Kodak Discontinuing I.R. film?

Charlie Peich · April 13, 2007

I was visiting photo.net, and I ran across a thread that was discussing Kodak dropping the Infrared b&w HIE and color EIR films from their catalog and the face of the earth. Anyone here heard that rumor?

Has anyone shot with these films lately?

K Borowski · April 14, 2007

THey'll be gone in may, EIR and HIE. Basically, you can blaim the USAF. That's why the stuff's coated on estar, it's aerial film, so they can make a whole big master roll of HIE aerial film, cut probably 99% of it up and ship it to the force, and take the last 35mm sliver and give it to us ;-) Now I guess they're doing infrared photographs digitally, or with Kodak's dedicated false-color infrared aerial film. All the B&W aerial films besides the special order HIE coating for the air force are gone now anyway. I think Kodak is actually slipping news out about this one before their last coating because myself and a lot of other still photographers raise fu-cking hell every time they do it. They coat a film, use it all up, and probalby have someone call out the announcement the moment the last roll goes out the door. Someone slipped the news out early, so there's still time to fill an order before the HIE mixer stops mixing, cold in its tracks, and the emulsion is officially dead.

We would still have a chance on getting coatings of HIE made, maybe for reduced cost, if people would pledge to buy a specific amount of it. I'll pass on your order of a certain number of rolls to Kodak, Charlie, if you are interested in requesting x-number of rolls as part of the whole order, but there's still time to buy stick (May is the official announcement supposedly). Email me if you're interested. Despite my prolific postings here of late, I'm going on a little internet holiday to get my life back in order, and actually put all of the time I waste here into actually shooting movies and exposing film and learning all of the craft that can't be learned here or in the classroom, stuff that is most important and can only be learned by actually doing it over and over. So you can get in touch with me either through email or at my listed phone number.

From the perspective of a motion picture, were even one or two movies pledged to shoot x-thousand feet of HIE in 35- or 16mm HIE(done on a few occasions just recently), Kodak could probably be convinced to continue producing it, something for cinematographers considering using it for special effects shots in infrared to consider as this may be one of the last opportuniteis. It would fill the roll the air force was filling. As an aside, I am 1/1 in getting Kodak to cut products to a certain size (Kodachrome 40A in Regular 8mm in '04 was in part my doing), so I'd be willing to try it again, but they won't do a run for 4 feet of the stuff.

[. . .

I shot my first (and now possibly last) roll lof HIE in October/November of '06. I underdeveloped the first half (shot 18 frames, went in the darkroom, and cut the roll in half still in the camera) of the roll two stops, smooth move on my part and totally out of character to make a rookie mistake like that, then I went back and reshot the pictures again and apparantly the brief amount of light I had on just to cut the new leader for the other half of the 18 exposures produced fog that reruined my retake pictures, rendering the least satisfying experience with a film product I have ever had. I haven't made mistakes like that since before I was a photo one student, so maybe the stuff really *is* difficult to master, like they say it is. OK, enough stream of consciousness on HIE, back on track. . .

]

The film is obscenely expensive, i think $12 is the best you can get just one roll of 36 exp (so $2.50 a foot, anyone care to shoot an entire film at that budget? :o ) But the film produces, from the samples I've seen, some of the most beautiful images in B&W I have every seen. There is also no other infrared film like HIE because it is old school emulsion tecnnology (grain, is there ever?), it is sensitive all the way up the past 950nm, falling only gradually, whereas other films have abrupt falloff at least 100-200 nm sooner; I shot some of the Rollei infrared, basically 700nm stuff, and at 400, it looked like regular B&W. You need to buy IR filters, know what the hell you're doing, and work for years to get the other infrared films to work. I said the HIE I shot was my most unsuccessful roll, but when I tried printing those weak underexposed negatives on grade 5 paper, I could really tell that they would have been beautiful pictures if I'd have developed them right. What I mean is, HIE is legendary for being hard to use, and my first roll was an abyssmal failure, but from what I've shot with the other IR films, and heard and scene from the results they produce, HIE is the best infrared product out there.

Regards,

~KB

Charles MacDonald · April 15, 2007

We would still have a chance on getting coatings of HIE made, maybe for reduced cost, if people would pledge to buy a specific amount of it. I'll pass on your order of a certain number of rolls to Kodak, Charlie, if you are interested in requesting x-number of rolls as part of the whole order, but there's still time to buy stick (May is the official announcement supposedly). Email me if you're interested.

Trick is they probably "can't" make LESS than 3000ft at 54 inches wide. even if they wanted to, and I dont think that they can easaly slit one of those big rolls into different widths.

Infrared is even more problimaticaly as they can't use the infrared night vison stuff that acts as a safelight in some film production.

This is more complex than just getting some film perfed as Regular 8. For that they just have to use a different perforator die, at the time the film is slit to 16mm, or not perforate some and re-process it as a separate step. (micorfilm is not perforated so they should be able ot slit and not perforate. The US price list shows some Regular 8 stock with a minimum order of about 3000 feet, which would be one master slit.

Alessandro Machi · April 15, 2007

THey'll be gone in may, EIR and HIE. Basically, you can blaim the USAF. That's why the stuff's coated on estar, it's aerial film, so they can make a whole big master roll of HIE aerial film, cut probably 99% of it up and ship it to the force, and take the last 35mm sliver and give it to us ;-) Now I guess they're doing infrared photographs digitally, or with Kodak's dedicated false-color infrared aerial film. All the B&W aerial films besides the special order HIE coating for the air force are gone now anyway. I think Kodak is actually slipping news out about this one before their last coating because myself and a lot of other still photographers raise fu-cking hell every time they do it. They coat a film, use it all up, and probalby have someone call out the announcement the moment the last roll goes out the door. Someone slipped the news out early, so there's still time to fill an order before the HIE mixer stops mixing, cold in its tracks, and the emulsion is officially dead.

We would still have a chance on getting coatings of HIE made, maybe for reduced cost, if people would pledge to buy a specific amount of it. I'll pass on your order of a certain number of rolls to Kodak, Charlie, if you are interested in requesting x-number of rolls as part of the whole order, but there's still time to buy stick (May is the official announcement supposedly). Email me if you're interested. Despite my prolific postings here of late, I'm going on a little internet holiday to get my life back in order, and actually put all of the time I waste here into actually shooting movies and exposing film and learning all of the craft that can't be learned here or in the classroom, stuff that is most important and can only be learned by actually doing it over and over. So you can get in touch with me either through email or at my listed phone number.

From the perspective of a motion picture, were even one or two movies pledged to shoot x-thousand feet of HIE in 35- or 16mm HIE(done on a few occasions just recently), Kodak could probably be convinced to continue producing it, something for cinematographers considering using it for special effects shots in infrared to consider as this may be one of the last opportuniteis. It would fill the roll the air force was filling. As an aside, I am 1/1 in getting Kodak to cut products to a certain size (Kodachrome 40A in Regular 8mm in '04 was in part my doing), so I'd be willing to try it again, but they won't do a run for 4 feet of the stuff.

[. . .

I shot my first (and now possibly last) roll lof HIE in October/November of '06. I underdeveloped the first half (shot 18 frames, went in the darkroom, and cut the roll in half still in the camera) of the roll two stops, smooth move on my part and totally out of character to make a rookie mistake like that, then I went back and reshot the pictures again and apparantly the brief amount of light I had on just to cut the new leader for the other half of the 18 exposures produced fog that reruined my retake pictures, rendering the least satisfying experience with a film product I have ever had. I haven't made mistakes like that since before I was a photo one student, so maybe the stuff really *is* difficult to master, like they say it is. OK, enough stream of consciousness on HIE, back on track. . .

]

The film is obscenely expensive, i think $12 is the best you can get just one roll of 36 exp (so $2.50 a foot, anyone care to shoot an entire film at that budget? :o ) But the film produces, from the samples I've seen, some of the most beautiful images in B&W I have every seen. There is also no other infrared film like HIE because it is old school emulsion tecnnology (grain, is there ever?), it is sensitive all the way up the past 950nm, falling only gradually, whereas other films have abrupt falloff at least 100-200 nm sooner; I shot some of the Rollei infrared, basically 700nm stuff, and at 400, it looked like regular B&W. You need to buy IR filters, know what the hell you're doing, and work for years to get the other infrared films to work. I said the HIE I shot was my most unsuccessful roll, but when I tried printing those weak underexposed negatives on grade 5 paper, I could really tell that they would have been beautiful pictures if I'd have developed them right. What I mean is, HIE is legendary for being hard to use, and my first roll was an abyssmal failure, but from what I've shot with the other IR films, and heard and scene from the results they produce, HIE is the best infrared product out there.

Regards,

~KB

If you're going to be a windbag, how about being a "sustaining member" windbag. :D

Matthew Buick · April 24, 2007

That's spam, Alessandro. <_<

David Venhaus · April 27, 2007

There has been a recent update from Kodak on this. The Black and white HIE film will still be produced and currently Kodak has no plans for discontinuing it. They are, however, will be discontinuing the false color EIR film.