Dear Group, While discussing alternatives for Kodak HIE on this year's PhotoKina[*], I learned that the most essential element for at least the high-speed aspect is a miniscule quantity of (IIRC) 'hyper- sensitizer'....with the minimum commercial quantity of 254gr (that ought to be an odd Anglosaxian weight-unit, not?) being sufficient for 160.000 films....and probably killing in price, when say only 1600 films are planned. And also a life-span of only 1 year. Apparently, Kodak can produce their own in any quantity, but smaller manufacturers with less R&D might not (how much R&D would Kodak have left in the analog department anyway?!? (their goofs with recent HIE custom orders suggests that the last one with IR-experience retired a long time ago....:(( Do we have any chemical engineers onboard, commercial insight included? What is the proper chemical name/code for this stuff? (who knows, maybe even the Russians can produce it....they did have very sensitive IR-films in the past, more sensitive than HIE (1000 and 1100nm IIRC)) [*] sorry Marco, your question for a meeting came too late, and the most efficient Kina for me is one with as little fixed appointments as possible....but after visiting Aqualand in Cologne this time, and a bit of research on similar relax/swim/sauna centers closer to the Kina, I might have found a better solution for such meetings (without consuming valuable time *on* the Kina....:)) Willem (who wants to have a battle-plan ready for that dreadful day, when production of HIE stops (although a Kodak-UK representative said that *if* current sales of HIE stay at this level, production will simply continue (he also said that neither HIE nor EIR depended on military/industrial/agricultural sales, so I take this reassurance with a ton of salt....anyone data of how much those sales are today, compared to the consumer/artist market?)) Jan PS, interesting digi/IR/MF Kina news: the new Mamiya ZD (36x48mm 22MP sensor in either separate digiback for 645 system *or* compact SLR for 645 lenses!) will have a user-removable anti-alias filter (which also contains the IR-block filter, to be removed for decent IR- sensitivity/speed (like modification of common 35mm digi-SLR's, as done on http://www.irdigital.net). Of course, perfection requires a similar replacement with anti-alias plus IR-pass filter, and it took me quite some time (and several days) to get hold of the correct Japanese engineer, but I did get the point across I believe. (apparently one can also order the PhaseOne back without any filter, but only straight from the factory, no retromodification....seems to have quite a demand in the museum/restauration business) -- Bye, Willem-Jan Markerink The desire to understand is sometimes far less intelligent than the inability to understand <w.j.markerink@xxxxx> [note: 'a-one' & 'en-el'!]
