Can I buy(purchase) old film stocks from Kodak?

Hrishikesh Jha · November 11, 2015

The look of a certain film stock of the 80s or early 90s is different from the stock Kodak makes now. Or so I feel. After research I found that, for example Alien was shot on T100 5247. Could I still find them somewhere?I have mailed Kodak on this.

Tyler Purcell · November 11, 2015

Nope, they don't save anything.

Aapo Lettinen · November 11, 2015

you can find some of the old stocks from ebay but all of them are probably junk because they are so old and most likely incorrectly stored most of the time. older emulsions may also need different developers which are no longer manufactured.

If you have lots of money and time you could maybe buy some of the larger ebay rolls and test them thoroughly if they are usable for non-serious work or art projects. I mean factory sealed old 1000feet rolls, opened small cans or short ends are probably waste of time because you would need to test every single one of them and the total film amount would still be relatively small, they are also much more likely to have problems because they are opened and may have incorrect chemical conditions (for example humidity, rust, mold, etc) inside the cans :/

it would be much better to learn to emulate the older stocks with current film material by altering the look with processing and, if needed, additional stock emulation efx in post.

David Mullen for example is very knowledgeable about this and can maybe suggest you some workflows if you already have some specific stocks in mind you would like to emulate :)

Edited November 11, 2015 by aapo lettinen

Aapo Lettinen · November 11, 2015

film emulsions age relatively quickly so Kodak has no reason to store them for long, if you would need some older generation stock you would need to start from scratch by cooking new batch of emulsion, then coating it to the base material, etc. Storing emulsions would be like storing butter packages in your fridge, you don't want them to be there for years unused.... better to use them quickly before they go bad and got new ones :/

Jacob Delaney · November 15, 2015

I don't know much about using new old stock film but I do know acetate film doesn't like to be stored sealed for that many years. If you bought factory sealed film from the 1980s then I would think it would start breaking down (vinegar syndrome) from having those gases not being able to escape.

I might be wrong on this. Does vinegar syndrome only affect developed film?
Either way it's most likely bad if it wasn't kept frozen.

Mark Dunn · November 15, 2015

IIRC vinegaring is caused by the deterioration of the acetate base itself, so it could affect any stock, raw or processed.

I had some 1976 material on the Steenbeck recently. The picture was fine but the mag stock was starting to smell and distort -the perf side shrinks so the roll curls inwards. I told the client to put it in separate cans as it is contagious.

Most of my 80s and 90s material smells but Super-8 seems unaffected.

Edited November 15, 2015 by Mark Dunn

Jacob Delaney · November 15, 2015

I have a 16mm reel of some junk film that's twisting badly and taking up loosely so I wound it backwards very tightly and let it sit for a while and that seemed to help a little. I've heard of VS film being contagious but I'm not sure if I believe that. Better safe than sorry though. That reel doesn't smell like vinegar at all but I have some 35mm that smells but seems otherwise fine.

JB Earl · November 16, 2015

you may be able to get newly manufactured film of an old type, 3M i think. Don't know if it'll be the look you want, but it probably won't look like Vision3. http://www.filmferrania.com