On Saturday, March 24, Arthur Entlich wrote:
> Mike is right. There are no "supermarket" brands. 3M/Scotch used to be
> a main supplier of these no-brand films, but I think they left that biz.
3M spun off their imaging technologies business under the name of
Imation in 1996. The photographic division was sold off to a group of
private investors in 1999 and now operates (again) as Ferrania.
(This according to .)
On Sunday, March 25, Alan Tyson wrote:
> Do I remember correctly that 3M
> had a plant in Italy? Who owns it now? It is the 'Ferrania'
> plant I remember from my youth?
Yes, 3M acquired Ferrania in 1964 and their film products were later sold
under the Scotch name for many years, in addition to being packaged for
private labels. According to one source, K-Mart is Imation/Ferrania's largest
single customer. (I'm a big fan of Focal 100 myself. Cheap crap, but the
good kind of cheap crap...)
On Sunday, March 25, Laurie Solomon wrote:
> Aren't they the ones who bought 35mm movie film tails, respooled the 35mm
> movie film ends into canisters of 24 and 36 exposures, and then resold the
> 35mm canisters to the public via the mail. The net result was that you had
> to use them for processing because no other knowledgeable lab would
> knowingly process the film because it has a backing that would come off in
> their processors and was damn near impossible to clean off.
Yes, that's what Seattle Film Works did until sometime around a year
or two ago. These days, their film cannisters are clearly marked "Process
C-41" and "Made in Italy," a pretty good giveaway that it's Ferrania film.
The film also has unique edge markings and a distinctive base color that
indicates who made it.
But I've heard that many film labs still refuse to process Photoworks/SFW
film, no matter what the cannister says, and will be persuaded by no
amount of explanation, because they "know" that it will mess up their
machines or chemicals somehow.
Assuming that this is on-topic because we have to know which media
type to select when scanning the stuff...
Tim Victor
TimVictor@csi.com
