No more of my favorite film... now what digital?

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Kevin - 04 Jan 2005 03:21 GMT

Well I think it is official... I have run out of my last brick of
Kodak Supra, all speeds. It was a sad day. I have since run through
a dozen rolls of Fuji films, agfa, and some other Kodaks.

While I like the kodak 400UC the best, and Agfa 50 rocks for
sharpness, I think it could be a little expensive for an amature like
me to shoot every day. I think it may be time to add a Nikon D70 to
the bag....

Unless someone has a recomendation.... (but lets face it I will still
probably get a D70)

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Bill Tuthill - 05 Jan 2005 15:47 GMT

> Well I think it is official... I have run out of my last brick of
> Kodak Supra, all speeds. It was a sad day. I have since run through
> a dozen rolls of Fuji films, agfa, and some other Kodaks.

Supra 400 is still available mail-order from B&H.

> While I like the kodak 400UC the best, and Agfa 50 rocks for
> sharpness, I think it could be a little expensive for an amateur
> like me to shoot every day.

There is no such film as Agfa 50, unless you mean RSX, or old Ultra.
No comment about the D70 -- this is the wrong newsgroup.

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Kevin - 09 Jan 2005 01:58 GMT

>There is no such film as Agfa 50, unless you mean RSX, or old Ultra.
>No comment about the D70 -- this is the wrong newsgroup.

Sorry meant konica 50 (still have a bunch left) and agfa 100

And no there is currently no Supra available from B&H, only royal
supra 400, not the same.

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Ted - 09 Jan 2005 03:58 GMT

> Well I think it is official... I have run out of my last brick of
> Kodak Supra, all speeds. It was a sad day. I have since run through
> a dozen rolls of Fuji films, agfa, and some other Kodaks.

Supra 400 used to be my favorite film. When Kodak discontinued it, I
switched to Portra 400UC/Ultra Color 400 and never looked back.

However, I notice that Kodak still sells Supra films in Australia, New
Zealand, and other nearby areas. They may be the five-year-old Supra
films, or they may be something like the Elite films sold in Europe or
the Ultra Color films sold in North America.

> While I like the kodak 400UC the best, and Agfa 50 rocks for
> sharpness, I think it could be a little expensive for an amature like
> me to shoot every day. I think it may be time to add a Nikon D70 to
> the bag....

I don't know about Agfa 50, but mail-ordering 400UC is no more
expensive than Supra 400 used to be. It's certainly cheaper than a
digital SLR and all the necessary accessories (although there certainly
are compelling reasons to switch to digital).

---
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The Wogster - 09 Jan 2005 14:53 GMT

>>Well I think it is official... I have run out of my last brick of
>>Kodak Supra, all speeds. It was a sad day. I have since run through
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> films, or they may be something like the Elite films sold in Europe or
> the Ultra Color films sold in North America.

They could be something completely different, it's not uncommon for film
companies to sell film X as film Y in another part of the world, and
then sell film Z as film X in that same country, confuses the heck out
of tourists though.....

>>While I like the kodak 400UC the best, and Agfa 50 rocks for
>>sharpness, I think it could be a little expensive for an amature like
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> digital SLR and all the necessary accessories (although there certainly
> are compelling reasons to switch to digital).

If you live in the Northern hemisphere and order professional films,
this is the time of year to do it, when shipping trucks / trailers /
containers are nice and cool. Never order them in the summer, those
trucks can be 50C inside (over 120F), it's hard to get mail-order using
refridgerated transport.

One way to cut film costs is to bulk-load and have the lab return the
cartridges/spools to you. You could also home process, but whether that
saves money or not is debatable.

W

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Ted - 09 Jan 2005 22:29 GMT

> > However, I notice that Kodak still sells Supra films in Australia, New
> > Zealand, and other nearby areas. They may be the five-year-old Supra
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> then sell film Z as film X in that same country, confuses the heck out
> of tourists though.....

It makes absolutely no sense in a Global Economy. It surely must cost
Kodak more to package and market the same film under three different
brand names, or even more than that to manufacture three different
films the fill the same market niche. But the clean-cut men in
pin-striped suits who make these decisions have MBAs and earn executive
compensation packages, so they obviously must be far wiser than
uneducated laymen like me. I can only offer the ignorant speculation
that it has something to do with controlling the distribution channels
and making unauthorized "gray-market" imports more difficult. Whatever
good reason the marketing professionals have for doing things this way,
it clearly must outweigh the cost and confusion.

In this case though, if I were in the region of Oceania where Kodak
sold "Supra" film, I would wonder why (or if) they were foisting
five-year-old technology on me when the rest of the world has newer
(and presumably better) emulsions. It could be that that "Supra" is
actually a new emulsion sold under a name that is obsolete in the rest
of the world for reasons understandable only to Kodak's marketing
professionals. But absent any explicit statement to that effect, it
raises a reasonable question of being deliberately left behind the rest
of the world.

> If you live in the Northern hemisphere and order professional films,
> this is the time of year to do it, when shipping trucks / trailers /
> containers are nice and cool. Never order them in the summer, those

> trucks can be 50C inside (over 120F), it's hard to get mail-order using
> refridgerated transport.

That's true. If you can't plan that far ahead, a better strategy might
be to bite the bullet and pay a premium price at the local camera shop.
But is there a guarantee that they get their shipments in refrigerated
transport?

> One way to cut film costs is to bulk-load and have the lab return the

> cartridges/spools to you. You could also home process, but whether that
> saves money or not is debatable.

I think both of these measures are excessive, unless you happen to
enjoy home processing for its own sake. What I do to save money is take
my negative film to a local mini-lab to be processed but not printed.
Then I batch scan the whole roll at low resolution, and make
high-resolution scans only of the frames I want. But that's much too
tedious if I've shot a lot of film.

---

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The Wogster - 10 Jan 2005 01:05 GMT

>>>However, I notice that Kodak still sells Supra films in Australia,
>
[quoted text clipped - 32 lines]
> good reason the marketing professionals have for doing things this way,
> it clearly must outweigh the cost and confusion.

You end up packaging things differently anyway, for example you need to
include English and French on the labels in Canada (by law), you need
Spanish for Mexico and most of South America, except Brasil where they
speak Portugese. You need English, French, Spanish, German, Italian,
Dutch, and a host of other languages for Europe. Better include Hebrew
and Arabic for the Middle East, for Asia you can include English,
Japanise, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese and maybe a couple of others.

Is it cheaper to send boxes of film to Australia or 1000m rolls to China
where you cut it into individual rolls and boxed up with English labels
for the Australian and New Zealand markets.

In my life I have met 5 MBA's, all 5 combined couldn't run a business as
well as my Grandfather who dropped out of school in grade 2 to start
working the family farm. He later ran the farm, and a successful
logging and saw-mill operation, the farm he worked in the summer, the
logging in the winter, and the mill all year 'round. I often think the
M in MBA stands for moron.

> In this case though, if I were in the region of Oceania where Kodak
> sold "Supra" film, I would wonder why (or if) they were foisting
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> raises a reasonable question of being deliberately left behind the rest
> of the world.

It could be, old film. Think about it, your shipping a load of film, you
don't ship a brick or two, you ship one of those big metal containers,
the local office knows it's not a big seller, so they toss it in a lead
lined deep freeze, they know it can sit there for 10 years without
affecting it, they haul it out when a dealer needs some, and ship it out.

>>If you live in the Northern hemisphere and order professional films,
>>this is the time of year to do it, when shipping trucks / trailers /
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> But is there a guarantee that they get their shipments in refrigerated
> transport?

Ask the store owner or manager, consumer film doesn't matter much, the
pro stuff, they might and that's why it costs more. Considering that
Kodak and probably the others toss their film in the ice-box, nothing to
say you can't do the same, so order the brick, and get a couple of those
airport xray bags, put the rolls inside the airport bag, and label it
with the date you froze it. The freezer will extend the expiry date,
and the airport bag, will cut the radiation that could also fog the film.

>>One way to cut film costs is to bulk-load and have the lab return the
>
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> high-resolution scans only of the frames I want. But that's much too
> tedious if I've shot a lot of film.

I bulk-load and home process B&W, but not colour for now, but I am
heading that way. I do 2400DPI scans of all colour frames and most B&W,
I have some colour shots from the 1970's that have faded considerably,
so they are in rescue mode now, fortunately most frames from back then
were shot on B&W, I expect that sometime in 2007 I will have everything
scanned and catalogued.

In 1977 I shot 20 rolls of film, this past year, 16, I want to shoot at
least 21 this year, and 25 next year, the scanner, which is recent, cut
the cost of processing in half. Home processing will halve it again,
and bulk loading will reduce the cost of film.

W

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DaveHodge - 10 Jan 2005 16:27 GMT

<< and get a couple of those
airport xray bags, put the rolls inside the airport bag, and label it
with the date you froze it. The freezer will extend the expiry date,
and the airport bag, will cut the radiation that could also fog the film. >>

Sorry. Neither the lead-lined deep freeze nor the airport x-ray bag is going
to slow down gamma radiation which can penetrate 10 feet or more of lead. So
after 10 years you have to expect some increase in fog level, but it should not
affect performance significiantly, unless you are earning your living from
photography. I have several emulsions in my deep freeze that are 20 or more
years out of date and they still perform well. But I'm not a pro.

Best regards, David Hodge at the top of the Chesapeake Bay--

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