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by sparky_ 3819 days ago
Interesting to see history repeating itself a bit: "When you purchase film you will be buying the film, processing and digital transfer". Kodak was pursued by the DoJ in the 1950s and ultimately ruled against in an antitrust suit for doing the exact same thing with Kodachrome, the market leader in color (still) photography at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodachrome#Prepaid_processing
3 comments

Looks like the consent decrees were terminated in 1995. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-2nd-circuit/1300513.html
Interesting.
Kodachrome was slide film. Very few labs would process it, though the colors were bright and some people really liked it. E6 was the process that most slide film used (even some of kodaks).

Slide film was always a challenge to expose just right, its dynamic range is pretty narrow compared to negative film. Its what you needed to use for movies though.

I can't see this new revival being more than a niche market. Sending film away and waiting a week might not cut it in todays market when phones shoot hd and can edit.

There are a bunch of these. The "imposible project" [1] bringing back polariod film being another. Polariod though has the advantage of being instant.

[1]https://www.the-impossible-project.com/

Polaroid instant film is awesome and is not like Super 8 at all (except they're both old). There is nothing digital that works as well as Polaroid (or Fuji) instant film. No, carrying around a digital printer doesn't work as well, yet. Integrate the digital printer into the camera so that you don't notice the printer at all, then it will moot the instant film. This Super 8 thing just seems crazy. It's conspicuously added inconvenience where instant film is just the opposite, an instant photo.
I'd say the Fuji instax SP1 works pretty damn well.
Home movies used a positive process, but TV and cinema would typically be shot using a negative process. Kodak has discontinued all of their reversal films except one (and it's black & white).
Thing is, in 2016 it's hard to argue that doing prepaid processing is to lock out the competition, at this point, it's a requirement to make super 8 "viable" again. Where else will you get it processed?