Originally posted by gofour3 Sad, though I’ve never tried this film. I have three processing labs close to me that do true b&w developing, so there was never a need to shoot the C-41 version.
As long a Kodak does not discontinue Tri-x or T-max 400 I’ll survive.
Phil.
Your reply with the word "need" caught my eye and made me think. There's no doubt that film photography has changed. People used to shoot film because they had to. Photography needed film. Now we shoot film because we want to. Photography now has a very robust digital solution.
We all have our personal reasons for shooting film but whatever they are I think we can all agree that we enjoy film because it's not digital. Try as they might, software and hardware companies cannot fully duplicate the film look or film experience. They may come close but they never get it 100%. Those of us who care about film and understand the difference still flock to the format. We may be small but we are still a realizable market.
So the question is, what do we who use film need? The people at Kodak Alaris have come up with their interpretation and it is presented in their product offering. They understand we appreciate film for what it is but they also see us scanning our negatives and processing the images in our favorite software. Saturation, contrast, dodging, burning, etc are just a mouse click and swipe away nowadays. Kodak offers :
Ektar 100 - High contrast punchy film color negative
Portra 160 - Lower contrast less saturated color negative for the studio
Portra 400 - Lower contrast less saturated color negative for the unpredictable outdoors
Portra 800 - Lower contrast less saturated color negative for fast action and low light situations
Gold 200 - Neutral low end consumer film
Ultra Max 400 - Neutral low end consumer film
T-Max 100 - Fine grain B&W
T-Max 400 - Fine grain B&W
Tri-X 320 - "Classic grain" B&W as Kodak calls it
Tri-X 400 - "Classic grain" B&W here too
Kodak would want products that make technical and marketing sense. Would it be a stretch of the imagination to say that BW400CN competed against Portra that was scanned and converted to B&W?
Other than Gold and Ultra Max Kodak's line up is filled with flagship products. They are all labeled as "pro" films. Could the "consumer" films be next does Kodak need the $2.50 film to compete against Fuji?