I love this!!!

Sarah - what a great endorsement for Destin and his crew that Kodak would use his videos to help with employee orientation.

Who's Justin?

Wow, that's an unexpected new audience for Destin. He's pretty much a trusted expert.

I was going to make a comment to this effect (that this seems like a good onboarding instructional video). That's awesome that it's true.

Man, film is not cheap 🥴

@@crazyirishman121 yes, film is cheap enough. I mean I grew up in a lower-middle-class family in a 3rd world country (Argentina) and we could afford a roll of film a month or every couple months, so we could have some photos. Maybe we had a crappy plasticky camera with only a flash as the only /flashy/ feature, but now we have a good amount of memories in print

@@coski87 Print is superior to digital.

@@joekenorer what is print? Is that just all physical forms of photography and video? Also I am curious as to why you think so?

@@joekenorer sorry lot of questions, but I am interested : )

Those machines were 2 stories tall. I used to clean them on the inside with solvents.

Yeah except they are gonna lose the vegan customers lol. I'm not vegan but learning that film contains animals products was a shock to me and I'd bet most vegans have no idea either.

@@mikedrop4421 I'm pretty sure vegans know that gelatine is in almost everything... also, I would be more worried about Muslims not some tweekers who only eat mashedpaper

I want Film for my 45 year old 35mmcamera , I also want 120mm film for my dad's 70 year old camera. Thanks Kodak ❤️👍😃

It made me appreciate it so much more. I'm looking into buying a camera, I'm adding a film camera to the list. Just because of the technology and human innovation behind each picture.

@@OnceUponReddit minolta. Never fails reliable as an ak. Cheap lenses. A goody of a camera. A surgeon of a camera would be a nikon. But pricey. A capitalist camera that works fine is a canon.

Best comment!

Thom my dad and I worked at Kodak. I did a couple summers in college and he did almost 30 years. I’m totally sharing your comment with him!

Of course, you just unveiled a massive conspiracy!

i find it wholesome how nervous he is and how exhausted he gets while talking because of it

@@H4RD That's probably caused by his weight. Not his nervousness.

He looks like John Goodman

It is great to see people so passionate about what they do for a living.

@@H4RD yea, poor guy was just out of breath doing his best to show everything in a timely fashion I'd say. I don't think it was nerves, he was well spoken and level headed.

if i would need to build that machine I would never ever think to use mix three liquid layers together in once (avoid mixing). I would appllied one layer and dry it, secod layer and again dry it, and so on to many layers. I am very surprise what they (KODAK) invented and it works well

It would be interesting to know how the competitors did it in the day? I imagine the theroy of the process at least got out but if the others copied it or not would be interesting to know. There were a lot of film manufacturers back in the day, not just in the west but in europe, russia, asia and the baltic states. I wonder if any of them had this level of tech?

I was having the same thought - how on earth are they disclosing all these trade secrets, the results of literally a century of massive investment in research and development... and then I was like, oh yeah - it's film. Who would care any more? (In a business sense).

Yep!!!!! And the viewers are so thankful. Let's keep enjoying this for as long as possible so it remains in the light.

WOW, what about AGFA and Fuji?

@@ErikVangeel Those companies already exist and are probably also using mostly equipment from the same era. NEW competitors, however, might be locked out for the foreseeable future by the steep wall of the initial investment required to play the game.

@@EisenFeuer Kodak actually takes a loss on their film. Most of their business comes from helping other businesses stuff, and mostly in the digital space. Nobody would start making film because of this. It's like ink for your printer. They sell you the printer at a loss, and making all the profit on the ink. Nobody would start just a printer business without selling the ink, unless you were making specialized printers

@@EisenFeuer theres been a decline of film ever since the rise of the digital era

Shamalama Dingleberry they take a loss on all film or just consumer photographic film? PCB masks for electronics and X-ray film probably bigger?

Is it different then what you're used to?

@@sonman3694 yes, this is curtain coating, I do slot die and comma roll coatings. But the web i use now is copper and aluminum foil so the web handling is a bit different because it requires much higher tensions and i can touch my coating without worrying about scratching, drying is similar but much much shorter in length.

@@PascalLiddane Batteries?

@@PascalLiddane What's the difference between the kinds of coating?

Tell us! How did Agfa do it different?

Wow! That would be awesome! I wanna know the details!

I'm starting to think it will never come out :(

Same

Totally I was just wondering the other if he had to pull the video, or what ever happened - since so much else came out in the mean time !

Same!

Eehhhh. Watch it on the clock. :)

There's a little wobble you can see at 18:34 at the lower edge, where the "waterfall" hits the slanted cover - is that the vaccum that Jeff mentioned at 26:04 starting up or settling in?

Oh, and I don't think they mentioned the speed of the process - how fast is the film running through? How long is a complete roll? At how many points is something actually touching the web - even with the low friction air cushioning, somehow you must pull the whole thing through the machine? How long does it take to re-thread a new web if the web fails? Does that ever happen?

How has Kodak's process for scanning for defects changed over the years? (And where is the process now?)

I'd be pissed if Destin came to my work and nobody came and told me! 🤣 How often do you find defects in the film? Is the whole roll scrapped or what? Can you give us a brief rundown of the process? If you can turn it into a brief rundown, that is.

@@arghgrmbl that's a very good question and I honestly don't know! I would imagine that's what it is because the coater should be static at that point. We coat rolls anywhere from 275fpm to 950fpm, depending on the product. Our quickest roll cycles are about 8 minutes while our slowest could be 25 or so.

This is one of those things that is truly mind blowing. I can see why it was proprietary then, I applaud Kodak for being so open now. I hope it bring appreciation and new interest in film

​​@@OnceUponReddit I just hope it'll bring China to produce Kodak-quality film at a ⅒ of the price cause goddamn

@@GuillaumeishThere’s a good reason it should be made here too. In China when a command comes from up top they can scrap the whole factory if they decide not to mess with film anymore as a strategic decision of some sort. If the last factory that does this process drops offline, a good chunk of a billion dollars worth of knowledge will evaporate within months. And if for whatever reason we’ll need to go back, we’ll have to pay for Al this again. That would be a big waste.

That's great, wish we could all hear his input too!

I'm curious about your dad's input!

Am interested to hear what your dad actually did in there!

@@nzoomed most of his career he ran and worked on the machines that put the small holes on the edges of the film called perforations. Towards the end of his career things started moving towards the digital end

@@ryanshadders750 ok, looks like he was involved in the conversion process mostly, still would have been an interesting job. I'm assuming he would have got to see how the film was coated like Destin has been taken around the facility?

Cost over quantity over time. 60,000 rolls of film at avg $8 a roll. $480,000 grossed in that time frame to make a master roll!

@@lancemccoy237 Well the quantity isn't like it used to be. These Kodak machines probably were build at a time where nearly a billion rolls of film were sold per year (ofc not only Kodak but they had a huge share of that market. For example Adox got many of the medium to small sized machines from Ilford because the big ones are hard to run economically. If you compare the prices of film over time especially looking at the cost of materials it's insane that they are this "cheap".

think about the engineering and machining skills needed for all this - used to live in Rochester - need to see if they offer tours

Kodak aerochrome😳

Because 1 massive roll = 60,000 canisters of 36 exposures. 1 Roll can make 2.1 million photos. Even if it cost $1 million per roll to make, each photo would cost $0.50 so they need to sell at least $18 to break even on a roll.

Currently it is at a disadvantage, but you never know when the algorithm will change. Videos that he invested a lot of time into like this will be the thing that keeps him on top of his niche! The algorithm changes because of content creators actions. You never know if this video is part of what makes it change in the future to go back to favoring long form videos in the suggested content portion of UKposts.

@@SomeDumbTrucker 2 months later and Im coming back to watch again and noticing things I hadn't before - heres hoping the algorithm starts preferring longer form videos!

If you're at this level you don't have to care about such things. No hate tho, Destin is super cool and I appreciate the amount of work he put in this film.

You can always pay yourself a trip and visit. I would do that.

It didn't happen overnight. It started with a single wet layer, moved to gel, then moved to multi-layer.

And they started in the 40s

Not the work on one dude. It's a cooperative and iterative process.

Human progress upon human progress Things happened over years if not decades You start with a simple idea, you make it, it works, you then wanna make it better, it works and so on.

@@MichaelSteeves I always have to remind myself when seeing massive production lines or factories that one person didn't just figure it out and build it in a few months.

I would also really like to see it.

Also waiting for it, hopefully Destin didn't forget about it... 😅

I feel like part 3 got swept under the rug 😢

Still eagerly awaiting part 3 as well!!

Part 3 link ?

I was thinking about that. I imagine they had teams of workers who were very skilled at moving things around and getting processes done in total darkness.

ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴇᴇᴅʙᴀᴄᴋ sᴇɴᴅ ᴍᴇ ᴀ ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛ ᴍsɢ ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ sʜᴀʀᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜ🔝✍️❤️....ʷʰᵃᵗ’ˢ ᵃᵖᵖ┼¹⁵⁰²²⁰⁹⁹⁵¹⁹

This is what gets me the most. Someone actually sat down and actually designed those machines. Each at their time, and improving over time, but at the very beginning, some mind had to have that all figured out in his/her mind.

I'm a production engineer at an automotive supplier... this is a whole different level of tech and attention to detail. As "low tech" as film seems, it takes an awful lot of tech to make it with good quality. Makes the robots, welders, stamping presses, etc. that I work with seem like sticks and stones.

@@ratdude747 lol, same here dude. I'm an engineer in aircraft production. When he said that the troughs have to be parallel within 0.00005", my jaw about hit the floor. That's so crazy.

@@iluomopeloso precisely…

@@ratdude747 i was thinking the same... and i can just imagine what a push the whole thing was to integrate... just insane.

I was thinking the same thing, but I guess at this stage the drying process stabilized the layers such that the film won't stick onto itself. I'm thinking the rolling tension is monitored aswell, to avoid excessive friction between layers during the rolling/unrolling processes.

@@xJingZz Very true. The rolling tension would need to be varied/adjusted and balanced with the air pressures in order to maintain the gap between the turning bars and entire conveyance system, not just the roll itself. Assuming there isn't some sort of drive rollers on the sides of the support, outside of the boundaries of the product. There's some mind blowing enginerding in that machine. A true work of mechanical art, really.

Everything has to do with the drying process and how the edges of each roll are done. Makes it easy!

We have a totally separate machine that also rewinds some of the rolls of film after they have been coated. Alot smaller but awesome machine

Yeah, that must have been A LOT of trial and error.

I completely agree. I am amazed an feel blessed each time we get to see such a video! Thank you Destin! & Kodak

I agree 100%. Destin, we are all lucky to have you in our lives and are lucky that you garner the respect of folks who let you into these situations (Rocket factories, Submarines and now Kodak!)

Free for the end viewer as well, truly spectacular.

This world is rapidly passing away and I hope that you repent and take time to change before all out disaster occurs! Belief in messiah alone is not enough to grant you salvation - Matthew 7:21-23, John 3:3, John 3:36 (ESV is the best translation for John 3:36) if you believed in Messiah you would be following His commands as best as you could. If you are not a follower of Messiah I would highly recommend becoming one. Call on the name of Jesus and pray for Him to intervene in your life - Revelation 3:20. Contemplate how the Roman Empire fulfilled the role of the beast from the sea in Revelation 13. Revelation 17 confirms that it is in fact Rome. From this we can conclude that A) Jesus is the Son of God and can predict the future or make it happen, B) The world leaders/nations/governments etc have been conspiring together for the last 3000+ years going back to Babylon and before, C) History as we know it is fake. You don't really need to speculate once you start a relationship with God. Can't get a response from God? Fasting can help increase your perception and prayer can help initiate events. God will ignore you if your prayer does not align with His purpose (James 4:3) or if you are approaching Him when "unclean" (Isaiah 1:15, Isaiah 59:2, Micah 3:4). Stop eating food sacrificed to idols (McDonald's, Wendy's etc) stop glorifying yourself on social media or making other images of yourself (Second Commandment), stop gossiping about other people, stop watching obscene content etc. Have a blessed day!

matryoshka canisters (Russian dolls)

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's just really big film.

Love your Channel. so happy the second part is finally here.

@@user-bp8yg3ko1r We're still working on it! Beta testers are testing early versions of screens now.

Why are the posters in the main control room blurred out? They don't look particularly inappropriate, nor would i expect them to be in a workplace.

I had no idea Kodak is alive

Who knew that film is not vegan!

The economics of bulk manufacture. Amazing.

Also have to remember that for most of history film was the only option to record an image so millions of people had no choice but to buy it. Digital recording is relatively new.

I'm guessing that it would be cost prohibitive to build this plant these days. It's only because Kodak built it decades ago that it still exists. The scary part is if it burnt down, would it make sense to rebuild it? I highly doubt it.

@@tbillington The complexity of rebuilding that is mind blowing.

You have to understand the buildings weren’t fully designed and built from scratch as it exists today. Its years and years of buldings and redesigns and renovations etc. As processes change and advance the infrastructure is modified and retrofited with some new buildings added etc. In some ways its easier as youre breaking these down into smaller engineering problems, in otherways its harder as making new techniques and process work with older things and bulidings designed for older processes. Im sure if today they were designing a factory from scratch to produce film it would in many ways be totally different than whats there

There's a mile long compressor next door.

Would you be willing to sell one or two 35mm cassettes? Would be nice to experiment!

No, sorry. It was all pre paid for. I think that some others might be doing similar buts though, I would look on Photorio and Reddit.

These videos make me feel dumber every minute.

That's only a small portion of the original plant that's being used today. Can you imagine the size and scope of the operation when literally everyone shot film back in the day? It would have been many times bigger in scale and many more employees involved and round the clock operation. Even at this level, it seems overwhelming and it's amazing what they accomplish.

It's sad to think of what Kodak and rochester used to be, I wish I could have worked there with my grandfather back in the day

In your cyanotype camera project, have you considered making your own photographic paper for visible light?

There's a few decent papers on float ovens, using the input hot air to float the strip. Its used in the metal painting industry pretty commonly

When they were looking at the film in a line of air-rollers slightly overhead it looked like the line doesn't just blow air but also pulls air in between every two blower rows, and the film looked tensed. If they were using conventional rollers, the film would probably be going over-under the rollers, with adjustable rollers here and there to tension it. So I think that in the air-conveyor, the blower rows create the 'over' and the vacuum rows create the 'under'. By adjusting the positive or negative pressure they can tension the moving film and it could theoretically work the same to hold it suspended place but still under tension. Love the channel btw!

Brian, I used to work for Kodak so I can answer your questions. Kodak has been improving those steps for over 100 years. Yes, any one of those processes can cause a problem, but they have evolved over those years with trial and error/research to get to where they are now. It is incredible. Their film lines do have multiple tension zones as you surmised. They generally are isolated into sections of the machine, i.e. unwind to just before coating, then just after coating to keep the tension consistent in the coater, there might be multiple zones in the dryer sections because they are so long, etc. down the line. The control systems are amazing to keep the speed/tension in sync throughout the machine. The air supports are not angled as far as I am aware. I'm not sure if Kodak has any, but there are air bars called airfoils that use strategically placed slots where the air comes out and can hold the moving film very close to the air bar and keep the film from flopping around. Have a good one. Love your channel too!

They had tension rollers in strategic locations, but they usually only touched one side. The whole place was amazing and there was a lot we didn’t have time to get into. The final accumulator for example… it was all in the dark so I didn’t get to see it while I was in that building.

ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴇᴇᴅʙᴀᴄᴋ sᴇɴᴅ ᴍᴇ ᴀ ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛ ᴍsɢ ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ sʜᴀʀᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜ🔝✍️❤️...ʷʰᵃᵗ’ˢ ᵃᵖᵖ┼¹⁵⁰²²⁰⁹⁹⁵¹⁹

I've been working for kodak for 7 months now and my mind still gets blown every shift at how much goes on, and this is just my building, there are so many others

The processes that your grandfather would have worked in were similar but very different from how film is manufactured today. No curtain coating no upside down chilling and drying but his generation made some great film.

The machining, the planning, the execution. Unbelievable.

Industrial engineering is incredible.

That is they way I feel when my grand kids friends ask me questions

👍😊👍

I have to ask how you manage to assess every single piece of science correspondence on the entire internet. I don't know why people can't say something is great without making extremely grandiose claims. It would be unrealistic to claim to be aware of everything on the internet even in the 90's when it was in its infancy.

@@BlueZirnitra it's all in one place here, you don't have to sift through technical manuals or papers data sheets or try to consolidate all the rest of the information to put it in an easily viewable and understandable format and package presented by the very people who design make and quality assurance the very same product that you're looking for. Are there other videos out there? Yes there are but none of them are as in depth as this series with very recent information. For example in one of the videos he goes into how they had to redesign ectochrome film because some of the processes that they used in the discontinued film work viable anymore or they wanted to adjust and improve the product. Other than a simple statement on kodak's website saying "new and improved" we wouldn't know what they went through and redesigned to make the product better we wouldn't know that they built new machines tools processes and facilities to get things to us we wouldn't have a complete understanding of the flow process and characteristics of the flow machine are there other references out there on the internet yes are they easily presentable and easily found not that I've been able to find if you can find a link or reference another video that explains everything that this series and its second channel offshoots have explained please do so I'd like to see it.

That's what I used to think while watching How It's Made. I wanted to see how they made how it's made.

What Destin didn't explain is that every inch of film you see being made by Kodak-Eastman in these videos isn't for Kodak-Eastman, as they sold the rights several years ago. The UK Government owns "Kodak" film, and Kodak-Eastman just continues to make it for them under contract. Kodak-Eastman can not legally sell Kodak photography film (C41/E6/BW). Want to get even more confused? Kodak-Eastman does still own the rights to their movie films (ECN2 Vision3 film) in which they resell as photography film known on the market as "Cinestill". Confusing huh? Part of the sale of Kodak film was the new owner purchased the branding rights to continue calling it Kodak. Look on the boxes though, it's labeled as "Kodak Professional" not Kodak-Eastman.

When I got hired on one of the managers told me up until about 5 years ago I would of been "taken out" jokingly about seeing the hoppers and all that without permission

@@jimi2929 I think this is only made possible due to a loophole in the NDAs with Alaris and Fuji since Eastman doesn't own Kodak film anymore. It makes no difference to them, it ain't their film they're leaking secrets about. They're just a 3rd party making the stuff under contract. That Eastman factory isn't the only company making Kodak branded film either.

On the other hand, what secrets are there? The real secrets are the fine details not the grand scheme of things we see here. And even if they went public, nobody would build such a factory because there is no more money to be made here that brings back the investment.

@@whuzzzup I own a popular photo lab in Texas... Let me tell ya, that's about as far from the truth as you could ever imagine. There's billions in the film industry. It's back big time Eastman can not keep up with demand and neither can Fuji. Fuji has Eastman making film for them to try and keep up.

ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴇᴇᴅʙᴀᴄᴋ sᴇɴᴅ ᴍᴇ ᴀ ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛ ᴍsɢ ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ sʜᴀʀᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜ🔝✍️❤️..ʷʰᵃᵗ’ˢ ᵃᵖᵖ┼¹⁵⁰²²⁰⁹⁹⁵¹⁹

Basically

ᴛʜᴀɴᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ғᴇᴇᴅʙᴀᴄᴋ sᴇɴᴅ ᴍᴇ ᴀ ᴅɪʀᴇᴄᴛ ᴍsɢ ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ sʜᴀʀᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜ🔝✍️❤️..ʷʰᵃᵗ’ˢ ᵃᵖᵖ┼¹⁵⁰²²⁰⁹⁹⁵¹⁹

Not to mention, the nuclear reactor Kodak ran in the basement of one of their buildings in Rochester with the government supposedly not aware of it.

There’s a Veritasium episode on this topic.

@@jstreutker except it wasn't a nuclear reactor, just a neutron source. Sure, you could argue there isn't much of a difference, but there is. For starters, there aren't too many nuclear reactors that are the size of a typical single door, household refrigerator.

Veritasium and SED are buds, and Veritasium already made the quintessential video on this subject.

@@EisenFeuer I know, but a lot of people don't know about it and it would greatly illustrate how sensitive film is.