William Tracy Babcock

1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I've literally held the can of test film, so it absolutely exists. Obviously, not called "Vision 4" but it clearly was the intention. The people who got test rolls, were pretty random. One of my friends got a few and he just shot a commercial with them. I wish he had some left overs, I would have loved to test it myself. 

I'm not sure the sensitivity as it was not labeled on the can itself. The concept was to make a stock that didn't need to be pushed in order to achieve 1000 iso. After conferring with some friends who also knew about this film, they said it worked best at 800 ISO. So not an incredible improvement, but that was the concept. 

Evidently, the results weren't beneficial compared to simply pushing Vision 3 one stop. So my guess is that it wasn't pursued as an option and Vision 3 will be around for a lot longer. Just a guess, but it seems to make sense with the evidence. 

Another thing is that right after the test stock was released, the person who engineered it, left Kodak. So perhaps there is some correlation between that person leaving and the reason we haven't seen any new stock. 

Honestly, the current lineup is pretty good. If I were to develop a new stock, I would go about making something radically different, rather than simply another flavor of vision stock. Maybe some re-hash of the Kodachrome look? They tried with the new Ektachrome, but it kinda fell flat on its face. I think people are desperately looking for something to define their work and there just aren't many workable options. 

 

Ahhh, that's interesting.  If they really could get true 800/1000 with the grain of 500T they'd be on to something. 

On 7/31/2022 at 4:27 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

Correct, Kodak is already in financial trouble. "Film" product is the last big market they have. They've sold nearly everything else off. The fact they keep bleeding long-term employees and refuse to release the already finished and ready to roll Vision 4 stock, really shows how much trouble they're in. 

ORWO is no way going to produce enough film to make a difference, they don't have a full facility. They use multiple shops to do each step, so their costs are far more volatile. Plus, everything in the EU is more costly, especially the materials required to make emulsion. The only stock we've seen thus far is 50D. It looks nice tho, very different to Kodak, so that's good. But can they make enough to make a dent and keep the price lower then Kodak? I just don't see how. I've been wrong before, but especially for the US market, I don't see them being competitive. In the EU, they may be competitive, so we'll see! 

This is the first I've ever heard of a potential Vision 4.  Do you know any technical specs of the stock and/or details of its supposed aborted release?

A google search literally only returns your post and another thread from 2012.