How many manufactureres of B+W film left?

With Kodak no longer making B+W film and agfa out of

business, other than Ilford what other brands of B+W film are

there? Will there come a time in near future when B+W film is no

longer made?

Kodak stopped making B&W paper not film.

Bergger, Efke, Foma, Forte, Fujifilm, Gigabit, Kodak, Lucky, Macophot and Paterson. These are the ones I know of.

Kodak still makes Tri-X, Tmax and Plus-X last I heard.

Right now? There are the following companies coating B&W film:

<UL>

<LI>Azomures (Romania)

<LI>Lucky (PR-China)

<LI>ERA (PR-China)

<LI>Filmotec (Germany)

<LI>Foma (CZ)

<LI>Forte (Hungary)

<LI>Nuvo Fotokemika [Efke] (Croatia)

<LI>Fuji (Japan)

<LI>Ilford (GB)

<LI>Kodak (USA)

<LI>Konica (Japan)

<LI>Svema (Ukraine)

<LI>Tasma (Russia)

<LI>X-Ray Retina [e.g. Maco R3] (Germany)

</UL>

 

Other companies perhaps able to make B&W films:

<UL>

<LI>Agfa (the big coating unit is still up for grabs)

<LI>Gevaert (Agfa and Gevaert are to part)

<LI>Sterling (X-Ray films)

<LI>3M (I think are still making X-Ray films)

</UL>

There are also probably a bunch of other companies in the developing world making X-Ray, microfilm, motion picture copying or other industrial B&W films.

<p>There's also Moscow-based NPO FoMos among the lesser known manufacturers. They produce an ok 100 ISO film, sold in bulks only.

"<cite>There's also Moscow-based NPO FoMos among the lesser known manufacturers. They produce an ok 100 ISO film, sold in bulks only.</cite>"

<P>

The film looks very nice. Their address does not seem to fit a coating plant. Are you sure that they are coating? I suspect that they might have been importing some films from Agfa and cutting them down.

<i>Will there come a time in near future when B+W film is no longer made?</i>

<p>

Maybe, but right now you can get more emulsions in more different sizes than you could 5-10 years ago.

Edward, AFAIK they have their own coating line. FoMos was formerly a chemistry research institute, but downsized greatly in post-Soviet times.

 

Note: it appears that my post was edited, with sample image and text removed. I'd like to know what was the reason for moderation, and why manipulated posts are not explicitly marked as such.

"Bergger, Efke, Foma, Forte, Fujifilm, Gigabit, Kodak, Lucky, Macophot and Paterson."

 

Berger, Gigabit, Macophot and Paterson only sell films coated by other companies. Some of them make quite a fuss about themselfs beeing "manufacturers". Well, if slitting, perforating and spooling was all that is involved in manufatcuring...

 

best

 

Stefan

Eugene, I am the moderator of this forum and have not edited or deleted anything in this thread. However if blatant violations of site participation policy are noted when the primary forum moderator is unavailable it is possible that the chief moderator or administrator may choose to edit or delete a comment or entire thread.

 

In most cases when comments or photos seem to have been deleted, it's a glitch in the photo.net software or, more likely, one's browser. There have been many instances when I hit the wrong button and deleted one of my own comments rather than hitting the "Confirm" button.

 

If you wish please feel free to post your earlier comment again.

The image was removed because the HTML was bad and it wasn't displaying. Since I never saw what it was, I didn't remove it for reasons of content! I just removed it to remove the dead HTML code which was displaying on the page.

 

By all means try again!

 

BTW I don't usually moderate here, but someone drew my attention to this thread in which two of the participants were exchanging insults such as calling each other "Spaz" and "Retard". Those posting have, of course, been removed.

There are dozens of small brands here in China, and I am sure many other places too, which most people do not know of. You can only guess how long B&W film will be around, but I am not really afraid it will disappear in the next one or two decades.

One wonders if there is not enough of a niche for Kodak to stay in. Unfortunately, I have a feeling they are overbuilt, too much investment in their B&W plant. Maybe if they spun it off, and ate the loss.....

 

My son is in the paper business and hears rumors that gaining photo paper is getting to be a problem. Plants don't want to fool with it, because it too is a niche market. That may kill B&W fiber photo paper quicker than anything, I am talking about the paper base, not the silver coating. I seem to remember Fred Picker having a problem with that.

I guess to the list of companies who could in theory manufacture b & w film, you need to add Ferrania in Italy who still manufacture colour films. Personally I think that b & w films will survive as a niche market and that there is no need to worry at this stage.

No worries at all, there is even a small lab who makes paper and films in a small-scale here in Milano-Italy, I guess we'll see many of these realities in the future. their products are cheap and good. ferrania, insted, makes just color for third-parties mostly. Supermarket brands rolls, these kind of stuffs.

 

regards