[pure-silver] Re: Angry Monologue aginst Deception in the Sensitized Material Industry
- From: Richard Knoppow <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 04:33:31 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
-----Original Message-----
>From: Ray Rogers <earthsoda@xxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Apr 1, 2008 2:02 AM
>To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [pure-silver] Angry Monologue aginst Deception in the Sensitized
>Material Industry
>
>
>--- Bogdan Karasek <bkarasek@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I believe that somebody recently mentioned that that ARISTA paper sold
>> by FREESTYLE was rebadged (manufactured by) KENTMERE. Can this be
>> confirmed?
>....
>
>You know I am having a hard time today- next doors no-freeze alarm having gone
>off and piercing
>all afternoon, so maybe you will excuse my short temper here...
>
>But I for one am sick and tired of Sensitized Material Manufacturers selling
>their products* to be
>sold to other companies so that those other "wanna be's" can pretend to be
>manufacturers
>themselves...
>
There has been a great deal of this sort of thing for many years. Agfa,
Farinia, Kentmere, Ilford, have all made materials on a custom basis. I believe
that Kodak never has. Ilford announced several years go that they would
discontinue the practice but they still have a custom department.
I think there is a difference between products sold under house-brand
names such as Freestyle's Arista brand, and materials sold on the general
market as though by a manufacturer. Some of the Eastern European brands fall
into this category (too early in the morning for me to remember names).
As far as Freestyle goes, they sell materials by several makers under
similar names. Arista and Arista EDU are, in general, not made by the same
manufacturers. One can sometimes make a good guess as to the actual
manufacturer from the country of origin. For instance, Arista EDU film is not
made in England while at least some Arista film is. I am pretty sure the Arista
film is still Ilford but am not sure. I did actually once get some rolls of 120
Arista that had Ilford sticky tape on them. Some Arista paper must be Kentmere.
Its made in England but does not seem to be Ilford.
For the most part the film and paper sold by these companies as custom
material is the same as their regular production. The advantages they claim are
a predictable market, lack of need for advertising, and some saving in
packaging.
I agree that one of the reasons for custom marketing may be excessive
production capacity, especially now, but the practice has been going on for
decades so this can not have always been true.
One thing I found out about Kodak several years ago was that some bargain
priced material was gray-market. There _were_ some differences in quality. For
instance, USA made 35mm 36 exposure cassettes had about 40 exposures on them
while the gray-market stuff had just about 36 exposures. I talked to someone at
Kodak about this at the time and was told that while the gray-market sales were
probably illegal and were certainly in violation of Kodak contracts the
practice was so wide spread that it was hopeless to fight it. I think the film
I bought that time was color film made in India and meant for the Asian market.
This may have been a result of Kodak's refusal to sell on an OEM basis.
I have no idea if Fuji sells custom material. I do wish they sold their
B&W paper in the US, evidently its good stuff, but is sold only in Japan.
In any case, the trick about understanding the modern world is that its
all about money and nothing else.
Your's richly, AKA Scrooge McDuck
--
Richard Knoppow
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Los Angeles, CA, USA
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