Pix in a Fix

Silver costs hit film users

Camera buffs may continue urging subjects to "Smile," but there probably will be little smiling on the other side of the shutter. Reacting to the rise in the price of silver from $6 per oz. to a high of $41.50 over the past year, Kodak last week announced increases of up to 75% on its whole line of film products. A twelve-exposure cassette of Kodacolor II, for example, went from $1.86 to $2.15, and a 36-picture roll of Kodachrome slides jumped from $4.40 to $5.29. The steepest increases were for graphic arts films and photo typesetting paper used by newspapers. Du Pont, a manufacturer of X-ray and industrial films, has raised its prices by as much as 80% in the past year. Polaroid boosted prices 6% earlier this month and said it was considering further increases. Polaroid is fortunate because its instant film uses less silver than other companies' conventional film products do.

Kodak is experimenting with ways to reduce the silver content of film, but scientists have yet to find any other material as sensitive to tight. With black and white film, the image is etched into grains of silver salts coated on the thin piece of plastic. Silver also captures the original image for color pictures, but is later replaced by colored dyes during development. Nonsilver film is being manufactured, though it is used primarily for slow-exposure microfilm. In all, the photo industry accounts for nearly half of the 160 million oz. of silver that the nation consumes annually.

While waiting and hoping for silver prices to decline, Kodak has stepped up its recycling procedures. The company already recovers 20 million oz. of the metal a year in processing amateur film and in scrap from its manufacturing operations. Even the silver that is punched out to make the tiny sprocket holes on 35-mm and home-movie film is meticulously collected and used again.

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