Film Friday: FilmNeverDie's CP800 semi-auto film processor comes to market, even after a failed crowdfunding campaign

Statistically I'm right, but hey, you run your company any way you prefer. It's your coin to lose, you don't have to listen to irrefutable data that suggests your risk will cause you to fail 👍

Statistically you’re right? What does that even mean? Do you mean based on statistics you’re right? What stats? Like I said, a kickstarter is not a reliable indicator of existing demand since there are just too many contributing factors. (Trust in crowdfunding campaigns in general is lower than it ever was. Maybe the goal was too high. Maybe there wasn’t enough publicity. Etc., etc.)
Now am I saying this product will be successful? Not really. I don’t think it delivers what it should at this price point. But it’s just funny when wannabe economists like you try to sound smart and talk about the market. Something tells me you’re heavily invested in crypto.

Well it might not be the kind thing to say, but the prospects seem dubious.

The target market would be (photographers still using film)x(those wanting to develop their own negatives)x(those with the time/space/money to afford both the machine and the consumables).

That would seem to me to be a vanishingly small potential customer base, but hey, if their business model is profitable very small sales numbers (which it might well be!) then by all means carry on!

I still applaud companies for coming up with products than those that did not.

I think that was the case with the Filmomat ( https://petapixel.com/2015/12/07/this-guy-built-his-own-automatic-film-processor-the-filmomat/ ) but that is now sold commercially, and I know of labs that use one for specialist processes (e.g. ECN-2, black and white slides)., but I don’t know the history of this project. Labs are mentioned as a target customer in the article and would seem the obvious choice.

On a connected note I did hear that Capix are selling a new dip and dunk processor ( http://www.capix.com/new-product.html - much bigger than this ) for smaller film labs, so the demand appears to be there.

Love all the replies and feedback here, look if you don't try you don't know right? and if it's a product the market don't want then we should just fail faster and move on to the next project.

We were a lab since 2018 and since been working up to develop about 80 rolls of films a day on average and about 10-20 rolls of them are BW. We were using the Phototherm Super SideKick for our BW, and Fujifilm Frontier 363 for our roller transport c41 colour. But when the Super SideKick failed, we were left with no a lot of options ,and our in house qualified and experience industrial designed went to work.

From the Kickstarter til now, the prototype model has developed close to 500 rolls and in one day I personally with 2 machine and 3 tanks was able to develop 75 rolls of BW in a 7.5 hour shift.

As much as we like to make this more commercial successful product, but the bottom line is its already helping our own work flow and system, is it perfect? No but it will get better.

I second goodeyes comment that temperature control and the tanks are crucial. Automated processing is mostly useful for those who want to do C-41 or E6 processing where temperature variation is an issue.

I welcome the effort and don't want to be negative but what is the advantage of this machine over a Jobo CPE-3 that is cheaper and has temperature control? (It doesn't compete with the more expensive CPP-3 since it doesn't do large format.)

After seeing so many request for tank based temperature control, we are very happy to announce just hours ago our engineer was able to implement Deep Cycle.

Deep Cycle now allows chemistry to continuously circulated through the processing drum & storage receptacle which can maintain temperature. You can see this working in a video via this link below

FilmNeverDie.com/CP800-deep-cycle-poc

titled IMG_9313.MOV

The machine you are seeing is our prototype machine (yes we are testing touch screen too) which is different from the production model, but once the code for the deep cycle been tested ( by next week) then new model will have this function for the future. Water / Chemicals is still tempted with a sous vide as shown. Temperature in degree Celsius.

With this insert you can do 4 x 5 large format in the tank .
https://www.vanbar.com.au/catalogue/product.php?id=134550

Any more feedbacks or opinions are welcome.

I would not even start down the path of calculating break-even for a device with so much risk involved. The potential advantages of a home lab are:

- use your own B&W chemistry
- same-day turnaround

The question is how this compares to other ways of setting up a home lab. Will it need water supply and drain in the same room to be practical? A slop sink? Or even water supply and drain hard-plumbed? The documentation link is engrish and poorly-organized.

They compromised on temparature regulation. Earlier hobbyist color negative labs did little else:

- https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Jobo+TBE
- https://www.popphoto.com/develop-color-film-sous-vide-machine/

If this machine made developing easier, like if it:
- were well-documented and foolproof and self-contained
- did not need cleaning or plumbing
- load film, press one button, walk away

It could be useful to a hobbyist. But it does need cleaning, and sounds quirky.
Maybe it's only a net benefit for a small lab.

Hi Carton, thanks for the feedback, we do appreciate the bad english and poorly organise part, we will keep working on that.

So far we been using this machine in the lab and in one day with 2 CP800 machines and 3 tanks I personally was able to develop 75 rolls of BW films in a 7.5 hours shift, with no issues with the films at all.

So far the machine has done close to 500 rolls so we are quite confident that this is now ready for a lab use as we are a lab ourself.

What you are proposing - did not need cleaning or plumbing , load film press one button walk away sounds like a dream and one day maybe we will get there (and with being Open Source , who knows !). Just for comparison sake , a new roller transport machine which is quite close to what you mention, which still need plumbing, cleaning , maintenance and chem replenishing can be acquire through Colenta cost upward of 20k euro.

Others competitor - Dev A, Chromabox-4, filmomat all cost more and it's not open source.

Or, if you are like me, the nearest processor is 4.5 hrs away. So I would have to incur shipping costs, downtime waiting for my film processing etc. Using this machine, in 2 years I will have the money I paid for it returned in saved shipping, processing and other costs.

I am going to be purchasing this machine for sure. This is great for someone like me who loves the look of film. You cannot faithfully duplicate film using digital means.

It is great for the hobbyist. You can run any of the films I have seen available in it as most use the same chemistry to be processed.

Good luck with this project Gary.