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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."
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.
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.