It should really be called ‘ADOX Scala’, shouldn’t it? Or am I completely wrong about that?
Hello Olaf,
You’re right about that, but we’re not quite there yet.
Earlier in the post, it was suggested that we should start by making only roll and sheet films from the APX 100.
With all these considerations in mind, you mustn’t forget that there are reasons why the photography industry is in the state it’s in.
If it were possible to produce on a demand-driven basis without major hurdles, then nobody would voluntarily give up a business.
The Plus-X, for example, was still a viable business in terms of the number of films sold. From our point of view, it was even a huge business.
Nevertheless, Kodak had to discontinue it because the numbers didn’t add up in the end.
Film is a highly complex product in itself, and high-quality film is many times more complex. The effort involved in manufacturing the emulsions and testing the results alone can sometimes use up as much emulsion as was originally intended to be produced for a secondary format (e.g. 5x7 inches).
Setting up the casting machine can easily cost as much as 20,000 rolls of 35mm film. A further 16,000 rolls are lost whilst the casting stabilises. At that point, not a single saleable roll of film has been produced, and the company is already in the red by a very large amount. The machine then has to run for a correspondingly long time.
Films offered at prices such as Tri-X, FP4 and HP5 can only be offered at these prices if you run a very large machine and can accept this cost structure.
There is no point in even considering using a small machine here (leaving aside all the technical hurdles for the moment). Today’s market prices for ISO 100 and ISO 400 films cannot be achieved with an alternative production approach. In our research, we are currently focusing on infrared, PAN 25 or CHS 50.
This minimum production volume for mass-market films is already very low for us compared to others, but it is still so high that we currently have to concentrate all our efforts on producing the 400-speed film in 35mm, roll and Panfilm formats.
We have to produce a huge amount of film and invest a great deal of money to do so, and the big question is where that money is to come from and how quickly it will be recouped. We can only think about anything else after that, at the earliest. At the same time, however, we must not jeopardise our existing business with paper, which involves similar sums of money.
We have test material of the APX 100 on a clear base with which we intend to enter the market (a 5-year-old test cast on inherited clear triacetate).
Our approach here is not so much to produce a new Scala straight away (though my personal line of thinking could certainly be described that way, but I have to think commercially here), but rather to gauge what quantities of such a raw film (APX 100 emulsion on a clear base) might potentially be settled on the market later in various formats. That is why we are now launching this trial run with Super 8.
If these quantities turn out as I hope, the whole thing could be considered as a building block within the context of a potential APX 100 project framework.
Because the same questions will arise again: how do we secure large casting volumes that can then be liquidated at short notice?
The test material is only available as 35mm pancake film. The entire cast has been fed into the slitter, as it consists of a 135-micron base from which it would not have been possible to produce high-quality roll film.
Best regards,
Mirko
