Matthew W. Phillips

I am not saying I have an alternative. But I am not Kodak. Kodak has a reputation for going with the status quo and not taking advantage of advances in technology. It is their business to figure out better/cheaper/etc ways to create their products. Most other industries that still exist have done just that but Kodak is supposed to get a free pass because why? I couldnt care less if they go out of business. If film can become a viable format again, someone will figure out how to make it work.

No need to be testy. I am just asking about what makes it so difficult? You arent giving too many specifics. Are there any videos online that show this process? I don't think you are giving enough respect to how much tech. has advanced as far as automation and robotics. And 2008 was 14 years ago.

I do appreciate the work involved. I was just pointing out that compared to say, creating CPUs or other nano-precise processes that must be done in negative pressure rooms, etc, that it cant be that hard to automate. Kodak isnt (or wasnt, at least) some small time operation that had to rely on manual labor for everything because they couldnt afford machinery. Am I to believe that creating film stock is more precise than creating a modern CPU? I would need some hard data to believe that.

I am not sure of what they are worth as far as a book value, but I wouldnt pay more than $3,500 for one. (I am in US so not exactly sure what that would correlate in Euros). Even at that price, if it had > 7500 hrs on the sensor, I probably wouldnt buy it regardless of the price. That is just me. I probably wont find that gem that is prices in that realm with that low of hours but then I guess I wont buy one.

What I find amazing about this site is that there is no middle ground. People here tend to think gear is either great or junk (or the obnoxious definition of "a toy") Could it be possible that some of this "junk" gear could actually be decent gear for a segment of the population who has different (and lighter) needs than you? Or are you that narrow minded and simple that you can only think in black and white?

Oh boy, we have one of those... Pray tell how you have the skill to detect, while watching footage, what type of dolly it was shot on?

Have you tried out the Fuji X-t line? These arent full frame but, for a stills camera, have a lot of manual controls. Feels very much like an old 35mm stills camera. Menus arent complicated either.

Not sure about this one. Imagine all the beautiful silver bullion that could have been made from the film shot to make an orange and teal Michael Bay film.

Not sure this is an accurate statement from a business perspective. If that were true, how did businesses ever come to exist in the first place? Businesses often fail because they assume "if you build it, they will come." But marketing is perhaps more important than the service or quality thereof in most cases. Cannot tell you how many businesses fail because people don't even know they exist.

Not to pick on you because I know what you are saying. But I had a funny thought about if we hit the last of the silver stockpile in the world and you had people arguing over whether to use the remainder to make antibiotics or motion picture film. ?

I never thought the film's color accuracy was its selling point. However, from pixel peeping, I found these colors to be much closer to accurate than all of the digital footage I have shot with a color chart. The colors are more saturated and less tainted from those of the electronic variety. Granted, I am not shooting on an Alexa either so I cannot speak to that end of the market. I see you are being cynical today. From one glance, I would guess that you used an eyedrop tool to acquire a pixel from red, green, and blue to make those from the Kodak image. The grain will still make it more interesting though because it has close but different values around it to give it more variation in exact color instead of being a single monolithic color block. I guess I would say that grain variation is more "visually interesting" than that representation? Not much different than a textured wall looks more interesting than a perfectly flat wall.

Wow, you reach for the top shelf with words, don't you? Would I know the difference side-by-side with Dehancer? Yes, likely so Would Filmbox "stomp all over it"? I highly doubt it I am not defending Dehancer and I did not purchase it; I played around with it for over a week and was over it. But even your own screenshots are not that compelling compared to other screenshots I have seen from Dehancer. This doesn't mean it isn't better on a side-by-side comparison but it does mean that Filmbox isnt breathtakingly amazeballs and necessitates me going and begging, borrowing, or stealing a mac to get my hands on it. Although side-by-side comparisons are useful to "isolate for the control variable", I never thought that you should have to critically scrutinize something to see its benefit. It should be apparent from the first glance that "wow, that is something special."

For reference of the beautiful saturation of film, I found this partial color chart from an old Kodak ad: Look at that red, green, and blue. Good lawd, that is beautiful.

This is so true, Phil! I love film but I love it for what it is; faults and all (looks wise, not workflow wise) Those arent bad clips at all but I dont think it looks any better than some clips I have seen of Dehancer. The one thing I have noticed about all of these plugins is that the saturation cannot be pushed as far as it can with film without the colors falling apart. So we end up with, like Phil said, flatter looking images with large dynamic range, lower contrast, desaturated colors, and a few "token" characteristics of film like grain, halation, bloom, and orange and teal.

What sucks even more is that most sellers of anything precious metals related add a markup or "premium" in addition to spot price. Even if Kodak can buy at spot, you can be sure as hell that they arent selling it to us as spot. I imagine they are marking the silver portion alone up a good deal. Not much different than a coin shop or bullion dealer would. Therefore, in the scenario I gave, I imagine Kodak would go as much as double the silver value added onto the cost of film for the movement in the spot price.

I am not trying to make light of the labor that goes into making film. However, I am quite sure that tougher manufacturing problems than that have been solved in the past using even automated technology. In a world where we have 3d printers available to most any income bracket (which has precise motors on all 3-axis), I am finding it a bit tough to envision the creation of film to be that exacting. And if it were, I doubt it would be a problem solved by humans since we tend to be...error prone. Not arguing with you, Phil, just saying that I wonder if there is either some puffery on Kodak's part or maybe it is a question of the automated systems not being worth the return?

I really hope something positive becomes of this thread. I am selling my CP16r, but if I end up stuck with it, I might as well be able to use it. Having a better lens solution would make the value much greater. Good luck with this thread.

Do you have any footage to prove this or are we supposed to take your word for it? I looked online and couldn't find anything other than the stock couple of screenshots put up by the creators (which mean nothing if they have exact film shots to draw from; anyone can match closely with time/technique). Would be nice to see work done by actual users of this. And I still think it is weak to be mac only. Some of us have Windows or Linux systems for our other work and not a dedicated computer just for using a particular program. PCs give you the best bang for your buck performance-wise anyway.

This is both encouraging but also aggravating. It is good because it shows that the price of film shouldn't be that closely tied to the price of silver. However, it is aggravating because silver has long been a (at least partial) justification for why film costs so much to make. This here proves that story was a load a BS. So where is the costs of it? Labor? Is the labor actually difficult or is this more BS like the silver cost fallacy?

Wouldn't it be 0.16077 oz. since precious metals are measures in ounces troy? (1 ozt = 31.1 grams)

I clicked your link but didnt see a buy price? (Unless I missed it)

Silver is great and all but (and I imagine you know this if you invest in Silver; I used to put a good deal of money into it myself) the silver supply is dwindling a bit each year and the values are believed (by Silver bugs, at least) to be artificially suppressed by the paper market (JP Morgan, etc.) If this theory is true, the time will come when Silver will become untouchable for creating film stock. The approximate natural occurrence of silver in the Earth to gold is about 17.5:1. Historically, the Romans set silver as 1/12 of gold price and the USA (when on the gold standard), had silver as 1/15th of gold. Right now, Silver is ~1/79th the value of Gold. It is possible that Gold is "overvalued" but I doubt it. With the crazy recent inflation, I would say that Gold is still undervalued. Nonetheless, even if Gold is "priced right", Silver is historically extremely undervalued. If Silver had the correct pricing relative to its ratio in the Earth (17.5:1) and Gold is "priced right", then Silver would be ~$103/ozt. This is about a 450% markup over current pricing. Could you imagine what that would do to the price of film? Yikes. I agree that, if possible, Silver should be replaced with a cheaper metal. Not sure if it is possible but also not sure if anyone has thought to try.

At this point, I believe you just want the last word so I will give it to you. Have at it! Cheers, Matthew

This is an accurate point; at least from what I have noticed from watching a million YouTubers discuss the topic. Pretty much everyone on there advocated for keeping grain only on the Luma and suppressing the Chroma. Therefore, I cannot imagine that procedural grain is going to be any more "realistic" than grey card scans. I, personally, like Cinegrain because a couple of the samples have other things that I stylistically like something like the subtle flicker, vignette, or a few legitimate pieces of dust for effect that might be harder to simulate in a very gentle sort of way. But I do not disparage procedural grain; I just don't want to spend 400 - 1,000 for it.

You have the right to your opinion. I don't believe there is some grand conspiracy to bully people in this country. I tend to view these issues as the struggles that a society grows through with rapidly evolving social norms. People tend to change slowly but the agenda of the progressive left have been moving quite fast. Cut people a little slack instead of always assuming the worst of them. Even positive changes take some adjustment and some people are more conservative than others. Does that make them bad? Hell, even on this forum, there are some that do not want to adjust to the rise of digital as the dominant acquisition medium. This is a relatively small matter in the scope of the problems of the Universe but you still see the passion involved. Imagine challenging people's ideas of ethics, morality, religion, fairness, etc and you are bound to set off a sh*tstorm. I never said "everything is cool now". I hope you are intelligent enough to recognize that there will never be a time in history where everything is cool. If that is what you are expecting, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Therefore, the best we can do is fix problems as we spot them in the best way we can, balance the rights of everyone; not just a niche group, but sometimes take stock of how far we have came (and give credit where it is due). I find that many people of the SJW variety always have a new complaint but seldom give a pat on the back to their country for coming as far as it has. I believe that the modern free nations (USA, UK, Australia, etc) are among the most fair and just nations in the history of the world. Things are getting better overall and if you disagree, consider that it wasn't even 100 years ago that we had a tyrannical madman in a first world European country that believed genocide was an appropriate discourse. I agree with that "classic centrist argument". Why? Because what else are you going to do? Keep moaning over things that have already been fixed? Like I said, if you have an issue, try to fix it. If it was already fixed, shut up about it. The USA has always been an experimental government. We aren't completely unique (as many aspects of our structure were borrowed from predecessors) but the exact way we do things is largely an experiment. With any experiment, there is a chance for great success but an equal chance for terrible failure. I admit that I don't have it all figured out. But if you would be honest, either do you. Also consider that most things in life have a tradeoff so what solves one problem might create another. Therefore, we will never reach political Nirvana.