Ektar 25 Followup - how does it hold up so well?

I love kodak except when I look for some ektar 25 for the grain and find it discontinued. I think kodak at one point said that they make all their money on the max versatility 800 ASA films and essentially screwed everyone else. All the films I want to shoot were gone before my time. I'm looking for some ektar on ebay but those early 90s films are rare at best. Wikipedia cites "poor market segmentation" as kodak's cited reason to discontinue ektar in 94. It would seem to me that there would be a fair market for 25 ASA color print films. Some people don't need speed. But hell, what do I know? For now im on reala 100 because it won't be discontinued next year in favor of 1600 ASA print film.

I'm an Ektar 25 fan as well. I have a few rolls left in the freezer. Even at its peak, Ektar 25 sales were minuscule. The film manufacturing facilities at Kodak were designed to make large quantities of film at low cost.

I loved ektar 25. I got my first 35mm roll as several freebie 12exp rolls at a trade show. It never really sold well. It was hard to find even in its hayday. It was hard to make; the sales were small. It died because sales were to low to support the specialty film. Besides bringing back Ektar 25 the Hudson Hornet could be brought back; cars with fins; space food sticks; betamax and 8 track tapes. The film extar 25 would have been made longer if folks bought more; enough to support an exotic film coating line. They DID NOT; they whussed out; palty sales meant the speciality flm line was axed; like it needed to be. The life of a product depends alot on actual sales; NOT retro dreaming.

At the time they cited poor sales. Probably true except it was never advertised either.

it was really really good color neg film. Thinking back, it would compete well with what I can do today with 4x5 color Portra.

So what if is was ASA 25. So was Kodachrome 25.

I remember the ads for it with some dude holding up a huge enlargement of a butterfly on the back of Pop Photo.

I shot a few rolls but I loved the Ektar 1000 because I took alot of available light pictures in places where a flash was not allowed and I could color balance it in printing if needed.

Larry

Kodak advertised Ektar 25 in stores; they even bundled *free* 12 exposure rolls with other C41 rolls.

They had slick full page adverts in Pro Photography magazines; amateur ones too. Ektar 25 and 125 had adverts in the Rangefinder magazine too. The film was at pro trade shows. It was advertised alot; even when its was rebadged as Royal 25.

The film was often at the fire sale old film area at Ventura camera, the Oaks Mall camera store; at canoga camera; a the camera store in Westwood; or at Franks camera; eevn Free style in the Los Angele area.

Kodak could not even give the stuff away, 12 exposure trial rolls were often leftovers at trade shows. I got much of the Ektar stuff as free samples; or bought it new at local camera stores where it rarely sold; or went on fire sale since it had expired. I even bought the film new in Auckland, Munich, Toyko, Bangkok, and Singapore too.

The film never sold well; even with advertising and many free samples and bundled samples. Its was a flop; folks didnt buy enough to keep the production line going. Its a like watching the original star trek and wondering why they didnt make a 4th season. Just because a cult status erupts years later doent mean a company should make a product that costs alot and with poor sales. The failure of ektar is due to photographers not buying enough; not due to kodak. It was rejected by most photographers; even with free samples; massive advertising; super reviews as being a super fine grain film.

The Ektar film series was abit harder to shoot than amateur stuff; thus the typical wallyworld shooter got better results with amateur kodak products; often faster ones.

Its easy to say that 8 track; beta, the AMC Pacer:) , the original star trek, ektar, the mac tombstone; the timex sinclar:), should have been made longer; or that they should have done more advertising. Its hard to predict "Retro dreaming profits" ten years into the future; when production costs are exceeding sales.

Probably many photographers are not business oriented; thus return on investment, advertising costs, sales figures are easy to ignore. Its easy to think the other chap should work for nothing; or keep on producing marginal products.

Ronald, great point: "it was really really good color neg film. Thinking back, it would compete well with what I can do today with 4x5 color Portra." I have some images made with this (35mm) that enlarge better than anything else I've ever used. Although I love Kodak's UC 100, E100G and GX, Ektar 25 seems to have been special; a great color palette similar to K25 and such fine grain!

Tried to actually show this to a guy by showing him an enlarged print. He had a sappy gallery display of low-end digitally captured images. Said he couldn't even understand Ektar 25's qualities and refused to acknowledge the fine grain (virtually non-existent grain) that I attempted to point out.. Stated that everything could be somehow simulated in Photoshop anyways, and that the type of film mattered little.. Perhaps that just might be indicative of the mentalities that helped to contribute to its demise.

Perhaps Kodak could have done a better job of educating people as to its qualities? I don't know, as unfortunately, I was just getting knowledgeable enough to appreciate the 25 speed films (including K25), when they were pulled. It would be wonderful to have these films back, engineered for optimal scanning, but like Ron and Kelly say, it likely won't happen. I'm happy to at least have available the Kodak 100 speed emulsions, though.

Oops, sorry, Kelly. It looks like you pretty clearly covered the fact that Kodak did its best.

That touches on an idea that has occurred to me before, though: maybe an unfortunate aspect of demographics helped to kill these films. What I mean is, people now in mid- life, and there are a lot of us, had just started to reach the experience levels where we began to appreciate the somewhat subtle qualities of these 25 speed films; this, just before Kodak gave up on them.. Perhaps this might explain the continuing interest in threads on this topic, and the huge prices these films now fetch.

On the other hand, the rise in popularity of zoom lenses, with their often slow apertures, probably also had something to do with the rise in faster films.. But still, I can't help but feel that had production continued for another year or two, that there might have been enough people like us that appreciated fast primes, and/or were willing to use tripods, to have constituted a viable market.

I had some rolls of RG 25 that did not hold up so well. The grain was so large it looked like a high speed film. This was a batch around 1999 or 2000. They had problems with the later batches as well. I won't add to that.