manufacturing

It’s been a while since we last saw an update on Destin Sandlin’s visit to the Kodak factory in Rochester, New York. Part One was posted way back in March of last year. It looked into how Kodak produces the actual film onto which the chemicals are placed. Part Two arrived a few months later in July, going over the chemical processes involved in making it light-sensitive and how they’re applied to that film base.

Now, we’ve finally got Part Three, where Kodak takes us from those big drums of sensitised film to cutting it up, adding the sprocket holes, making and filling the canisters, popping those into film cases and finally, retail packaging. Let the adventure continue!

We’re back in the Kodak factory in Rochester, New York today with Destin from Smarter Every Day. It’s the second part of a three-part series looking into exactly how Kodak makes its film stock for photographers. In part one, we saw a general overview of the mechanical processes involved in making the blank film base and in part two we find out how they actually make it light sensitive.

As with the first video, part two is almost an hour long and goes into a lot of depth into not only how the process is done but why certain choices are made during manufacture, depending on the needs of the final product.

Film’s popularity has been on the rise for a few years now, gaining more and more ground each day. And as Destin Sandlin at Smarter Every Day points out at the beginning of this video, it’s not just us photo geeks that are getting back into it, either. I wouldn’t say it’s becoming “mainstream” again, but it’s regular normal everyday people who are experimenting with film again now.

The 56-minute video is the first of a three-part series in which Dustin takes us on a tour of the Kodak Factory in Rochester, New York where they still have production lines making new rolls of film to keep the growing market happy. Kodak isn’t the only manufacturer of film that’s still around today, but they’re one of the oldest and most legendary.