[Frameworks] Resources on history of 16mm technology

[Scott Dorsey]

Anscochrome was Agfachrome in disguise.  What with the war and all, the
German parent split their US division apart and Ansco was what was left
in the US.  They stuck around for a good while.  Agfa themselves was
making their ball-and-chain-dye coupler film in Germany well into the
1980s and some filmmakers in the US were using it.  I think their last
customer was WGBH.

The original German Agfa plant was picked up by the Russians and taken
back home as war spoils, and the Sovcolor films of the fifties were made
with film from that plant (Svema).

No low-budget or amateur filmmaker would shoot color negative when they
had reversal, especially with a high shooting ratio, because workprinting
was so expensive.  You could save some money by getting B&W workprints
of your color original, but shooting reversal allowed you to edit the
camera original directly without having to go back and conform.  Your
chance of damaging the original was 100% but that's how it goes on a budget.
Given the choice of Kodachrome or ECO you could make a choice of whichever
evil you'd like.

I gave Scott Norwood a copy of the 1978 price list from W.A. Palmer films
which I got when I was working on low budget surf films as a much younger
person.  He scanned it and has it online somewhere, and it is worth looking
at because it is a guide to all the laboratory services that were once 
available and how much they cost back then.  Kodachrome prints... Opticals...
Lacquering... Peerless Treatment... 

By 1990 or so you could still get 100 ft. of Tri-X Reversal for $11.54
and 100 ft. of 7239 for $16.  Rafik was charging me four cents a foot
for short ends...  all of that is gone with the wind...
--scott