Tour of Kodak’s Factory Shows How 35mm Film is Made

I must admit I'd never given any thought to the perfectly logical but surprising stuff at 7:27!

Now, you all spotted the secret Kodachrome production line, right?
 
cover a sheet of 4x5 card in glue and sprinkle them on (in a dark room) shoot that bit of card through a lf camera, see what you get.
From that video of the production line it looks like they cut the film and perforate it before adding the light sensitive emulsion, if so, all you'd probably get is bits in your camera!
 
From that video of the production line it looks like they cut the film and perforate it before adding the light sensitive emulsion, if so, all you'd probably get is bits in your camera!

Boooo. I'm sure the ilford version they cut down coated master rolls. I've not watched the video in much detail though.
 
I watched that video a couple of days ago. The thing that stood out for me was how few people there seemed to be around - like the place was running on a skeleton crew or something (or maybe it was just the weekend or something).

I want some of those 35mm sprocket bits (for no good reason I can think of). :)

The master roll room was pretty bare - I could imagine that 25 or so years back it'd be stacked floor to ceiling with them, now there's only a few on some very empty looking shelves.
 
Boooo. I'm sure the ilford version they cut down coated master rolls. I've not watched the video in much detail though.
That's how FilmFerrania say they are doing it, too. Coat the massive rolls, then slice them and perforate (or add backing paper).
 
On the video they show the cut film on a machine (presumably the one that cut it) but in the open and with lots of it exposed to the light, far more than I'd have thought they'd have had in the open if it was light sensitive at the time., so I can only think they add the light sensitive emulsion afterwards? If not, then it looks like they must waste an awful lot if it if they're just feeding it through or those are off cuts?

I wonder if there's a video that actually shows film being made step by step rather than just a quick wander round a factory. To be honest, I wasn't awfully impressed with that video.
 
I suspect that was a dormant machine with slit film on it for demo purposes.

The classic film of how it's done is here (part 1 of 2, in something other than English, but with subtitles)...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ6w1esVcoY


I love the bit where they're shoving big silver ingots into a vat of hot nitric acid.
Now that was an informative film, after watching that it makes me appreciate just what an incredible invention film is. As the subtitles say at the end of Part 2, "Shoot it now, while you still have the chance!". Given today's economic and political climate, never a truer word might have been spoken.

Edit: I've just found this video, which explains the more modern process (probably a bit closer to how it's done these days).

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNhSFQmnMcE
 
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Now that was an informative film, after watching that it makes me appreciate just what an incredible invention film is. As the subtitles say at the end of Part 2, "Shoot it now, while you still have the chance!". Given today's economic and political climate, never a truer word might have been spoken.

It also underpins what I said in the Acros discontinuation thread, about it being done on an industrial scale - that's a proper, full-on, big old factory. Not only that, but it's not something that can be downsized other than shutting down some of the factories if you happen to have several. Any attempt to make one factory cheaper to run would pretty-much entail dumping the machinery and investing in new machines that were suited to a smaller output, which means it's a choice between trying to maintain sales to run the current setup, or making a big investment to then survive on less sales. I can't imagine Fuji run at a much smaller scale, and it doesn't surprise me that their response to dwindling sales of Acros is to just end the product.
 
14 tons of silver per week! k'in'ell! Sure that was when film was all there was, but even still!

Having watched that, and the second part also, I find it really rather inspiring that all of that was routinely achievable 60 years ago. It actually makes me want to shoot film even more now than before.
 
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Wow all that silver...you'd think the chemists would\could find something cheaper.
 
Yeah, maybe some sort of minature silicon diode array attached to a small computer to record the image?

Are you mad? That would never catch on, cameras would have to be huge and far too expensive...
 
Are you mad? That would never catch on, cameras would have to be huge and far too expensive...

I forsee a time where people will pay thousands for the latest dSLR (diode (array) SLR) and change them every year or two at which point they will be worth less than good quality p&s.
 
I forsee a time where people will pay thousands for the latest dSLR (diode (array) SLR) and change them every year or two at which point they will be worth less than good quality p&s.
Never mind, while they're concentrating on that the price of film cameras might fall to practically nothing and we'll all be able to own dozens of them including all the top models we couldn't afford when we were young! This could be a really good thing for film photography, as long as they don't stop making film that is.

Snip:
14 tons of silver per week! k'in'ell! Sure that was when film was all there was, but even still!

Not just any old silver either, 99% pure silver! :wideyed:
 
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Wow all that silver...you'd think the chemists would\could find something cheaper.

You can of course use sonmething like bitumen - Niepce used it successfully:D. The difficulty lies in the relative slowness of the material.

There are in fact non-silver alternatives - I recall diazo films having a relative popularity in the 1960s. Popular for certain things, and not general use. There's a lot more involved in making a usable film than simply light sensitivity per se.
 
Also, didn't the early alternatives actually poison the photographers using them? :facepalm:
 
Also, didn't the early alternatives actually poison the photographers using them? :facepalm:

I don't definitely know of any fatalities, but the Daguerrotype process used mercury vapour as the developing agent. Mercury was freely available in the physics lab when I was at school, but I understand that modern children lack the resistance we had and it's now banned.

It's simple enough to get details of all the early processes, and even download the books that gave details for the 19th century photographers who needed "how to do it" information.
 
It's simple enough to get details of all the early processes, and even download the books that gave details for the 19th century photographers who needed "how to do it" information.

And presumably also simple enough to get an early-morning call from MI5 and half a dozen large and heavily armed police officers if you start trying to buy ingredients like mercury on-line! :facepalm:
 
You can of course use sonmething like bitumen - Niepce used it successfully:D. The difficulty lies in the relative slowness of the material.

There are in fact non-silver alternatives - I recall diazo films having a relative popularity in the 1960s. Popular for certain things, and not general use. There's a lot more involved in making a usable film than simply light sensitivity per se.

Well I suppose until recently (well say before 10 years ago), people were buying film in reasonable quantities and the film manufacturers attitude was "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and why spend money on research to find an alternative to silver.
 
And presumably also simple enough to get an early-morning call from MI5 and half a dozen large and heavily armed police officers if you start trying to buy ingredients like mercury on-line! :facepalm:

I just had a quick look, and it doesn't seem too difficult to get mercury - despite the EU banning it in barometers and thermometers etc. Someone I worked with had an early morning raid for no better reason than a flatmate had enquired about the cost of a distilling licence - which was proof positive that they must be distilling illegally - so it's very easy to generate a dawn raid.

But why the fixation on mercury - there were many alternative processes apart from Daguerre's original one. As far as I know, none of them involve mercury, although I strongly suspect that in this safety gone mad age all involve highly dangerous chemicals - some even use sodium chloride, a compound of the highly reactive and dangerous metal sodium and the deadly gas chlorine.

I believe quite a lot of research was done on processes that didn't need silver, because there was a time when the price was skyrocketing and the continued availablity was in doubt. It's just that no viable alternative was found.
 
And presumably also simple enough to get an early-morning call from MI5 and half a dozen large and heavily armed police officers if you start trying to buy ingredients like mercury on-line! :facepalm:

In the early days, there was lots of experimentation using all sorts of chemicals, some of which would now be considered dodgy. It's also possible that some of the processes were using chemicals that weren't really needed, or that had a minor effect, or might not be needed now, given that we have things like refrigeration, modern chemicals might be more refined (or even just ready-made), etc.

In short, the dodgy stuff isn't necessarily needed to make home brew photographic materials that work. The key ingredients for the Silver Halide methods can be bought freely. Of those, Silver Nitrate solution is probably the one that most needs to be handled with care. In general, always do the research beforehand - research the historical methods as well as the equivalents that have been published by modern experimenters, and read the MSDS for everything that you use so that you understand the risks.
 
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