Kodak made a jarring announcement in early 2002, promising by year-end, many of its popular black-and-white films—Plus-X, Tri-X, T-Max 100 and P3200—would be “changed” as a result of a relocation to a different emulsion-making and coating facility. Kodak promised photographers this new facility would manufacture a more consistent product with better physical characteristics, assuring us these new films would retain their familiar, fundamental characteristics. Kodak did warn, however, that photographers might need to make “a slight adjustment” in development times.

Many of us likened this announcement to telling an artist you were going to take away all his brushes and give him new ones, assuring him the new brushes might not be exactly the same, but very similar (and even better) in some respects. By the end of 2002, Kodak posted development times for the new films on their web site. Some new times were more than 50% different—definitely not a “slight adjustment.” What was going on? Why change anything? The products were fine the way they were.

In truth, Kodak was probably doing us a large favor. They noted production of these black-and-white films was being relocated to a state-of-the-art facility featuring their most modern emulsion-making and coating processes.

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