The chief disadvantage of nuclear emulsion is that it is a dense and complex material (silver, bromine, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen) which potentially impedes the flight of particles to other detector components through multiple scattering and ionising energy loss. Finally, the development and scanning of large volumes of emulsion, to obtain useful, 3-dimensional digitised data, has in the past been a slow and labour intensive process. However, recent developments in automation of the process may overcome that drawback.