K Borowski

John: You're kidding right? It's almost child's play making B&W film compared to color. I did it myself at a class once. Color is almost impossible for a small company or one man operation to accomplish. For film projection technology, that's for the archives (and the number of EECS majors that erode their sensibilities) to decide. There will be people shooting light sensitized black and white (maybe not even panchromatic emulsions) 100 years hence; I certainly don't need a crystal ball to see it. . .

As it relates to profits, I can assure you, color reversal and B&W film aren't keeping Kodak in business, they're practically charity. I was an avid Kodachrome shooter back in the day. What comparable process did Fuji have in competition with Kodak's then? It's really easy to bash Kodak for products they kept in production far longer than their competitor(s). Now, however, I am disappointed to see Kodak slash their neg stock portfolio down to five and offer only one reversal option, and eliminate Plus-X. I am in (somewhat) active negotiations to bring a replacement. Kodak offers a current lineup that rivals Fuji's (a lot of what is said here is based on ancient information; John's favorite stock was ECN-ONE? Early ECN-II?) Things change a lot in a generation. . at any company, at least one run by mortals. I bet very few people on here have done a stock test between the two manfuacturers, in a decade. I have to admit only having done one on print stocks myself. Anyway, getting back to Super 8, I hesitate to mention this, God forbid I allude to the death of the home movie market in all practical terms, nearly three decades ago, but Fuji apparantly didn't discontinue Single 8. . . they just don't offer it for sale anywhere else outside of Japan. So, maybe they will reverse this if Kodak goes under. I don't understand how someone can bash a company for offering a product, worldwide, in a limited capacity, that its competitor has conceded. It's almost as if they shouldn't have even tried, they would've gotten less grief that way. AS someone who deals with customer satisfaction of varying degrees of sensibility on a daily basis, it's hard to see it leveled on a company that has supported me since I entered into this business. Eastman Kodak certainly has its faults, but A it has supported me since I entered into this business with exceptional products (color longevity issues notwithstanding), and B it has provided charity products like B&W and 8mm for a very long time, with little direct financial incentive to do so. Kodak has been fueled by color negative for almost as long as home movies became a trickle in the bucket, easily almost thirty years there as well. Don't pretend that shooting 50ft. of 8mm film in a year is a contribution. I'm a low-volume user, and I go through the equivalent of hundreds of feet of 35mm every week. . . THe companies Eastman Kodak deals with directly go through 250,000 ft. of 35mm or equivalent. This is in no way meant to scoff the amateur filmmaking community, but it's simple math guys. A super 8 cartridge is 3 36 exp. rolls of stills (15 feet.) Kodak and Fuji did/were sending those out for free for 35mm filmmakers, 100 feet at time. There probably hasn't been any significant profit from S8 since 1983. 16mm volume has plummeted so much it may have already entered into the same category.

Sorry, but what does Super 8 reversal have anything to do with color neg.? The thread is about 16- 35mm color neg. I don't know anyone, even documentaries, shooting reversal anymore. Be thankful any of that is made; it's charity. Kodak and Fuji both offer higher contrast options, primarily Fuji at this point with their Vivid line. . . a lot of people I've heard saying they don't like it though, so go figure. The contrast of the 35mm neg to print system is very high, maybe not as high as a reversal original, but the highest contrast anything from a 4th generation copy can provide.

TYou realize, John, that Kodak going under will mean a probably end to research and development at Fuji for stock improvemetns there. They will probably try to find ways to cut costs on film coating; Kodak was always good at making those sorts of "improvements" too. We'll see if Fuji picks up slack there. Ironically, it looks as if black and white film is going to outlive color. There will certainly be B&W film even a century from now. Color's future is very uncertain.

Sorry someone stole your idea Steve :( Let this serve as a valuable lesson: Don't let people read your script!

Please don't take offense to this, but you don't have stretch ("full" screen") on, right? You have the HD feed, not the standard-def. camera distorted to fill the frame, correct? I tend to be looked at as the family a$$hole for going and setting all the televisions from FULL to NORMAL aspects in standard def. mode. I tell them I am only doing my job as a cinematographer B)

Knowing nothing about the show, I assume it's 4:3 center extraction from network TV. Unfortunately, when they went to digital broadcast of television, to save space I guess, the SD signal is pulled from the center of the HD. So it's like the early days of VHS without pan-and-scan all over again. Do yourself a favor and get an HD TV if you want to talk about cinematography in general, not that they aren't still f***ed when it comes to having to frame with the center in mind. And 16:9 was supposed to fix this! Same problem, just biased in favor of the opposite aspect ratio now. One small positive, I saw "Soldier" on Starz/Encore in HD the other day and they preserved the 2.35:1 aspect; at the same time, it is very possible the movie's poor box office numbers didn't give it a budget for a pan-and-scan for the HD telecine.

While I am a user and advocate of NLE over workprinting and film editing, I'd hardly call it a "revolutionary" accomplishment. I'd be just as happy wee timecodes and bouncing tape still the norm. I'm sure someone would've come up with a frame-accurate analog tape format were there demand for it. CGI I would classify as harmful to the field of filmmaking at this point. There is no need for entire motion pictures to go through the process. The arts of matte painting, modelmaking, motion control photography are all endangered, which is ironic because they still produce in my opinion, a superior product. Yet everyone cares now about budget and ease-of-use. At work, I use a 1970s "computer control" timer and a 1980s densitometer with no problems whatsoever. I have the high-tech problems of blown lightbulbs and power outages to deal with. I would like a better timer, but other than that, no complaints. I've noticed that the big names in Silicon Valley get all the credit that is due the little people, or stolen, acquired, or dubiously obtained through shady business deals. So jobs was more like a director or an A-list actor in terms of his actual contributions.

Tom: I guess I owe you an apology. Having gone back and looked at the last thead where I spoke negatively about the dead, it was someoen else who called me out, not you (although your being in the thread is what I guess set me into giving you "guilt by association") I am not putting words in your mouth, I may have paraphrased, but if not hero-worship, then there is certainly at least praise going on here, no? I'd say Jobs gets a lot of credit, like Eastman, for technologies he IMPLEMENTED EFFECTIVELY, rather than having invented. I guess what I am calling into question is his place in MOVIE history. Certainly not all daisies when the effect of computer technology on the industry is taken into full account. There's no denying the marvel of the conversation he's enabling us to have right now, albeit indirectly. I don't own an iPod, iPhone, iPad but am sending this from an iMac ;)

"Because of Steve, we no longer take photos on Kodak film, write checks and mail them, we now buy books in a few moments, all stored digitally, hundreds of pounds of paper now on a 1.4 pound tablet." From "Hollywood Today" No Less! Basically this author is heaping praise on the man for decimating professional photography, filmmaking,the music industry, the print & graphics arts industries, and replacing recyclable paper with metric sh--tonnes of nickel, cadmium, arsenic, lead, and mercury. Since I never met the man or even toured any of his facilities, I guess I shouldn't be angry at him, rather at what people attribute to him, what he represents. I find that my criticism of the like of George Lucas was unfair when I saw a pair of 35mm projectors and a real live projectionist instead of a HAL 9000 in his screening room, not what I'd heard rumored! I guess my feelings can best be expressed as such: "It's not you that I hate, Cardassian: I hate what I became because of you." At the same time, I am not celebrating his death like when Osama bin Laden got gunned down in May.

Tom, all I know is that this is the second time you've called me out for not heaping praise upon the dead. Instead of the passive aggression, why not a separate thread or a PM? You're very quick to pass judgement on someone merely for having a different set of beliefs, different background than yours. It's not as if I'm desecrating their graves, airing all of their dirty laundry. I view the cultural notion of saying only good things about the dead in the same light as whitewashing history, glorifying the past. Job's role in this industry was driven entirely by a desire to divert income away from other players into Apple's coffers. "Pirates of Silicon Valley" paints him as Bill Gates' victim; I think he just beat Jobs to the punch line. I tend to take the same view as Stuart on this one, surprisingly. The man was a key player in the "Planned Obsolescence" movement. In any case, I think you're being hypocritical talking about how the dead deserve only praise, then taking a cheap shot at film. Steve definitely played a big role in brainwashing everyone into believing everything visual, audio required Mac OS Lion Cheetah Leopard whatever compatibility to be relevant in the 21st century. There's an irony in defining as obsolescent everything that is not tethered to an industry with a 2-4 year product life cycle. I hope you'll forgive the cynicism that goes hand in hand with staying on a sinking ship: I'd love to have something positive to talk about!

Thanks for the tip Tom. You've opened my eyes. . . Personally, I am not on a mission to glorify rich tycoons who hurt my field far more than they helped it. I'll leave that to others, making a fuss about people they never spoke a word to. Hero worship is alive and well in western culture.

I'm not sure if I agree on your analogy. If I were going for a film-out, I'd want the closest to my original as possible, therefore I'd opt for a recorder that is fast enough for IN film. Since I'm likely to originate anything I can possibly get away with on film anyway, I already have that look built into my files. Seems as though you are catering to "Digital Movies" as in shot on HD though? For better or for worse, almost every movie ends up as a digital one at some point in the process.

How much revenue did his company gain from taking it away from other industries, say at the expense of quality :)

I don't know how much the cartridge costs, but the film itself is what 50ft.x1/3inch (15m x 8mm) 200 sq. in. or 0.12m^2 This should cost slightly more than 2-1/2 ro. of 36 exp. B&W stills, or 10 feet/3m of 35mm film, roughly. If I were paying for it in bulk, like with a 1000 foot roll of Double X, at 35¢/ft. that would be $3.50 worth of film. Kodak is making a very healthy margin on 8mm film sales, and labs are making a very healthy margin on processing.

Chris: Try even getting a slide show done in 2011. . . BTW, since the show is shot on Eastman, I'm sure there was some sort of huge stock discount on that one. I've noticed the Kodak logo plastered all over that show, not as much as "Talladega Nights" but you can bet their ad department is involved whenever "Kodak film" comes up in a television show or movie. It's interesting to see ads very directly targeted at other filmmakers in the movies.

LaserPacific?

Hi George: But what does anything of that have to do with Kodak? Were they in on it?

So, how many movies are commercially available that will PLAY in 3D?

George: Now there are some team players! May I please have the names, telephone numbers of everyone on that camera crew, the ADs? Matt: As a leftie, I take offense to your blatant stereotyping of my race! This has been going on since the time of the Roman Empire, calling us "sinister" "back stabbers." There are plenty of Southpaws who are in favor of things as they are, though I am not one of them!

Martin, A, I found the girl for you: Guy Magnet? She's a time traveler, who has probably already been chastised for breaking the temporal prime directive 15 years ago (woah, two years more than the gap between "The Cage" and the events of "The Menagerie"), but if you make a good enough impression, maybe she can return to the 21st century, having interfered so prominently in the Whitewater investigation. Speaking of "TOS," the Southpark episode on Comedy Central today lifted lines in their entireties, liberally, from the episode "Dagger of the Mind" at the Tantalus V Penal Colony with the thought control machine and the Helen Noel character (another sucker, at least the character the actress played, for uniforms). Kyle even speaks the Shatnerian monologue at the end, and a kind of impish Southparkesque homage is paid to the soundtrack as well. I have, in no way, seen anywhere near 201 episodes of Southpark, but I've counted two full episodic ripoffs of TOS (the other was from "Mirror Mirror") that I am aware of, and many other liberal payings of homage to "First Contact" (the movie) when Stan's Dad smashes the glass case and yells "No, NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" and many other tidbits. Anyway, devoting significant portions of your life to devotion of Star Trek might not just keep you a real-life example of the 40-year-old virgin, it can be an artform as well, and help you keep your syndication contract with Comedy Centra :-)

Phil: That'll hurt your chances more than the uniform, to paraphrase Star Treik :-D I got yelled at for wearing a Star Trek uniform, on Halloween, by someone who was too busy studying to know what day it was. I'd say that is even a step lower, being so busy hitting the books to know what day it was. EDIT: But yeah, getting back to Star Trek, Halloween, conventions (to which I've never been) acceptable, jury duty not so much!

Umm, since you generally have to hold a watch up to your ear to hear it ticking, I think I'll be safe :blink: You been around too much auto race fuel lately Steve? :-p

With digital, there is a different set of problems, as the sensors are natively sensitive to IR wavelengths (above red, rather than UV sensitivity). Cross-contamination aside, digital and film definitely render different colors with varying degrees of success (pleasantness of reproduction). Digital tends to do a TERRRRRIBLE job with grene grass, especially when it is overexposed, in my opinion, but I actually think it does a better job with purples. There are other differences I can't think off of the top of my head. IDK why purple, mostly blue with some red would bring out what I'm assuming is IR contamination. I'd think, since there are twice as many green sites in a digital sensor, this channel would be most susceptible to IR contamination, followed perhaps by red as its wavelengths are closer to IR (kind of like UV shows up as blue haze on film). Any overexposure, though, is where I'd think it'd make it through the IR filter onto the chip. My problems with "violet" are more that is a matter of out-dated color theories (painter's colors are red YELLOW and blue or the color wheel: Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet), so it's more a matter of English words and ancient, incorrect theories on color than a debate on what is happening scientifically. Talking about "violet" is just as meaningless as talking about "orange" being captured by film or digital. Scientifically, the colors you deal with that film and digital can be sensitive to are ultraviolet, blue, green, red, infrared.

I'll stick with a watch that ticks. Why not just use a darkroom timer in the darkroom? Anyway, music can become distracting in there.