What happened to ASF dry process?

Just came across this article:

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<A HREF= "http://www.digitalimagingmag.com/publication/article.jsp?id=952&pubId=1" > http://

www.digitalimagingmag.com/publication/article.jsp?id=952&pubId=1 </A>

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How bizarre that it was only written in 2003. It seems like an age ago! I guess it must have become

painfully obvious very quickly that the "shoot with film" model was really doomed thinking, given the

plunging prices of cheap cameras and camera phones. I can imagine someone thinking that this was a

good idea in 1998, say.

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Plus the idea of a film processing system that destroys the negative is a little weird for me.

<a href="http://www.digitalimagingmag.com/publication/article.jsp?id=952&pubId=1">Kodak bought out ASF and the kiosks</a>. I'm not sure what happened after that but since it did rely on film - and Kodak has migrated away from the stuff - perhaps they just let it die.<P>

I always thought it was brilliant but like you, would've never used it because you not only don't get the negs back - they're destroyed by over-developing.<P>

There is an interesting history to this process (or processes to be more correct). ASF demonstrated a prototype "aparently dry" process that used a small amound of B&W developer followed by transmission and two reflection scans, one from each side. The top reflection scan picked up mostly the blue silver. The bottom reflection scan picked up mostly the red silver. The transmission scan picked up all of the silver. By subtracting the red and blue density from the total you can calculate the green density. There was a lot of additional computational work to construct a decent image. (This is a simplified description because I don't know all of the details.)

Before ASF was bought by Kodak, they had switched to a color developer that produced dye from the couplers in the film, just like a normal color developer (except that is was a tiny amount of developer and was still "apparently dry"). A single transmission scanner sufficed. Since there was no bleach or fix, the scanner had to read the dyes and the silver. It required a very intense light. Kodak had its own dry process under development, but it was a special film. The ASF approach worked for most common color neg films.

The program died for two reasons. The quality wasn't as good as conventional processing and digital was taking over the market. Too little, too late.