Kodak: "There is a very real resurgence for film"
BJP talks with Scott DiSabato, US marketing manager for Professional film at Kodak, after the release of the new Portra 400 film
Author: Olivier Laurent
27 Sep 2010 Tags: KodakFilmColour photo filmsPhotokinaQa
Earlier this month, Kodak announced the launch of a new professional Portra 400 colour negative film, which replaces the Portra 400NC and 400VC film.While the film will only be available in November, BJP talked with Scott DiSabato, US marketing manager for Professional film at Kodak, about the new film and Kodak's commitment to film photography.
BJP: Tell us a bit more about the new Portra 400 film.
Scott DiSabato: We now have the finest grain, high-speed colour negative film in the world with the Portra 400. But certainly with a film as popular as the Portra family, we had to take great care in making sure that we preserve all the good and wonderful things that photographers expected from the Portra line of film. So, this film is still as good as it’s ever been with skin tones. It does a complete range of colour in a superbe fashion. But I think, what we’ve done is to look at realistic workflows today where the majority of films, ultimately, are getting scanned even if it’s printed back out on photographic papers – it’s still scanned along the way. By improving the film the way we have, with the new image structure and by optimizing the contrast and colour saturation, I think we’ve created a film that is just going to be superb for scanning. The feedback, so far, has been fantastic.
We did borrow a lot of technology from our motion picture group – the Vision3 line of films. They’ve been innovating and pioneering new and different technologies that we were able to incorporate right into this film. We have micro-optimised t-grain structure in this film and a new technology to improve the light management capability in this film.
BJP: How long has it been in the making?
Scott DiSabato: It’s hard to say because we did borrow some technology and R&D that was conducted on the motion picture side. But I’ve been involved in commercializing it for most of the year. We definitely looked at the marketplace to see which areas it would make sense for Kodak to support, and a film project like this is truly an investment. We won’t make a product like this if we don’t believe we’ll see a return on it. Luckily the colour negative film sales have been very stable over the past year. Black-and-white is also doing extremely well. It almost feels that there is a very real resurgence for film. A lot of people that were completely digital are now accepting film again for certain things – or they do like the workflow. And the most exciting thing is to see the younger people adopt film. It’s almost a generational thing. They have not shot film growing up, but once they do get a hold of film in a university, they just seem to fall in love with it. And that’s exciting. It just seems to have a lot of influence.
BJP: With the release of this film, you’ve stopped the Portra 400NC and 400VC films…
Scott DiSabato: Yes. We will continue to offer those two films through year-end. There might be supplies for 2011. But, yes, the Natural Colour film and Vivid Colour film will combine into this new film emulsion. There is a bit of history here that would have signaled that this was going to happen. When we introduced these films in the 1990s, there was a huge difference between these two films. There was primarily an optical printing workflow in those days, and you really needed a stronger saturated film and a stronger contrast film to make it work in the optical world. So, the Natural Colour was a bit flatter, a bit more muted in colour saturation, and the Vivid Colour gave you a little bit more. When we revamped these films in 2006, we moved those two positions even closer to each other. The difference was very subtle even then, so it’s a kind of natural progression looking at the workflow now.
In the scanning environment, it makes a lot more sense to make sure that your contrast levels are moderate so a whole range of scanners can get the highlight and shadow details easily and that the colour gamut is not pumped up so much that it begins to compete with some of that tonal information.
We’ve made sure to target a lot of Natural Colour fans, and also captured a lot of Vivid Colour fans, and we’ve heard great things from everyone.
BJP: Last year, you’ve introduced the Ektar film as well. How successful has it been?
Scott DiSabato: It’s been very successful. Early this year, we introduced the Ektar in sheet films and that was very exciting. We first introduced the Ektar film two years ago in 35mm only. We had, at the time, no plans to do anything else – we just thought it would be a great format for such a fine-grain film. But, when we got at Photokina 2008, the medium format film fans hit us over the head with their desires. When we looked into that a little bit more within a few months we actually came out with a product in 120 format. And then we started hearing the rumble from sheet film users… It’s a great film. The skin tones are really good. Also, what is driving that growth too, in my opinion, is linked to the E6 environment and transparency films. It’s a little more challenging today to find some good E6 processing. The Ektar film kind of distills the characteristics of an E6 film – fine grain, strong colour, slower speed – and produces that with the ease of processing and scanning of colour negative films.
BJP: Do you feel your line of films is complete?
Scott DiSabato: I can say this – this is the best film Kodak has ever made. We have a broad and very relevant portfolio. If you look at the competition and the industry right now, we’re the only manufacturer out there to consistently introduce new products. It’s pretty clear we’re continuing to invest in film. We’re very lucky to have our motion picture side of the company with which we can share a lot of resources to continue to produce new great films.
Some other things we’re doing is working with Canham Cameras, a global distributor for ultra-large format films – anything above 4x5. Kodak doesn’t stock any of these products – 11x14, 20x24 or other goofy sizes for ancient and brand new cameras – but we have Canham. What they do is that gather orders from photographers around the world, and when they hit a certain figure, we produce it. Of course, we need enough orders to justify the retooling at our factory to produce these sizes. Kodak is moving in this direction of made-to-order production. Because it’s a perishable product, we wanted to make sure that we’re not stocking product that’s never going to get purchased. Canham sells the new Portra 400, Ektar 100, T-Max 100 and Tri-X.
For more information about the new Portra 400 film, visit Kodak.com.
For ultra-large sheet films, visit www.canhamcameras.com. And if you are a dealer looking to order large quantities of traditional sheet films, email kprotraditional@kodak.com.
Comments
I've been doing a bit of digital copying of film lately and the more I do I more I regain respect for the amount of information contained in a negative or slide.
I still think that for landscapes and images that are not required in a hurry film is a good choice.
Not surprised, good scanners help!
Not surprised! We started digitizing our past film archive with a scanner recently which produced such quality that we realised that we could start using film again. We have a digital back which effects the lenses on the Medium format so that we do not get as much coverage. Similar story with the Sinar 5 x 4, with same digital back which slides across.
We are planning to use film and scan as usual. We purchased an Olympus Om1 couple of weeks ago, favorite 35mm camera, so we are delighted that it will start getting use.
The Sinar 5 x 4 will also get some film use, not just for the fun either, it is great to use, all that fiddling around to get the best hot spot. So keep making film in should be used in combination with digital as another option in the tool box. It should not just be one or the other. All systems formats and mediums have their use. : D
The comment about age is correct, people younger than me are excited about film but people older than me want nothing to do with it. I've launched a website to help document labs that still process film and i've had good interest. http://www.photomfa.com
Minilab scanning quality is awful..
Anyone who did color negative film dev/print in minilabs (probably up until around y.2003 in my country), and a LOT of such people, know pretty well the quality that was possible to print at.. But these days young people who are not able to compare the optically printed image quality against the "newly scanned" print quality (and I refer solely to minilab printers, at least where I live-Europe) do not have a clue what a vast difference in quality this unfortunately is. It's reassuring that the film is alive and strong, but if its full potential was easily accessible to masses through classic process printing labs - it could do alot better imho.
Now all we need are good film scanners that don't cost an arm and a leg. Flatbeds are ok, but it's pretty easy to hit their limit. Dedicated 35mm / 120 filmstrip scanners are either a bit rubbish or VERY expensive and Nikon recently stopped making their high end scanners. It's time for someone to step up and fill this void.
Kodak states they introduced Ekta film 2 years agol. I used Ekta 25 film in Australia more than 2o years ago, an excellemt film. Ekta 1000 was also available at the time
The news sounds promising, although I will miss the VC version. Lets hope 160VC sticks around for a while.
That said, I got the new Portra 400 loaded now and will shoot and review asap!
Keep film alive!!!!!!
Digital-only work-flows only mean fast production speeds. Right now, we don't need speed, we need quality. More quality please!! More film please!!!! MORE FILM!!!!
p.s. Nothing can match the slow-paced image control of a large format ground-glass.
Film--not just for technical arguments
Boy would I love it if Portra (ANY PORTRA) film was well-stocked over here in the States. I like to give the local shops my business before Internet mail-order, but the only commonly available color negative film is "UltraMax" 400. Nice and saturated, but I shoot color reversal if I want saturated colors without hypertension faces.
I don't mind improved products, but reliable supply would be nice.
And I'm tired of hearing film-versus-digital arguments. Why do so many people think they're mutually exclusive? They're two different mediums, they look different and they have different advantages. I hope this news signals an end to irrelevant arguments about what medium other people should use.
About the return of investmnent
Afer a period of thirty years I decided to go digital. It turned out to be a good choice, for average assignments. But when we talk about quality... And than I had to make a decision, a new medium format camera, wich one. After five years the old one is junkyard-bound, nobody wants to buy it. This implicated the 'investment' costs about €15.000 a year. In the old days you reached your break-even point in ten years. Costs: € 7.500 a year for the Sinar and the middle format. But, even grandfathers camera's were almost as good as new ones. And after those ten years the yearly coast is zero. Photographers did change from variable costs (just some film and laboratory) to fixed costs: when there's no work for the medium format it stil costs a lot of money. Not quite cost effective. So I decided, instead of throwing money in the big black hole of a new Mamiya ZD or Hasselblad, to take my old 4x5"and 6x7cm together with the Flextight out of the locker. 'Wiped off the dust and go!' Besides, the quality is enormous, much better than a 80 Mp thing (who the hell is using them all..?). I made a test, a scan of 196 ppi on 2.80 x 2.00 meter from 35 mm film. And believe it or not: gorgeous! And after that I learned that worldwide 70% of the professionals still work on film!!
Nowadays there is a new option: shooting on film, scanning and Photoshopping. Just one advice, don't buy a mickey-mouse scanner like al those Polaroid, Minolta, Nikon or other rubbish, but go for a Flextight. And believe me, just like the ol'day camera's: the scanner lasts forever. In my case the scans are recorded on a 'scanner dedicated' old computer, upgrading is not necessary, the thing doesn't have to rule the waves of the internet. The finishing is done on a modern machine.
And besides the unsurpassed quality or speaking of the dynamic range of negative film.... There's no noise anymore on 400 ISO. ;-)
There's evidence besides testimony
One very concrete evidence that film smells funny but is not dying is the popularity of software that attempts to emulate the look of film. (Digital just isn't the same because of CFA demosaicing and telecentricity, as most of you may know).
They might have been surprised by the demand for 120 slide film because of the lomography/toy camera movement, which I wouldn't doubt is a relevant driver for film demand. Slide films with weaker color casts when cross-processed are particularly prized, and the "best" xpro film according to popular lore (Agfa CT Precisa) is discontinued but highly sought after and commanding high markups on eBay.
I get a feeling that film photography had a lot of development -- sp. camera-wise -- to match a certain ideal of photographic aesthetics which is now quickly achievable on digital (matrix metering auto-focus, super high ISOs with next to no grain), and thus got lost when digital outbeat us on such counts. But I own a bunch of "prettify your digital images" software and nothing compares to well-scanned xpro or, for the right purposes, the Fuji Pro160S/C lines.
There's also the received wisdom that Kodak lost its way when Fuji came up with Velvia (now Velvia 50) one of the most beautiful films in existence -- whether crossed or not. Kodachrome just couldn't match the Velvia sunsets, and soon couldn't match the Astia portraits. I'm glad they're coming around again.
I was sent some 125 year old family 5 x 7 photos to repair. I initially paid $15 for a 550 meg TIFscan, then opted for the Epson V750 Pro so I could do it all on my own.
In a group shot of 13 people I can actually see the fabric on the buttons! Seeing this detail is amazing!
Now, after reading all the praises here for film, I feel justified in staying with my 40 year old 120 camera.
I am actually afraid to go digital. There can be 23 switches and 35 memory mode functions. There is no viewfinder. And worst of all, I can not write off this as a business expense and buy a new one every 3-4 years.
Thanks to everyone for providing the confidence I need to stay with film.
Kindest regards!
maybe it is time for a break....
Things are bad big time in digital. I have had to return a machine canon claims has the hishest image quality of any DSLR- the Canon 5D MkII.
Because the image quality is so poor.
First it gives results with a low dynamic range and much, much, more noise than an older machine from 2004 (the 1Ds MkII).
DPP cannot get rid of this noise, nor can Lightroom, no.
And like the D300 before it, all attempts to remove noise results in the removal- of course, of all the fine detail you paid all that money to record in the first place.
And digital is computer-dependant. It is OS dependent and software dependent.
If Lightroom changes the way noise reduction is done it makes a substantial difference to what images processed through it look like.
Agreed developers are a lot more fractious, and a lot less controllable, but they have at least no digital noise reduction to do.
Where digital should score with reduction of fringing and removal of distortion, it fails as many machines leave all these there- the Canon 5DII certainly does, and reliance on software even if affordable (for video? - it costs a fortune plus a new High-end Mac to cope with the corrections which are not anyway too cool) forces you to keep and maintain obsolete hardware to get back the picture you first thought of- and to print it (no drivers for XP, or 7 being written for old pro machines halves their resolution, for example)
What film gives you is a stable known result that can only be ruined by processing.
I gave up Kodachrome when several b atches returned with grain like golfballs all the way through everything. Kodak refunded but I lost 5 weeks work- a lot, thanks.
Digital doesnt do that. You at least have an infinitely clonable result that as I type is probably being ripped automatically by someone off this oft-hacked machine!, but at least it exists somewhere in the continuum endless circling the circuits of the www like everyone else's.
Film will be good again when it is a mature product, because up until now no accurate grainless colour emulsions have ever been made.
They simply do not exist. The user has no choice but to buy into a "look", and that is dreadful.
The user should be able to have an accurate base from which to create their own look, yet this does not yet exist at all.
It does not exist anywhere at all in digital either. Sigma possibly will one day do it, but nobody else does.
Just maybe we could give the whole thing a break until somewhere someone turns up who can actually provide accuracy- wysiwyg is still mythical.
Keeping Analogue is Economical
As an amateur;
I think that one of the major reasons of surviving film, is the short time interval for a serious DSLR to be outdated (to be sold for less than a half if you wish to save the half !) just after 2 years, typically. If you keep analogue, it is a bit strange but you save more, at the end you can afford an Epson V700-750 with no hassle...
The other issue is the immunity of film exposure against all "digi-hi-tech" developments and against all unreliability of memory drives, they simply resist without help, without any software / hardware update.
If only Kodak would bring back Kodachrome 64!!!
If they make it today I would buy 500 rolls....
Kodak are you listening?? ;-)
Love reading this thread again a year since. Read another about the same time by Tommy Sowell about the "death" of E-6 process. Funny that I just got in a new batch of E-6 chemicals, and my slide film shooting continues. Also funny that there are people evangelizing digital in a story about film. You'll never catch me advocating film in a story about digital unless I was paid to do that. Not sure what I would hope to accomplish either. It's not like I haven't shot digital for over a decade, or digital shooters haven't shot film in the past.
New Portra is still hard to find here in the States. I joke that Kodak could save money by printing the product announcement and cancellation notice on the same sheet of paper--seriously though, a lot of people are confused about the status of Portra. It's a shame, because I shot some old 400 NC recently and it was just the most gorgeous high speed print film I have ever set eyes on. I understand that the new Portra 400 is good, but not as settled or as grainless as 400 NC. Kodak are shooting themselves in the foot with the timing of their notices. I had to convince my local shop that the entire Portra line was not cancelled. Kodak needs to get the word out. Portra: "I'm not dead yet!"
I see that some would like Kodachrome to make a comeback. It can still be bought, however I have yet to see a hobby remjet machine. ;)
Kodak would demonstrate it's commitment to film by the reintroduction of products for those of us who invested in Readyload holders.
I just read a month or so back that Kodak is selling off their film division. Now they are making new films? What's happening?
35mm HP5 + Developing + Good scanning = about $25 for 36 shots... if you can find a lab to do it.
I'm sorry, but I'm done with film. Just doesn't make sense anymore.
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