Nous avons reçu un long mail en anglais de New55 Film voila le mail, en anglais car pas le temps de traduire pour le moment.
Mais voila en Français les points les plus importants :
* Pour les supportes Kickstarter les lots commencent à être envoyés. 25% sont déjà envoyés ce qui est significatif.
* les ventes sur le site New55 Film : http://shop.new55.net/ sont encourageantes et nécessaires pour la bonne continuation du projet principal et le paiement en fin d'année d'une assurance assez chère.
* il y a quelques soucis avec les utilisateurs des chassis 545 et le film New55 PN mais les choses avancent
* des photos commencent à arriver et sont très belles voir :
https://instagram.com/new55film/
https://www.facebook.com/New55-190955884271025/
Nous traduirons le reste du message un peu plus tard...
* des tutoriels vidéos ont été crée pour aider les utilisateurs
Devant l'avancée du projet nous venons de décider d'acheter des produits New55 Film et les revendre. Dès réception on fera un billet.
Dear Kickstarter
backers and others,
We have some news and want to share with you this outline of the
status of the various parts of the project.
The slow fulfillment of packs as rewards to Kickstarter
supporters in general order of pledge has continued. The current amount is 25%
fulfilled, which is significant.
Sales of a small amount of film online have made possible a
steady effort. It has been tedious and expensive, but there is no alternative
way to fund steady operations, and it is giving the team some actual commercial
experience that presumably would be needed for a continued product.
The project still has the same cash shortfall that has prevented
the paying of some bills and delaying needed purchases of materials, and there
are end-of-year bills such as liability insurance (huge dollars) that will have
to be paid.
Direct sales have been small, though sales in smaller amounts
will help tell us if there is a real marketplace. Little batches of New55 PN
have been up on the shop and sold out several times. This shows that some
people are willing to buy and use New55 PN at its present stage and price to
support the project and for their own purposes. This might be a good sign.
Field reports show that reliability has improved dramatically
and that users have become more comfortable with the peel-and-fix part of the
process. As expected, there has been a lot of learning, some failures, and many
exchanges online as we dust off and attempt to repair our old 545 holders. The
problem of bad 545 holders remains, so we are going to put an extra effort into
insisting that users know how to take apart, clean and reassemble the holder.
We want to overcome these getting-started failures in the future by offering
fully checked out 545 film holders, but for now it remains a problem.
Supporters have started sending us some very beautiful
photographs made with New55 PN. These are still few, as it is early, and not organized
in any one place yet, but a sampling can be seen on facebook or instagram. This
is encouraging.
The team has been producing a series of how-to videos that
should improve the overall success rates.
The latest receiver sheet coating exercise did not entirely fail
and a small amount of good receiver sheet was made - enough for perhaps another
1000 packs. But hand coating has and must continue. The steady supply of
receiver sheet remains a very annoying, expensive and distracting problem and
the time and cost of all of it has put the project at risk.
The hand coated receiver sheets are works of art and produce
rich full tones and good blacks now. A sort of silver lining, if there is one.
The negative stock we have is problematic. One batch was fine,
another one has a tendency to fog chemically that can produce reversal in mid
tones. The lead times for new negatives, and the cost, has us concerned about
smooth production schedules. We are currently scrambling for new negative stock
that does not have the tendency toward chemical fog. This problem might be
mitigated by a reformulation of the reagent but lead times for reagents have
been very long, to date. Bottom line: We need film to make the product, and the
three film manufacturers that today make suitable film for New55 PN all have
various problems associated with delivering a working product at a time and
price that makes sense.
A fix for the mottled effect that we sometimes see has been
found and will be implemented. The addition of rails that space the receiver
sheet from the negative involves further development effort, and we may print
raised rails using expanding ink such as the raised ink used in certain
business cards. If that does not work we will apply strips of 0.0015” thick
tape, preferably by machine but possibly by hand if necessary. Expensive and
time consuming, but an important product improvement that we feel must be
implemented.
20X24 Studio has supplied the first tranche of bespoke pods at a
specific transfer price. This is a milestone. Scheduled runs are planned and we
hope all that goes smoothly.
The assembly stations for New55 FILM work perfectly. There are
two in use and one more planned. These are the so-called dark chambers that
allow lights-out assembly of film like it is in daylight. Great.
The team is changing somewhat with one key person moving on to
another job and being replaced by another skilled person also with photographic
experience. Congratulations and thank-you on a successful stint and best of
luck as we evolve. Occasional staff changes are normal and expected.
The assembly team consists of three full time and two part time
people. The industrial production rate is about 100-200 packs per day and
increasing. This can increase even more if we can get the supply chain to move
more smoothly, which is critical to keeping the assembly team busy and
productive. Once again, the slow supply of materials has affected this and is
slowing everything down.
Every day is frantically busy with full time, part time and also
volunteer staff working many hours making the product, and some vendors
starting to produce and ship better parts to a cost and a schedule. Users have
told us that watching the project evolve, and new people using the product for
the first time is "serious fun". While there is still no guarantee
that operations can continue as they are today, we can certainly say we have
put in place the industrial capacity to make the New55 PN (and other, such as
1SHOT) film products. is what we said we’d do. That’s good, but we need to be
able to keep going.
As always, we thank you for your continued support.
Bob Crowley
MX2
Telephone : 04.75.69.10.90/ +33.475.691.090
