Thought film was dead? Far from it. In an interview with the British Journal of Photography, Kodak's US marketing manager of pro film Scott DiSabato said that sales of color film are steady, and that black and white is "doing extremely well." He sees it as a mini-revolution, adding that "it almost feels that there is a very real resurgence for film."

And this strong market is letting Kodak release brand new emulsions. The updated Portra 400, which will be available in November, is described by DiSabato as "the best film Kodak has ever made." Given Kodak's history, that's quite a claim. And that's not even the biggest surprise. Portra 400 is not made for printing. It is designed to be scanned.

The new emulsion has very fine grain (using Kodak's T-grain technology first seen in the 1980s) and has had its color saturation and contrast tweaked to better suit scanners. DiSabato and the Kodak techs realized that most film is scanned at some stage in a photographer's workflow, so they made it scanner friendly. Contrast was lowered to better allow the scan to capture the full range of tones, and the color gamut "is not pumped up so much that it begins to compete with some of that tonal information."

The stills team worked with the Kodak motion-picture team and borrowed some of this technology from the Vision3 line of films, also designed to be part of a digital workflow.

Kodak is also making small-batch films, in collaboration with Canham Cameras. Canham specializes in very large-format film - 11x14, 20x24 and "other goofy sizes." Canham takes orders from all over the world until they have enough to make it economical for Kodak to tool up and manufacture it. Amazingly, Kodak is actually "moving in this direction," say DiSabato.

Like vinyl before it, the death of film seems to have been greatly exaggerated. Hell, even the kids are getting into it. "Once they do get a hold of film in a university," DiSabato says, "they just seem to fall in love with it."

Kodak Portra 400 product page [Kodak]

Kodak:There is a very real resurgence for film [BJP]

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