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Kodak To Stop Selling Film Cameras In U.S.
MikeDataLink writes "Kodak has announced today that they are no longer going to sell or manufacture film based cameras in the USA or Europe (except for disposables) and instead concentrate on Digital cameras. It looks like consumers have spoken and film is finally going to go the way of the dinosaur."
I work with both analogue and the digital photo production and can definitely confirm that this is a string global trend. However, the only apparent reasons for people to switch to digital are price and comfort; most pictures people shoot with their jpeg cameras are quite ugly and pixelated..
The announcement also did NOT say Kodak was going to slow down or stop the production of film in any way. I suspect that corner of their business will continue to thrive in the US and Europe for quite some time yet.
You don't really need a crystal ball for that - especially when it happens to be true. Even though prices continue to come down, and memory and resolution continue to increase, I still can't afford to purchase a digital camera which could equal my old Nikon in image quality, color fidelity, and responsiveness.
Nevertheless, for day-to-day photography my wife's Canon digital camera is perfectly adequate, and I imagine many consumers feel the same way.
Kodak has been losing market share to Fuji for quite a while anyway, especially in the professional market. Kodak has been investing a lot of money and research in "Digital Color Science" for well over a decade - they've been preparing to abandon film for a long time.
Kodak is a film copany, almost any camera they make is disposible. The ONLY professional cameras Kodak make at the momment are digital anyway, and even those are Nikon camera bodies, that have had a Kodak CCD/CMOS chip slaped into them.
This is not really news unless Nikon, Pentax, Canon or Olympus decided that they were going to stop film camera production.
One reason for this I can think of: A digital camera is useless with-out a computer. Try useing a digital camera with-out a way to re-charge the batteries!
*for the record I am not Anti-Digital, I am the proud owner of a Canon G5.
I don't think this has anything to do with the demise of film. It's about no longer producing products that aren't as profitable as they'd like. If they stopped making 35mm film, then we'd have something notable.
There is something interesting in the press release; Kodak indicates that they will
This looks like an indirect reference to plans for phasing out the production of APS films, which have never caught on to the degree that the industry had hoped.
Get your facts straight. Bill Gates and Corbis are the ones saving the images for historical record - not the ones destroying it.
Mmmm.. Donuts
You are right that it will be a long, long time before real photographers use digital. But I believe that we are only a few years before the bulk of consumer photography is digital.
I am actually a "real" photographer who has embraced digital photography due to its convenience and cost issues. I was raised on standard B&W and color film photography in 35mm and large format photography and have a passion for those formats as well. But digital does have its place in semi-pro and pro shooting. In fact, a recent National Geographic article on flight was shot entirely with digital cameras and Apple Powerbook computers.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I hate doing this, but it's a "niche" area, pronounced "neesh". Don't feel bad, even Steve Jobs got it wrong. Dictionary Dot Com
What you may not realize is that Kodak makes a great deal of royalties off of most CCDs manufactured. The have the patents on color filter gels that are placed down with photolithography over the CCDs (and CMOS?) that go into most digital cameras.
I suspect they make tons more on this than any profits from cameras they would make.
I think you're full of crap.
quality: This is a technological question that technology will quickly answer. In the last 5 years, i've seen the first 1Mpixel cameras come out, and now you can hardly buy one, since they've been replaced by much larger pixel sizes. it's common to see 5 pixel digital cameras, and they will only get better.
price: what kind of printed picture are you talking about? you can take your digital media down to wal-mart and for $.26 you can get a print out on the same Kodak paper that your 35MM pictures come on. After that, you can store the images in a digital format of your choice, and print it out again. What happens to analog film after about 10 years?
Different Formats: i guess you don't know you can get different pixel depth cameras. Want a large format digital camera? have you tried looking at sony? Sony makes a Sony DSC-F828 digital camera that is 8 megapixels. That plus a wide-angle lens should allow you to take a "large format" picture. most cameras have different qualities built in, so you can scale the image down and store more on a media stick.
Basically, you sound like you are living in 1990 when digital media was unknown. what kind of research have you done?
read this and you'll have more of an understanding of the differences.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
The plant in Longview Texas is part of Eastman Chemical, no longer part of Kodak since the early 1990s. They manufacture Chemicals and plastics, which explains the smell..
Canon, which does no small digital business, continues to introduce new film cameras -- even low-end SLR's, which would seem to be the most vulnerable to competition from digital. They've recently introduced the Rebel K2 and Rebel G II which are both lower-end versions of the Rebel Ti (Canon has used the Rebel name in the US for about 13 years for their entry-level SLR). Evidently the Rebel Ti was getting just a bit too high-end for comfort. These are all film cameras, by the way.
As others have noted, Kodak getting out of film cameras means nothing. APS has been a well-deserved failure, and Kodak really hasn't built any interesting 35 mm cameras lately.
(I just got a Rebel Digital, which is based on the Rebel Ti body. It's a much, much better camera than my first SLR, a Rebel XS. It's more solid, has better controls, a metal lens mount, much shorter shutter lag and faster drive and in some ways a better autofocus system than my EOS 1N, their previous top of the line prior to the 1V. The controls are still deliberately dumbed down so that they don't completely destroy the market for the Elan, but both the film and digital versions of this camera are very innovative indeed.)
The article in question was shot with a 5 MP Nikon D1X, which is their highest-resolution digital SLR to date. Now for the size of the Geographic, the camera's resolution was just fine.
I like to consider myself a "real" photographer. I take photos and get paid for it. I use digital, in the form of a Canon 10D digital SLR, with various lenses. Straight out of the camera, the prints up to 11" x 14" that I have done have been more aesthetically pleasing to the eye...significantly less grain at equivalent ISOs, and more apparent sharpness. Film may technically be sharper than my 6 MP DSLR, but the sharpness is offset by the grain, which obscures fine details in most cases.
I'd dare to say in the photojournalism field, film is dead. Every event I shoot, everyone is digital. Film is eventually going to be a fine-art medium exclusively...not to say digital isn't (there's a few notable exhibits out there where the images were captured digitally...i'm unsure of the name, but one US-based female photographer produced a book entirely from a now-antiquated Nikon 990..), but film will be relegated exclusively to the fine-art area.
It's cited advantages where:
1) the film stays in the the cartrigde
2) you can rewind a film that is not fully exposed and use it later again
3) there is some information stored on the magnetic strip (date, exposure, etc.)
4) smaller cameras
Note that the only advantage to consumers is that they don't have to store the film strips but the cartridge. Big deal. Oh yeah, and the film remembers the date.
Which are not really advantages if you consider:
1a) no slides
1b) it's harder to process the film or make prints yourself
2) you can do that easily with normal film right now
3) is totally unnecesary, because it only matters that the film is exposed correctly [1]
4) digital cameras anyone?
Now consider the major disadvantage: A smaller film size (meaning inferior pictures) with a bigger price tag.
[1] I know, the exposure settings do have an impact on the development process, but only if the film is pushed. Photographers who do that certainly don't use APS.
Having said that I wasted $299 on a Nikon APS camera in 1997. I think I shot about a dozen APS films with it, after which it broke.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Consumers have spoken, and Kodak digital cameras are going the way of the dinosaur. They use proprietary drivers instead of the standard USB Mass Storage protocol most other cameras are using. This means it's extremely difficult to use them under Linux or BSD, even with a current gphoto. And Mac users are too used to *REAL* plug and play to bother with installing drivers, particularly for devices that shouldn't need them.
On the other hand, most UMass based cameras just work. Period. Without installing one damned driver anywhere, I can use it on my FreeBSD machine, my friends PowerBook, and my mom's Wind98SE system.
Having to carry around the Kodak Install CD just so you can grab your photos anywhere other than your own computer, is just silly. It sucks when you're on vacation. It's just another thing you have to remember to pack. "Dear, don't forget the Kodak CD! Remember that Aunt Martha uses a Canon camera instead..."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I presume Kodak makes as much film as they sell, and I guarantee that film sales have fallen.
I don't doubt that film sales have fallen in the US, Japan, and Western Europe. But as the article notes,
Kodak said that it plans to continue making reloadable cameras that use 35-millimeter film in emerging markets, such as China, India, Eastern Europe and Latin America and that it will introduce six new cameras in those markets this year.
Kodak said the 35-millimeter film industry is growing at double-digit rates in those markets.
I have a 4 mp digital camera and I can get prints out of it that look as good as any film camera.
There are a few keys to making good prints from digital:
Good software. To make a print from digital to printer requires scaling and interpolation of the digital data from the camera's resolution to the printer's native resolution (ie 720 dpi) and the paper dimensions. There are half a dozen interpolation algorithms I can think off the top of my head (ie, bicubic, lanczos etc) and the quality of your print *depends* on these. My personal favorite printing software is QImage which uses Lanczos, and feeds the data to a printer driver in managable chunks rather than a quick dump, among other things. Its way, way better than choosing the simple "print" from photoshop.
You also need a properly calibrated printer and print profiles for the specific paper and ink you're using. Any decent commercial service should have this done already, but sometimes the button-pushers at your one-hour photomat don't really know what they're doing.
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Why film beats digital
Regular 35mm film has an optical resolution and information depth similar to about a 25 MegaPixel digital camera [1].
A more important measure of film or CCD quality are light collecting power. In photogrpahs light == information. More light collecting power leads to higher resolutions, greater depth of focus, and increased shutter speeds.
Light collecting power allows photographs to be taken at a faster speed through the same lens. To collect the most light possible into a camera, and thus the most information, we usually set the shutter speed to the slowest speed we can without blurring the scene - this is usually 1/90th of a second (Some photoraphers can hold a camera still for 1/45th of a second, normally tripods can do about 1/10th of a second). Then we adjust the other parameters of the camera to match this maximum-information shutter speed. To use up extra light and convert it into information we can increase the depth of focus of the camera (making the hole the light goes through smaller). The more light collecting power the film has, the greater depth of focus the camera can have.
Light collecting power also affects the maximum resolution of film or CCDs. For examle a slide film at ISO25 can capture about 4 times the information of a film at ISO100. The ISO25 film trades light collecting power for more pixels, which can function because there is enough light to expose them. ISO100 film can take pictures faster, because there are fewer picture elements that need the light collecting power, so more of it can be used to increase depth of focus and increase shutter speed for less blurred photographs. ISO800 or 1600 films expose very easily, but are greatly lacking in the resolution of the final image.
So, more light collecting power leads to more ability to collect information, depth of focus, and shutter speed.
How digital can beat film:
Digital cameras have some unique potential which will allow them to beat 35mm film in the near future. Medium and large-ormat digital cameras could potentially rival medium and large format film eventually. One of the potential ways to greatly increase the power of digital cameras is to increase their light collecting ability. Many scenes are relitivly motionless down to about 1/10th of a second, however our hands are not steady enough to photograph them easily. It would be a relatively simple task (simpler than correlating stereoscopic views) for a digital camera to repeatedly sample a CCD durring a long 1/10th sec. shot and remove the blurring and add the sampled frames together. This would greatly increase the light collecting power of the digital camera over film cameras in many regular types of shots, greatly increasing its information collecting ability. This increase in information collecting ability could be traded for increased resolution (if we are near the limit of having enough light to expose CCD elements), increased depth of focus, or increased shutter rates (limited by the fastest possible sampling rate of the CCD).
Nitrate film (used almost exclusivly untill 1950) is a legendary fire safety hazard, even if specific accidents have been rare. All film degrades, even if stored properly. And proper storage of "important" film hasent always happened, nor is it happening now.
The only guarenteed archival method is to digitize (whatever) at a higher resolution then the origional, stored uncompressed, or at least with a non-lossy compression method. Document the storage method, And then every 10 years or so move it to a new digital medium, and if necessary the new format.
We are in a state today that we have lots of digital data that is all but useless. For many things we have neither the physcial devices to read them. And for things that we can read the bits, we dont have the documentation for what the format is. No one make 9 track tape drives anymore, for example... A group at NASA maintains even older drives, by hand, assumably at enormous cost.
A better comparison would be to motion picture film. How many movies are shot in digital? There have been all of several--most of them highly oriented to CGI (read: Star Wars). It's not about "warmth" or some other esoteric artsy bullshit, it's about the underlying technology itself and the associated costs. To get the same quality as a $10 roll of film and a $200 SLR takes a $5,000 digital camera. If you're talking about high-end professional photography, you'd have to come up with a CCD capable of reproducing at least the same level of detail as 220 film, which is about four times the resolution of 35mm film. The CCD equivalent of 35mm would be about 12Mp. For high-end photography, you'd need one capable of 60Mp. Certainly, many professional jobs are fine in 35mm or equivalent, but you can get a very nice 220 camera for a few thousand dollars. A 16Mp digital back for a 220 camera will cost about $6,000 (keep in mind, you still need to spend a few grand on the rest of the camer)--and yield results better than 35mm film, but far shy of 220 film. 22Mp backs are available, but it takes 2 seconds to process each frame--and they cost over $20,000. Besides, without doing multiple exposures through color filters, you're still at 1/3 the resolution of 110/220 film. Don't even think about what it would take for work usually shot with 8x10" because 640mp digital backs are a LONG way off, let alone from being anywhere near the price of the film equivalent.
No - they are killing their film camera line.
They are not killing their digital camera line.
they are doing it to help their bottom line.
I'm not claiming "Film" will be gone. I am under the impression that film processing costs will increase, and quality cameras that are inexpensive will vanish to be replaced by plastic lensed cameras, or very expensive film cameras.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Improvements in the latitude of vid sensors, and post-processing that better mimics the look of film have allowed video to be used much more widely. In addition to Lucas films, there have been other major releases films using video, not for CG capabilities, but for cost reduction.
However, movie projection is actually a less demanding medium than still images. A 16x20 print from a 6x7cm neg viewed next to the same from digital will be easily discerable as superior.
The potato it is uninformed.
There are already digital backs for 4x5 cameras, yet I don't believe any are full-frame single-shot solutions; only scanning backs. Of course, price for such components are a wee bit high... The big problem with current medium format solutions (say, the Leaf Valeo digital backs for a Mamiya) is being teathered to a computer. While a laptop can easily be used in the field, the digital back draws power from the computer through the cable, thus quickly draining battery power. Also, there really is something to be said for working with components that are just rock-solid mechanical. I'd rather work with a mechanical cameras any day. It's far more reliable, in my book.
We have a 4 megapixel camera. A minolta s404. We can make 4x6 and 5x7 which are quite sharp a detailed and colorfull. We've also made some 8x10s and that really pushing it with 4 or 5 megapiexels, and you can't crop much.
I sugest investing in a photo printer. They're cheap (except the ink) and the output is good. (I have an epson 1270).
I'm not a super digital fan boy, in fact 90% of what I do is film. But digital cameras can be fun fun and has its place.
A good rule of thumb is you want at least 200 dpi for you prints (300 is ideal) Note this has nothing to do with printer resolution. so a 4 megapixel image 2270 X 1700 at 300 dpi is 7 inches by almost 6. At 200 dpi 11 inch by 8.5.
Who mods this stuff? And just how is ignorance intersting?
>Many pros are nearly all digital, because speed matters more than quality when you want to get
If by "pro" you are refering to photo journalists, then that is a true statement. If that is not what you intended, then you are a jackass. There are many different types of professional photographers.
>The few pros that are left care about quality enough that kodak isn't good enough for them, and they will pay extra for those smaller brands like Ilford that are better.
So many opinions in one sentence, and not one of them based in fact, or even informed subjective opinion. I happen to work in a custom photo lab. I haven't noticed a shortage of "pros" since digital arrived. I also would hazzard a guess that about 70 percent of the film that goes through our lab is of the Kodak NC or VC variety. Ilford makes great black and white film, Fuji is cheap (and has crossover problems with green and magenta in skin tones), but Kodak is still the standard fifty plus years later. Having said that, about seventy percent of our business is now digital, but most of it originates as film. Digital cameras and photoshop are a poor excuse for a good understanding of different film emulsions and proper lighting.
Can we get the moderators to add a "doesn't know shit" category?
-n
Well, I don't know if I would go this far. But if you read the article (which I would venture to say MOST people have not done who are posting here). This is not an article that says 'Kodak dumping film for digital'. It says 'Kodak is losing money, they don't make money on cameras, so they are getting out of that business.'
I don't see film dying for a long time, even in a consumer role. There is something much nicer having a photo, not a digital picture.
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
I hate it when geeks try to reduce stuff like this to numbers
Sorry, but it is just a matter of numbers. Once the numbers get high enough on the digital side, the analog technology loses.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
print your pictures on a kodak printstation
Odball parts and formats just don't have value. I looked at cameras in the past and stuck with basic 35mm manual cameras (the ancient ones with the screw on lens. The bayonett mounts were not standard then. (another format war) I still have them and use them. (I have Pentax and Yashika. the lenses fully interchange with no problems) I can use Kodak, Fuji or other film of my choice. I never delt with the pet rock of the month club that locked me into the manufacture for supplies. (Instamatic, Kodak Disk, Instant, Advantix, etc.)
In the digital world I got bit by my first digital that used a propritory battery. (SONY) I gave it away. I didn't do enough big shoots to justify buying 6 batteries at $40 a pop (Li-10 battery) and had enough big shoots (weddings, parties, and parades) that left me dead early in the game. My current camera uses CF (rant all you want, the camera has a large buffer so CF speed is not a issue.) CF is robust. It's the cheapest format and can be found anywhere. The camera uses standard AA batteries I carry 2 sets of Metal Hydride $10/set instead of $40 each and easly found. I take a package of disposables to my big events. I've never run out of batteries or memory. Downloading is no problem even without the camera software. The USB camera connects as a hard drive and the files are JPEG's. They are instantly usable at home or on the road. The memory card can be read at any kiosk or printer I have seen that supports removable media. (excluding of course the SONY memorystick printer)
Lessons learned.. Go with industry standard interfaces. Do not use anything that uses specialty supplies if possible. My last troublesome item is my printer. I can use most any paper, but ink is a problem. Due to this problem, I get my prints at Walgreens or Costco for 19 cents per 4X6 and less than $2.00 for an 8X10. HP does not make home printing a good value. You don't get many 8X10 prints out of the $60 HP78 color cartridge. Go elsewhere for value in printing photos. Don't forget to edit them first to kill red-eye and other problems.
The truth shall set you free!
That's not exactly true. I am a Kodak camera/printer tech. There's a chance I'll get fired for this, but since I'm not at work, I have some recourse.
:( )
It is true that some of the early EasyShare cameras did not have DC in to charge and required a dock or the wall charger, but neither of the models you talked about fit that. The DX6340 has DC in, along with the CX4230 (the 4220 you mentioned doesn't exist, the 4210 was only sold outside the US).
The only series based accessories are the docks/printer docks, as the dock interface is different between the two models. I can tell you why, but that would definitely result in the loss of my paycheck. Sorry, but I need the checks to keep coming in.
And if you email me (naz@NOSPAMyclan.net) with the serial number of the 4230, I can tell you exactly why it quit charging. I'm going to guess that you inserted the battery backwards and smashed the battery detection switch. I bet that camera is sitting 5 feet from my bench, if Best Buy has returned it through channel returns and it was really broken.
As far as the the $15 EasyShare batteries, you can use non-Kodak replacements. And any AA batteries will work, just don't use alkaline, as they blow for quick discharge use. I prefer LiIon AAs to test with at my bench, as I can use them for an entire 12 hour shift without recharging them.
Most of this is in the user manual, but email me with any questions you have, I'll gladly answer them. I can help you a lot more than phone support can. I have to get some sleep though. I've got 100 LS443 lens rebuilds to do tomorrow (why do people drop my precious cameras?
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
I'm wondering because I want to take some cool scenery pics with my old film camera, using low-# ASA film, and blow up the shots. I hear all kinds of people clamoring how film is dead, but I really don't know how digital stacks up to this.
Enlargements will look bad with any but the most expensive high-resolution digital cameras. Of course the same goes for low- to average-range film cameras. Even if your film has a high resolution, the optics probably aren't good enough.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Duh, Walmart, Walgreens, Costco, Sams Club, Ritz Camera, and Wolf Camera all use Fuji digital minilabs for in-store processing and Fuji Color Processing for out of store work. What in-store network are you talking about???
Walmart and Walgreens alone account for almost 8000 stores.