I talk about 500 megapixel sensors, diffraction, and the new Kodak 50 megapixel sensor.

Some notes on film, some cool and not-so-cool stuff out of PMA, and a few more tidbits.

A Kodak letter got scanned and passed around the Internet and it looks like another emulsion is gone -- Ektachrome 400X this time. They make some pains to explain that families of film other than 400X are not actually dead in the letter.

Kodak makes yet another new C-41 film

Apparently Ektar 100 is enough of a hit that now they're releasing it in 120 format as well as 35mm format.

I'm not incredibly worried about the "death of film". I'm not tied to the use of film to the point where I'll have lost my creative outlet if it disappears, it just happens to be the right tool for the job. I'll buy a fancy expensive high-resolution digital SLR and move on with life. But there are supply problems with film.

We have reached a new stage with Kodak, and I'm not pleased about it. With prior film discontinuations, Kodak gave advanced warning that a film was going to be discontinued, perhaps with a suggested replacement film. Now, we're faced with films being discontinued without the courtesy of advance warning so we can calibrate our process for a new film or alternatively stock up to complete a project while there's still film to be purchased.

Kodak announced that they are dropping EPR, EPN, and HIE in december.

Kodachrome is gone.

As somebody who griped up a storm about Kodak's previous film discontinuations, I have to say that they are discontinuing film with the appropriate amount of respect for our loss this time...

I've been in a bit of a funk since Sunday morning when folks noticed Silverprint's post about HIE (High speed IR) and EIR (Ektachrome IR) being discontinued. At least this time, somebody gave us warning about it. Naturally, it wasn't Kodak. Folks called Kodak. The first to call got positive news that it wasn't discontinued.... but everybody else was told that the last cut is next month.

Just when we thought that Kodak was out of ways to improve films, they got even finer grain out of the 400NC and 400VC films

There's some folks spouting off about the Polaroid situation. It really sucks to lose your primary photographic medium and there's a lot of subtle points to making film that nobody outside of Kodak, Polaroid, Fuji, Agfa, and a few others really know, so there's a lot of uninformed emotional blathering and wishful thinking...