The Chemistry of Kodak Film - Smarter Every Day 275-C

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Dustin, having worked in a Kodak coating room back in the 80's, you did a great job of getting into the inner sanctum of this amazing industry. My father who worked for Kodak for over 40 year always told me, Kodak is not a camera or picture company it is a chemical and chemical processing company in an absolutely niche market of photography. Unfortunately, since they were basically run by really good chemical engineers, they completely failed to recognize the digital revolution even though their own research department invented the digital camera, much to their demise. I have always thought a really good, in-depth documentary series on the 130 years of Kodak would be a fascinating insight into a piece of American ingenuity. And I'm talking about not just the development of the company, but all of its products, research and genius around the technology of chemical photography as well as the other successes and failures of this business. While you have done a great job of showing how this technology works, you have only scratched the surface of this industry and all the things that this company was involved in. There is a wealth of technology and knowledge inside the wall of Eastman Kodak that a vast majority of people have no clue of. Stay curious and I hope you do more on this subject.

as someone from industry its crazy how much depth he shows. obviously he doesnt share trade secrets but he is very very close to it and i love it. high industry is amazing - i work in pharma.

As a chemistry teacher, this tickles my brain. I do a chemical photo lab (turn their T-shirts into a photographic film) and this will be a great springboard into this lab and topics.

I love this guy, I'd love to spend a day talking emulsions with him, maybe I could plant the seed to get Aerochrome back in production lmao

The level of access you were granted is impressive. Kudos to Dr. Jeff for imparting so much knowledge!

This actually puts the price of a roll of film into perspective!

As a materials chemistry student who just took a class in solid state chemistry, watching jeff trying to explain core concepts without going way into the weeds was hilarious. Theres so much interesting stuff to cover i bet he could talk for hours about it :D

The amount of thought and design before this factory construction is amazing. Thank you and kodak team for sharing such knowledge

The Kodak series is interesting, because Eastman-Kodak invented most of these processes. Which gives a reference point to look at how other countries' film companies, gained the ability to also make photographic film..

After watching this, I'm amazed that a roll of film doesn't cost $1,000. Thank you for producing this. I'm becoming a patron today!

you can tell the depth of knowledge Dr Hansen has with how measured his responses are. Just like you said, he takes you to the edge of your knowledge, shows you there's even more that you don't understand, then explains what you can understand in a meaningful way. What an educator!

As a Rochestarian and the child of a Software engineer that worked for Kodak it’s really cool to see this but also really sad to see what a shadow of a company Kodak is of it’s former glory. The story of Kodak and the city it built is amazing.

I worked in a photo developing lab in my early 20s and I remember that Kodak film tended to emphasize reds and yellows while Fuji film emphasized greens and blues. (It is notable that their product marketing emphasizes these color differences). I don’t know if I could still tell, but looking at the prints of a full roll of film, I used to be able to recognize Fuji vs. Kodak. I tended to use Fuji because it was less expensive and I tended toward landscape photography which had a lot of greens (plants) and blues (sky), but I’ve always had a special place for Kodak because my great grandmother’s uncle was George Eastman who founded Kodak.

I'm a secondary school student and I'm doing my final year project on the chemistry of photographic film. I've found it quite difficult to find information about this subject and so I wanted to thank the Smarter Every Day crew for making this video as it has really cleared things up for me. Thanks for making us smarter everyday.

The logistics of this facility is insane. Every time Jeff tried to show a hint of the scale of the complexity of the operation, my brain started to extrapolate and immediately got overwhelmed. This series has been an absolute pleasure to jump down the rabbit hole in.

I've lived in Rochester for 26 years and never knew how much went into the making of Kodak film. Thanks so much Destin for visiting my city and this deep dive into the chemistry and all the other videos of how this stuff works!

I am a photography professional, I grew up with film and understand all of the basic principles, but... Gosh, I had no idea! These facilities are exceeding my imagination of film production by far. Thank you so much for this deep dive. Thanks to Kodak and special thanks to Jeff!

You can see why Kodak basically makes all the color film stocks for everybody, it's amazing how much work is done to make film. Also explains why Fuji is spinning down their factory. It's going to take a lot of demand for film to convince these companies that it's still worth all the effort.

Literally one of those episodes where learning is fun and I can’t get enough of it.