you're the one who chose those terms...

maybe, maybe not.

 

Tom, it's been an interesting discussion, but if you really believe
that the above comparison is even remotely valid, there's no
point in further exchange on this topic. You seem to be purposely
looking past the *fact* that any modern color film today is 100%
dependent on technology, sophisticated industrial manufacturing
and strict process control. The layers in a chrome film
might as well be 1s and 0s for all you can see.

I can take a handful of LEDs and photo-resistors and
create a digital image of a small number of pixels in that
same pinhole camera. While you might cry "foul!" that I'm
using sophisticated technology, you're overlooking the fact
that the "basic chemistry" you speak of is the result of,
you guessed it, sophisticated industrial manufacturing.
Even those century-old Autochromes are the result of what
was quite sophisticated manufacturing for the day.

In any practical sense, digital and film are both 100%
dependent on technology, sophisticated industrial
manufacturing and precise process control. Any
statement to the contrary is patently false at
worst, or quaintly romantic at best.

Dana

 

Entirely ? Nope. But the marketing stratagem for the companies
making these materials is aimed at the home user. Which would you
rather sell ;

150,000 photographers X $100 annual profit = $15,000,000

25,000,000 home users X $10 = $250,000,000

Do the math.

? I was speaking about the ease of which the average Joe will
be able to make fast-fading, off color screwups. The average Joe is
not buying an enlarger and making B&W prints. The commonality is $$$.
The manufacturers are robbing the profits from film to invest in the
future of digital. Not a good idea as film still has a lot of life
left in it.

Please. You know what it takes to build computers, components
and peripherals.

Also the toxicity of darkroom chemistry is for the most part
grossly over-stated.

Yep. And I love the fact that now a monkey can operate one !

You mean you don't have the latest 6 MP digi-whiz-bang
thing-a-ma-jig ? I see there's hope for you yet ;>) Quick get out an
RB67 or better yet a 5X7 view camera and make a real photograph !


Regards,

John S. Douglas, Photographer - http://www.darkroompro.com
Please remove the "_" when replying via email