Serious home-made film making!

[John Sprung]

... they have 8mm, 16mm and 35mm punches/movements which are interchangeable...

Wow -- with that plus the coating machine from Australia, you could make small batches of highly specialized stocks, customized for a particular movie and DP. This could be like bleach bypass on steroids. ;-)

 

How about making up a batch of Lumiere Autochrome stock? That would be fun to see, and not so very difficult.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Jame Lo Piccolo]

This is absolutely true, I have a set of B&H perforator machines at Cinelab and a Slitter too, they are precision mechanical instruments like a milling machine or lathe but not exotic.

 

 

Perhaps on the DIY nanbot laid emulsion I am letting my imagination run away a little bit :lol: I used to work at an exotic materials company after I got out of NYU and I ran the electron microscope, etc.. modern film emulsion is exotic stuff for sure but who knows what will come about in the next fifty years.

 

I am sure that a laser based stereolithography machine would have shocked the crap out of a 1950's engineer and now even small companies and individuals can buy one....

 

Imagination is fun...

 

-Rob-

 

Good to know that this machinery still survives in the US outside of a Kodak plant.

 

Recently, I enquired from Kodak about buying on special order some Ektachrome 64T slit and punched single-perf for 16mm. They would be glad to oblige me for a minimum of 10,000ft @ $4400, non-returnable/non-refundable.

 

Since the project I have in mind requires about 2000ft, tops, I decided to look elsewhere.

 

Someone in Germany is doing Super8 slitting and perf'ing of Fujichrome 64T reversal still-camera stock -- reportably a better stock than Kodak's -- so I was hoping to cut a better deal with Fuji, only to disccover two things:

 

One; Fuji had an even newer tungsten-reversal stock, Fujichrome T64 Professional still-camera stock with specs SUPERIOR to Kodachrome 40 in every respect, and,

 

Two; Fuji had discontinued both of their tungsten 64 reversal stocks earlier this year and their cupboard was bare; no demand was the explanation.

 

Should I abandon all hope ( negative color and video are NOT acceptable as alternatives )?

 

Best wishes, James (NYU '69)

[Jim Carlile]

Recently, I enquired from Kodak about buying on special order some Ektachrome 64T slit and punched single-perf for 16mm. They would be glad to oblige me for a minimum of 10,000ft @ $4400, non-returnable/non-refundable.

 

Hmm, that's really not bad. It comes out to, what, about 44 cents a foot-- almost the same as MP stock. I'm surprised Kodak would slit slide stock for 16mm. Usually special orders mean MP film for MP, only.

 

Here's an idea--- will Kodak slit their still Kodachrome for 16mm or DS8, too?

 

Wittner's getting Kodak DS8 somewhere-- perhaps it's new?

[Jame Lo Piccolo]

Thanks for your reply: Kodak admitted somewhere in their published boiler-plate, after discontinuing Kodachrome 40 and introducing Ektachrome 64T in Super8, that the latter was the same emulsion as the 64T 35mm and 120 Ekatchrome still-camera film, one of an aging family of Ektachrome tungsten transparency films.

 

I've used the 320T version in my 35 still-cameras with an 85B filter in daylight at 200 ASA/ISO to good effect (it's not the long-gone, much-missed-by-me, GAF/AnscoChrome 100D, but it's an acceptable substitute for that painterly film). Now, 320T has also been discontinued, by Kodak.

 

But, 35mm slides have 8 times the image area of a 16mm frame, so even the least-grainy, 64T member of the Ektachrome family would not cut it as a Kodachrome replacement in 16mm, never mind Super8. You probably detect the sour grapes in that assertion, since it would be too costly for me to buy it slit for 16mm from Kodak, anyway.

 

Don't know where the Germans are getting their Kodachrome 40 for Super8: Kodak claims that they ended production of Kodachrome 40 years ago, and that any film remaining in their inventory that reaches expiration date is destroyed, not sold to anyone.

 

Kodak may still have some Kodachrome 64 still-film, but that's a daylight film and so would be far too slow to use, filtered for my few, simple 3200K tungsten quartz lights, and it would be far beyond my means to light with rented 5400K fixtures, even if I could afford a special order of the film from Kodak.

 

No, the one that got away, as far as I can tell, is the Fuji T64 with an RMS granularity of 7, as compared to Ektachrome 64T at RMS 11, and Kodachrome 40 at RMS 9.

 

James

[Paul Bruening]

Wow -- with that plus the coating machine from Australia, you could make small batches of highly specialized stocks, customized for a particular movie and DP. This could be like bleach bypass on steroids. ;-)

 

How about making up a batch of Lumiere Autochrome stock? That would be fun to see, and not so very difficult.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

 

Hey John,

 

I had proposed a "boutique film" approach before but most folks responding thought it was a dumb idea. I assumed Kodak could make up small batches of its old recipes and release them on a large-per order basis. I think this was discussed, I say discussed, politely, on a Crystal Skull /old school film look thread. I love the idea, still. With all of the automated systems and fine sensing devices used in manufacturing these days, why would it be so unreasonable to do it and as a fairly automated thing?

[Patrick Neary]

I had proposed a "boutique film" approach before but most folks responding thought it was a dumb idea. I assumed Kodak could make up small batches of its old recipes and release them on a large-per order basis. I think this was discussed, I say discussed, politely, on a Crystal Skull /old school film look thread. I love the idea, still. With all of the automated systems and fine sensing devices used in manufacturing these days, why would it be so unreasonable to do it and as a fairly automated thing?

 

well, like it or not, that's where 35mm motion picture is eventually headed; artsy-craftsy, kind of like large format shooters still working with tintypes.

[Charles MacDonald]

I had proposed a "boutique film" approach before but most folks responding thought it was a dumb idea. I assumed Kodak could make up small batches of its old recipes and release them on a large-per order basis.

I also hang arround an the Alalog Photography users group site. SOmeone from Ilford recently posted their that they can only make amimumum batch of 5000 sq meters of any film. due to the way their automated coating line works, and of course they have to do some more work before hand to get a mixture that will work before coating.

 

divide 5000 sq meters into 16mm strips and you have a LOT of film. (ignoring the fact that Ilford no longer makes MP FIlm)

[jake harris]

That machine is awesome!

 

Last I heard, acetate film base was made from a cellulose source like tree/wood-pulp or cotton linters, no petro-chemicals (or dinosaur goop) involved.

 

...pretty sure gelatin is involved somewhere.