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Kodak Lagging in Digital World
mattmcal writes "Wired reports on the Kodak's struggle to survive and Mark Glaser comments on their demise at The Industry Standard saying that Kodak failed to take digital photography seriously, or at least failed to find a way to successfully transform their business. The Photo Marketing Association reported that in 2003, digital cameras outsold analog. Kodak's stock has been hovering near its 20-year low. Finally, today, the Asian Business Times reports that billionaire Carl Icahn sold all his shares saying the current business model there doesn't work."
charging exhorbient prices for a camera dock which didnt work on different model kodak cameras when you upgraded. Compared to the others which charged a much more fairer rate for accessories which reflected their value/build quality, it comes as no surprise their marketshare is so low.
"Disposable" digital cameras would be nice if they made those instead. =)
I have an old family friend that works as a chemist as Kodak and as i recall its been hard times for a while. For ages of course Kodak's bred and butter has been film and associated chemicals. With the masses switching and of course the long standing competition there is just less and less pie to go round.
Of course on the flip side Kodak does have some good r&d, and with the future of OLEDs and such there may yet be a future.
Properly stored original film negatives last decades, whereas digital media is gone in a blink of an eye when your harddrive/memory card breaks down or you accidentally erase your media.
It's the same thing as with e-mail. I routinely print out all my e-mail correspondence (sent and received) these days because I've lost my mails too often.
The owls are not what they seem
Kodak not doing so hot in the digital camera business?
GREAT!
I hope they will discontinue their digital cameras soon so I can find a digital for cheap!
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Their flagship digital SLR (removable lens digital) ha 14 megapixels, still more than Canon or Nikon (fow now.) Sample Pics Personally, I love the Canon DSLR's though like the EOS 10D for $1500.
Film Firms Fight to Stay Afloat
By Kari L. Dean
02:00 AM Feb. 19, 2004 PT
Traditional film is moving swiftly toward antiquity, about to be shelved as quaintly as Selectric typewriter ribbon. But with more than half of amateur and professional photographers still attached to 35-mm cameras, the film industry isn't ready to pronounce the medium dead.
Instead, amid layoffs and slipping sales, film companies are struggling to keep the ailing industry alive.
Symptoms of illness abound. Two weeks ago, Eastman Kodak said it will lay off 15,000 workers employed in its core film business. A few months earlier, Kodak's chief executive unveiled, perhaps belatedly, a digitally oriented strategy to spur growth. No. 2 film manufacturer Fujifilm did the same.
Underscoring the urgency behind such announcements, last month the Photography Marketing Association, or PMA, reported that in 2003, digital cameras outsold traditional cameras for the first time. In addition, the group said film sales and processing revenue declined from the prior year.
But industry leaders aren't giving up on film. In a surprising turn this week, Kodak announced plans for new film-processing retail kiosks to sit beside their digital counterparts. Eliminating the in-about-an-hour middleman, customers can process and print their own photos from 35-mm film in about seven minutes. The kiosks also enable customers to select and print only the photos they want, in whichever sizes they want, much like a digital camera.
"Let the consumer decide what the consumer wants," said Kodak spokesman Gerard Meuchner. "If they want to use film, let them use film."
Meanwhile, in Las Vegas this week, attendees at the PMA's annual convention saw Fujifilm introduce three new 35-mm cameras alongside four new digital cameras. The company also announced that it is "defying current trends in the photography industry by announcing significant investment in film camera technology in 2004."
In truth, although the PMA projects digital-camera penetration to surpass 42 percent of households in 2004, that still leaves 58 percent without one. Kodak's Meuchner attributes the ratio to the slow acceptance of digital by the biggest picture-takers of all: moms.
"Mothers with children take the most pictures and have the least amount of time," Meuchner said. "But they aren't early adopters."
But even among this group, film consumption is on the wane. The PMA reports that mothers with young children are quickly becoming the most common owners of digital cameras. So while the lone bright spot for traditional film might have been the increasing sales of the mom-friendly disposable camera -- up by 7 percent in 2003 and projected to rise another 5 percent in 2004 -- even that light is dimming.
As shutter-happy parents go digital, an array of other film users -- health-imaging specialists, professional photographers, artists -- are left to keep the industry alive.
According to a 2003 survey by the Professional Photographers of America, or PPA, just 52 percent of the group's members used digital as their primary means of capturing images. But 86 percent of PPA members were using at least partial digital technology in creating finished photographs.
oth Kodak and Fujifilm are positioning their film-focused entries around convenience and ease of use -- the same benefits used to lure consumers to digital. That choice of strategy might be the only one left as the long-debated quality issue between film and digital becomes increasingly moot: Some professional photographers now claim that large photographic prints from 20-megapixel cameras or camera backs -- attachments that let film cameras take digital images -- are virtually indistinguishable from images captured on 35-mm film.
"Newer cameras and digital backs have the higher quality, resolution and pixel count that have allowed portrait and wedding photographers to switch over," said PPA chairman Steve Best, who says he is a completely digital
you're an old fart, aren't you?
Yes, film is pretty much doomed (except for niche applications). But Kodak has seen this coming and started preparing in time. I think among old companies that needed to transform themselves, Kodak has been doing pretty well: their digital camera lineup is decent, they have done some nifty stuff with OLED, and they still have lots of non-consumer products that probably make them money. They also were one of the first companies to actually sell digital cameras widely. Kodak isn't a hot company, but give the guys a break on this one--they haven't been blind and they have been trying to go for the new market.
What is really dragging Kodak down is their brand name--some companies have a brand name that stands for innovation, and they can put out any kind of garbage and people will think it's the latest and greatest thing. Kodak, on the other hand, can put out a really nifty digital camera and the stale odor of photographic fixing solution clings to it in the mind of buyers (yes, including my own).
A 1942 book by Joseph Schumpeter (excerpt here) provides some background info on this.
[Capitalism] incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in....
The idea is that capitalism and innovation are almost linked. By doing something better, handier, cheaper, you can make more money than the other companies. So there is an incentive to do something new.
Seen over a long time, the biggest threat for companies is not so much the competition in the existing market, but the landslide next year when something entirely new just chops down existing, nicely ordered, markets.
Digital photography is such a "creative destruction" development. Suddenly the demand for ordinary kodak camera rolls drops down. Not even the best product in it's category will sell really well when the entire market moves to different products. (Kodak is not just camera rolls, also photographic paper etc, but this is the general idea).
An historical analogy: the dreadnought was the first all-big-gun battleship, completed in 1906. Great Brittain and Germany (and others) were engaged in a huge shipbuilding arms race. A lot of "ordinary" battleships were being build (one year later they were called "pre-dreadnoughts"...). That one single first dreadnought, prototype of the modern battleship, made every single fleet on earth obsolete. Brittain and Germany effectively had to start from scratch, 0 vs. 0. (Or, more rather 1 vs. 0 :-) Talking about creative destruction...
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
Any company that is large enough and is run by economists and overpaid suits long enough will inevitably run aground. This happened to Polaroid in the 1990s and IBM in the '80s, and indeed to Apple some ten years ago. It will probably happen to Microsoft one day soon. Today, the success or failure of a company is the focus it puts on technology, and the transformation of that technology into stuff they can sell. The masters at this right now are Apple, Canon and Sony, and yes, Microsoft. Many other major companies just don't have a clue.
the printer manufacturers got their act together first... after all... when faced with the choice of the right paper and cartridge for your photos, you go for the printer manufacturer's first...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
How can someone claim that the company with the largest CCD on the market, the company that holds all the patents on the display tech that you will have on your desk in the next five years, has an ever increasing segment of the health imaging market and still sells more motion picture film (while quickly converting theatres to digital) than everyone else on the planet, combined, be lagging in the digital world.
I hear all this garbage talk from critics, but it just doesn't make any sense. The fact of the matter is, EK is doing just fine transitioning from consumer film to consumer digital sales. IIRC, they sold more consumer digital cameras than anyone else did last year. EK knew consumer film was dying before the world did, considering they invented the CCD.
Blah... Everyone says that EK is dying, but I'm working overtime this weekend... HAH!
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
All I got was this image of a Disney mouse in bondage gear whipping Britney Spears....
"1) Metal people are always on about how "hardcore" it is."
YES!
METAL KICKS ASS!
*headbangs*
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Kodak does have other non-consumer markets. I read today that my hometown hospital is converting all their old film based x-ray equipment over to Kodak digital stuff. Maybe not super profitable but they certainly aren't dead.
The one thing Kodak has, which I haven't seen from any other company, is kiosks in drug stores that will take any digital media (CompactFlash, SecureDigital, Memorystick, CDs, etc) and for about 30 cents will print out a 3x5 picture.
Solid ink (wax), and color laser printers require quite a large investment ($1,000+). Quality inkjet printers cost $100+, and ink is notoriously expensive. Not to mention problems with ink spots, clogging, etc.
So these kiosks are probably the best thing to come along for those that don't do a huge ammount of printing, but want a few digital photos in a good quality, physical form. So, that's one place where Kodak has a foothold in an up-and-comming market, and could continue to expand on it for a while (different size prints, etc). No other companies appear to be taping this potentially major market, so they've got a good position. It may not completely make up for loss of film sales, but it is a good money maker, and they should be able to live off of that for quite a long time.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Apparently Kodakchrome isn't giving those nice bright colors any more.
Isn't he the one who invented the System Icon?
Who moved my sig?
someone comes out with a concept that makes your razor blade obsolete... the same thing has happened with Kodak and Polaroid... they only made their cameras to sell film, paper and chemicals. After all, you buy one camera but buy lots of film and chemicals/paper (when you get it processed even if with a one hour lab)... they just didn't react to the new paradigm that rendered complex proprietary film and chemical processes obsolete...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Properly stored original film negatives last decades, whereas digital media is gone in a blink of an eye when your harddrive/memory card breaks down or you accidentally erase your media.
That's why we have this handy thing called *backups*, something that is impossible with analog media (you will always have generational loss).
I have documents sitting on my laptop from the mid-80s and due to this sterling innovation of lossless copying I have never in all that time suffered a serious data loss. Every time I get a new computer, anything of importance moves across, and is stored at a minimum on two seperate hard disks and optical media also.
It's also a great advantage to be able to manage all of my digital information easily, and in one place. By contrast, I have both lost and damaged many negatives from only the last few years. Through my negligence, I will grant, but this never would have happened if they had been digital.
There is nothing inherent in digital media that makes it more volatile than analog media, and indeed the fact that it is digital, and thus allows perfect copies, makes the media ultimately irrelevant.
This is all the white man's lie!
Yes, I've been trolled, but I just thought I'd let you know that listing only mainstream bullshit as examples doesn't make your argument very compelling.
Here for H12002:
"the market share leaders for these six months were Sony, Olympus and Kodak, with 24 percent, 17 percent and 13 percent, respectively."
By now Canon has surpassed Kodak (Canon is aiming for 25% marketshare in this year), thus Kodak is n.4 in the US. Their position is propably even lower in the global market.
Backups require human intervention and, knowing what lazy bastards human beings (myself included) in general are, that means that backups aren't done as often as we should or they're are not done at all.
With film you don't have to keep on doing backups.
The owls are not what they seem
Yeah, well done there. That single ad in the print version was really burning my eyes out, thanks for taking the hit for all of us. And you never know, Wired could be slashdotted.
Eastmann Kodak is dying.
They are following the footsteps of BSD and Apple.
doesn't one need like an 8MP digital camera just to get the equivalent quality of a good 35mm color film?
those high MP cameras are still expensive, and some people are satisfied with the quality of prints from those disposable cameras.
l. It's more like GBP8K, which pays for eight years of film and processing for this guy. And that's without lenses (add $5K more for some good ones covering the range from 14-16mm to 300-400mm, if you want to cover 500-600mm, add $7K more).
"Mainstream"? I appreciate the criticism, but I'm a bit confused here as to what mainstream you're refering to. Are you talking about the mundane Britney Spears mainstream, or the selfcontradicting Slayer/Dimmu Borgir/Deicide look-at-us-we're-so-underground-and-filthy-rich-fr om-our-latest-mtv-music-video mainstream? I consciously tried to avoid mentioning the nu-metal bands, like Stinking Park, because I know metal people usually don't even think of them as metal.
ps. Eat my shit, you metal-loving homo-fag.
Well, my laptop backs itself up automatically over Wifi whenever I'm at home. My home server in turn backs itself up onto an external hard drive as a scheduled task. All of this without any intervention from me. My work folders are backed up over the network when I'm at work. Any good backup system will not require user action, as you are right, users will not remember.
With film you don't have to keep on doing backups.
No, you just need to store the film carefully in a controlled environment.
Except that he can probably use his old lenses.. at least with some models (Esp. Canon).
10 Years ago, I worked in a small photo development business as a darkroom technican. Kodak film was 90% of the film we developed, but unlike most film, Kodak film was more expensive to develop because the propreitery technology used in it. Also that year our photo lab had bought a Macintosh running Mac OS 8 to help us manage our film database. Part of the special offer was a 28.8K modem connection and a Gremlin TZ digital camera. This camera could take 640x480 pictures and used a AMC (Now known as firewire) cable to connect to the camera. We were amazed for just the cost of a floppy disk ($0.50) we could take 40 high quality photos instantly!
I was so impressed that I set up a website about our photo service using pictures from my digital camera. I had over 1000 pictures on that site and it was being hosted by a Slackware Linux box with Apache 0.7 and Kernel 0.95 (Yes, the linux dark ages).
We got in contact with Gremlin Technolgies INC and we decided to sell Gremlin Digicams to our customers and for 1/10 of the price of ordianry development we offered our customers prints. The service was so popular that we made $600,000 profits in 1994.
We completly ditched kodak in 1995 and now we are a huge photobusiness that has 40 employees and makes over 1,000,000 in profits a year.
I am no longer an employee as I am now a freelance Debian on Mac technican, but it just goes to show that digital cameras can be a lucrative business if you ditch the analog monoliths!
Screenshot of My G5 desktop!
...I bought one by Kodak. Why ? To this date, I still wonder.
.....
It was one of those DC-3200 camera's(opinion definitely not mine), which provided 1 megapixel resolution with the camerasize of a polaroid.
After one first try, I brought it back when I found out that the batteries (AA) would only last 30 minutes. Since then, I regarded Kodak in the digital camera business for what it proved to be to me: crap.
My second camera was a Fuji A-101, which was a lot smaller, more power-friendly, and gave me a lot of pleasure for my money. I stayed with Fuji ever since.
Kodak indeed can't hack it in the digital age. I would say to them: put up with it, or
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
That ad up the top is really pissing me off, I'm too lazy to dump ads.osdn.com into my hosts file, and too tight to spend the money to become a subscriber. TIA!
I wonder why this was modded "troll"? "Redundant" I could see, but otherwise everything in it is quite true and well-reasoned. Was it because of your user name and sig? Or was it because you expressed a preference for Windows over Linux? (I found that hillarious, BTW, and completely agree with the sentiment. Of course, to each his own and all that.)
Underscoring the urgency behind such announcing significant investment in 2004."
In truth, although the Professional photographers, artists -- are left to keep the in-about-an-hour middleman, customers can processing revenue declined from 35-mm film cameras alongside four new film-processing retail kiosks to sit beside their own photography industry alive.
According to a 2003 survey by the photos from the photography Marketing Association, or PMA, reports that still leaves 58 percent of time," Meuchner attributes the ratio to the slow acceptance of digital cameras alongside four new digital technology in 2003 survey by the photography Marketing Association, or PPA, just 52 percent.
what makes it even funnier is that your comment would have hit +5 in seconds if you'd swapped 'linux' and 'windows' around.
Conclusion. Digital Cameras are cheaper, more effective and more fun. Analogue cameras will slowly die out, with only a few Zealots still using them.
Your assumption may be incorrect.
It is true that digital is more versatile, but film still has it's place (as other posters have noted).
What will happen is that film processors will need to come up with added value to remain competitive in a digital enviroment.
For one service, I think it is the price point. If they can include a cd rom with your regular film development for the same price as regular development, they can keep much of the masses loyal. Where I'm at, it's more expensive for this option. With bandwidth becoming cheaper, maybe they could skip the cdrom and email me a download link for the pictures and mail me the prints/negatives. That way all I would need to do is drop off the film and not worry about making the return trip to pick it up.
Also, it might be nice to take my digital media and have it printed to real film. I do not know what the quality of the kiosks are, but anything that would enhance the quality of my pictures might be worthwhile.
I also do not think that it is coincidence that many stores (Walgreens, Albertsons) have installed a one-hour (or even half-hour) film developer in their stores. These machines have gotten to the point of operating themselves (as they would need to if a clerk is pushing the buttons).
Why bother with buying a digital when you can get your pictures in the time it takes to do your shopping? This is a win-win situation. It keeps people in the store aisles and companies sell more film/film developing equipment and supplies.
And who does the shopping for the family? Click happy moms.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
November of 2000 I was in a plane flying from Tahiti to Auckland and the people sitting next to me had been there for a sales conference dealing with film. I was taking picture of the islands and coral heads we were flying over. The woman introduced herself and said she had just been to a conference and asked me how many rolls of film I used on my holiday. I told her I didn't use and and and pull the memory card out of the camera and said I it took like 300 pictures and I had six more. She wasn't happy with that answer.
I bought a Kodak DX-3215 digital camera 2 years ago. It's a peice of crap. The box claimed to take AA batteries, but they don't work properly. You need to purchase Kodak's proprietary batteries.
The outcome of this poorly thought out money raising idea alienated the customer (me) and I probably won't buy Kodak again.
But the bigger story is what's interesting; Digital cameras have made Kodak's traditional business of selling film and ancillary products/services obsolete. As technological innovation speeds up (it won't slow down) there will be more and more organisations motivated to stop the earth from spinning on it's axis, and the clever ones like the RIAA will use spineless politicians to do their dirty work, hurting social progress.
Kodak recently announced that next year it was abandoning traditional film cameras in (at least) north america in favour of digital & disposable film cameras. How can this not be taking the market seriously?
Back in '96 I joined Kodak out of school along with my girlfriend. I'm a computer engineer, she is a chemical engineer. I was offered a much better salary than me (5% more).
That tells you how they percieve that investing in their conventional imaging was more important that the new digital imaging.
I left after three years. There was a constant struggle between the conventional imaging product development teams and the digital imaging ones. The conventional imaging guys were protecting their turf instead of working together with the digital imaging guys to bring innovation. Really sad.
Besides, who wants to work in Rochester, NY?
Maybe Kodak can still thrive, if they successfully re-invent themselves as a provider of OLED technology. They've already got a number of licencees.
>> Kodak failed to take digital photography seriously, or at least failed to find a way to successfully transform
I have to figure they took it seriously; I just realized my first three digital cameras were all Kodaks, it was 1999 before Nikon had anything to match 'em. And my dad is still using my 1998 Kodak D260.
But... Kodak was never a camera company, and one of the amazing phenomena is that the digicam market is dominated by film camera makers, not by technology companies or by film companies. Sony and HP have established a foothold, but only through enormous effort. Fuji has made some progress, but it's hardly comparable to their share of film sales. Other than that, it's Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Minolta.
What killed Kodak was that they had never sold high-quality film cameras, I guess. They led the way in Digital SLR's with their early Canon-partnered products, but when Canon pulled out, it left them pretty high and dry.
Anyway, anybody who thinks that Kodak was a lumbering giant who "just didn't get it," is just reciting lame cliches. They really were one of the early leaders in digital.
Analog photography is a trinity: Camera - Film - Paper. Digital photography drops that down to two elements, the camera and the film. Kodak's main business was the film, and that's just gone. They never had a strong camera division, actually, their cameras were pretty shit. I had contact with a couple of their P&S models and went running back to my Olympus Mju. The photographers I know who are still rocking film (which is all of them, because even if they're using digital as a 35mm replacement they're still using film for medium format) have all gone to Fuji. The only thing I see people buying from Kodak is paper.
It might be a matter of perception. Canon, Nikon and Olympus got it. They realized that digital photography is all about the camera. They were the camera companies, they capitalized on that. Kodak was just making... the stuff nobody cared about. What part of digital photography finally makes its way to prints anyway? I've never had a photo printed, just share all of them among friends via the net. Hell, even when I'm taking photos on film, I develop and scan. And of course, I'm shooting on Fuji.
I know the selling point and the comparison these days seems to be megapixel as the measuring point for the quailty of the camera, much like the MHz race with CPU's. And I guess it is easy to understand, explain and a line up in a table fact sheet when comparing cameras.
But it says little about the true quality of the image and none about the optics. So what if it has 99 megapixels when the colors aren't right. How many in the mass market needs a ultra high pixel count, they are not making posters.
That's a revealing quote, and is the big reason behind Kodak's troubles for a long time, way before the advent of digital photography.
A couple of decades ago, Kodak was king of the market with its InstaMatic camera. It was widely popular, but the film cartridges it used were propietary. This meant Kodak had a lock on the market, and they made billions.
Then, 35mm SLRs became available to the masses. 35mm film had a slightly larger negative size than Kodak's film, which gave it higher quality. More importanty, 35mm was not a propietary technology so the film worked with cameras from any number of manufacturers, and the film itself could be made by anyone.
Kodak could not, or would not, adapt to this situation; and they've been looking for the next InstaMatic ever since. Next thing they tried was 110 film: smaller negative size, and still propietary. Serious amateurs, and pros, didn't go for it.
Then came several other films (like clockwork, every couple of years during the 80s there'd be some new "system" from Kodak with a new film format). The last one was, I believe, Advantix. The theme was always the same: Kodak wanted again to lock-in consumers with propietary films, and 35mm users weren't buying.
So all Kodak cameras since the InstaMatic have flopped. And thanks to open competition, they got their clocks cleaned on 35mm film by the likes of Fuji, etc.
So this is a company who still thinks it can capture significant segments of the imaging market by introducing propietary technologies. In the digital market it's obvious to the Slashdot crowd that won't work; but the point is, in conventional photo it also had not been working for a l-o-n-g time and Kodak cannot, or will not, see that. They are still looking for the next InstaMatic and that's going to kill them eventually. The company is still so huge that it will take some time for it to die off, but unless they change their whole philosophy, they'll be gone.
I can't believe noone has mentined this. I don't think this is a matter so much of Kodak's failure as it is the success of Canon. In fact, despite the new huge market, all companies are having trouble competing with Canon; they have dominated the entire field, particularly in the upper end DSLR field. As was stated earlier, Kodak has primarily a film company, so it has had to scramble (due to the shrinking of the film market) to compete with other companies that were already in the business of making cameras.
-ashot
Could be that Icahn misjudged the potential of Kodak and its managers after all. There's knowledge in that company that goes beyond analogue- and digital photography and it isn't bad in digital either. He knows it,they know it. To split the company and sell off the parts is one way to do it. There are other ways. If Icahn needs an even lower stock price for his plans he sells and gives an interview (and nobody has written when and what he actually bought). Kodak will survive this A/D conversion. Probably in a better shape than with Icahn.
Ernst
Seriously though, that case that you make of finding someone else's media is the one case where you have a point for analog - you could call it the 'archaeologist case'. With many forms of digital media, *someone* has to care enough to keep the systems going to preserve the information. While this isn't a problem if it is your own stuff, I grant that it is a problem after you are gone.
Visit the Kodak web site to see 14 megapixel digital images. The detail is amazing. You can see tiny white hairs on the faces of the models.
Presumably, in 5 years or so, cameras with this resolution will be inexpensive.
They just couldn't figure out who to sue.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
In Sweden, Kodak and FotoQuick have a service where you pay 9usd a month and they will give you 25 prints + a CD each month. The camera, a 2mpixel Kodak is free.... /b
Kodak cameras are associated with low-end crap. I owned a Kodak Retina once - it was such a well-crafted instrument to hold and to use.
Their new digital cameras are plastic crap. They are throwing away their reputation that was established through decades.
Maybe this is not unique to Kodak. Alot of companies seem to be operating with the idea that sourcing out supplies of cheaply manufactured items from Malaysia or Taiwan is the way to go. I remember when Timex clocks used to be associated with very good build quality. The last thing I got that had the name "Timex" on it was an over-priced piece of plastic junk sold at Target. Yeah, the form-factor looked sleek (which is why I bought it), but it was a piece of crap and I will never, ever buy anything with "Timex" on it again.
Maybe what Kodak should do to save its reputation is to completely stop making/selling low-end plastic crap for a few years, and only sell one or two high-end models that are exceptional quality. Once consumer trust is broken it is hard to restore.
For more on this camera, there's an exhaustive review at Digital Photography Review.
If you have a collection of Nikon lenses, wait for the Nikon D70, which is on the edge of being rolled out. It will be in the same price range.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
I'm a former Kodak employee. Kodak will be facing hard times for a number of years, but I think what people forget is that most of the bad press they are getting is because they cut their divident by 3/4 so they can reinvent themselves. All of the people who owned stock are incredibly pissed, and every analyst will never give a positive review of a company who does this, probably because they are heavily into that stock.
Kodak will probably turn it around, because 5 years too late they realized what digital will mean. Executives at Kodak were so far behind that all employees were laughing when they were still talking about film not going away.
That said, Kodak is finally realizing that it needs to turn things around. The company will be much different in 5 years, but they are so far behind with their organizational structure drastic measures need to be taken.
Anyway, so what does Kodak do when it is trying to evolve into a technology services company rather than a manufacturing company? It lays off hundreds of young, agressive, future-minded people like me who are steeped in technology and keeps the slew of white-haired oldsters incapable of realizing what real change is about.
So the old time corporate culture of the good old boy's club still exists, and the company won't move on until the morons at the top realize this. Dan Carp (CEO), you better get your crap together.
They have patented CMOS technologies that are used in MANY digital cameras from different companies.
I wouldn't say they are finished. Their most recent cameras are pretty nice quality.
Cheap photo printers.
How about a $150 with $30 color cartriages?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Isn't Icahn the "merger mogul" that left a lot of US airlines as flaming wrecks?
To summarize, the Kodak camera has greater resolving power than any other current 35mm digital SLR. It also has greater dynamic range and lower noise than most. The downside is that you have to know how to work with the camera and it is very slow. Its noise performance is actually better than the acclaimed Canon 1Ds.
Kodak has just released an updated version of this camera with significicantly improved speed. It's now a full stop faster than the 1Ds yet with better dynamic range and lower noise. It is useful beyond ISO 400 so it's no longer limited to the studio like many felt it used to be. Far from being the crappy camera the parent suggests it is, in many ways the new SLR/n is superior to the Canon 1Ds at close to half the street price.
Canon is the Apple of the digital camera world. Pretty white paint, red rings, clever nicknames and a nuturing of a belief system that suggests that everything they do is better than anything anyone else does. Sound familiar? Difference is that Canon really is as good as their competitors, just not better.
The billionaire guy that pulled his stock. And what was that about anyway? The article said that he bought it low and sold it high. He then made some inflammatory remarks (that were played down b/c it was an asian paper) about Kodak and that was the end of it. So what? The share price is dramatically up, and Kodak has chosen a direction. What does it matter?
The story doesn't (read: shouldn't) have a damn thing to do with *that* guy.
I bought a cheap Polaroid digital camera just to see if I would use one. This was about 6 years ago. I used it a lot of documenting things at work (wiring closets, server locations, wire runs in walls before they were finished so you knew where they are and the like). I have since bought a slightly better one, again, not very expensive, but there are a lot of things I can't use it for. So I find myself wandering around with my Pentax 35mm and all it's lenses and adapters, as well as the digital camera and a bunch of batteries. The digital just is not very good at indoor distance shots, such as weddings or museums. And I can't adapt it to my telescope like my 35mm, or take good distance shots as the optics just are not as good as the 35mm ones I have yet. It's good for small room shots, and close by outdoor pictures, and I use it much more than the 35mm for those situations, as it's simply more convienent. Someday, I hope Pentax (or some other company) will make a digital camera body that allows me to use my existing Pentax lenses, filters, and assorted adapters. Nikon already has this exact item (around $1500 USD if I recall) that allows you to use all your existing 35mm optics on digital format. Well worth the $1500 if the photographer has a considerable investment in his 35mm gear. When this arrives more for the masses allowing other brands to do the same, then digital camera will be the king of my home. I do agree, digital cameras are very convienent (as long as you like rechargable AA's), and I can easily share pictures with any family member with a computer and a ISP, or simply mail a CD. SillyKing
sounds believable
> Analog photography is a trinity: Camera - Film - Paper. Digital photography drops that down to two elements, the camera and the film.
> It might be a matter of perception. Canon, Nikon and Olympus got it. They realized that digital photography is all about the camera.
Well, there's a third element that I take into consideration (you may care less if you're in the tourist point-and-shoot set, or maybe not) which is the optics. Optics are in some way keeping me in film. Like you, I shoot in film and then scan a lot of stuff in to work with.
I have a (for me) significant investment in lenses. No matter how fine your film grain, no matter how many MPixels, you're still limited by the quality of your lens. The thought of pitching all that hardware is, for me, painful. I'm waiting for the D-100 body to come down in price enough for me to use the lenses I already have. Quality optics are not cheap, and whatever camera
I have, I will want the ability to make decently large prints. 8x10 is a minimum, I'd prefer 11x14 or larger. I realize most people want a 5x7 that they can crop and put in a scrapbook, and that's where most of the market is going, but I'm going to be realistic about where I am, as well.
Producing prints in analog is expensive. A scanner that can do several thousand dpi is cheaper and more versatile than a good quality enlarger. I can use the scanner for other things, and it takes up a lot less space. (Not to mention, I can have sunlight in my office when I use the gimp!) I still have to use a darkroom to get bigger prints, although I drool at the larger inkjets every time I go to Microcenter.
With the B&W market, Kodak still has a good solid foot in the door. And B&W will probably be the last up against the wall for the digital revolution. IMO, It's hard to beat their TMAX either at 400 or 3200. I shoot mostly Kodak B&W. It's financially tractable for me to process B&W in my basement, walk the negatives over, and scan them. That will give me an outlet till I save up for the digital that talks to my already existing hardware.
> What part of digital photography finally makes its way to prints anyway? I've never had a photo printed, just share all of them among friends via the net.
I like having the odd print hanging up around the house, or to give hardcopy to $SIBLING to display. We're not quite to the point where we can all have fancy LCD frames in the living room alternating between displaying Magritte paintings and my best digital prints. (:
> Hell, even when I'm taking photos on film, I develop and scan. And of course, I'm shooting on Fuji.
For color, I also shoot Fujifilm, but Kodak has already lost most color customers to digital anyway. They can't be counting on color film at this point for much of anything. They've brought out that C-41 B&W film to try and get people to buy film, but I won't use it. It's the same price as color, and has the same orange tinting to the negatives as color film, an added pain when I'm scanning them in. I'd be really suprised if it gets them anywhere.
"Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull some intelligence out of the internet!" "Awwww, that trick never works!"
Kodak is a superb innovator and without them the market cannot survive, it isn't competition that is killing them or market changes, its PIRACY!
People all over the net are trading in online photos that should be printed off using Kodak processes, these criminals are killing the market which everybody benefits from. Since people are ignoring kodak and seeing it as a fight against the fat cats and big business, kodak will now be pressured to speak to their concerned congressmen and pass laws prohibiting online photo swapping software. Kazaa is small fry compared to all those iPhoto users and the illegal photo software that is bundled with a competitors digital camera. Its circumventing the whole photo process and thats probably breaking some clause in the DMCA. I implore online users to stop this and make it worse for everyone, use Kodak's stuff otherwise there won't be any new talent or new products from this fine standing company.
Just remember, every email you send with an attached image is a kill and an illegal act of photo distribution
Jonathanjk.com
Lots of reasons. Not going to the store at all. Being able to do your own prints without any intermediate materials. Print exactly, and only, what you want. Superior direct-to-digital image quality. Never having to pay for film or developing. Ease of travel. What else is there?
Film still rules for ultimate image quality especially in larger formats. You aren't going to successfully argue that it's more convenient than digital, though. Most people have no desire for slides or negatives.
Oh the Irony. CD-R(W)s are a joke. I have had Plextor CD-Rs become unreadable in a couple of years they spent in a dark closet in my house. I suspect DVD-+R(W)s are even worse due to the higher data density. Thats Kodak makes it's Ultima line of CD-R's for. When processed and stored correctly, Kodak Ultima discs have "[A 95% chance of] 95% of properly recorded discs stored at the recommended dark storage condition (25C, 40% RH) will have a lifetime of greater than217 years ."
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Back in late 1991, I was working for a now-defunct Mac reseller, and I specialized in imaging sales/support. At that time, digital cameras were something everyone said were coming, but hadn't hit the market yet (with a few extremely high-end exceptions). I spoke on the state of the market at an ASMP regional meeting that fall about it, and a guy from Kodak was there. He brought their (then) brand-new Kodak DCS for us to see. It used a Nikon 8008 body with a digital back, attached by cable to a box with the hard drive, battery, and all the electronics. It cost around $10k and was just hitting the market then.
Later, in 1992, I went to work for an ad agency. We did a lot of food and product photography, and the cost/time lost to conventional film was really difficult. The nearest pro lab was about 10 miles up the highway, so we had a minimum of 2-3 hours for turnaround.
Then Kodak came out with the DCS 200 - all the features of the DCS in a single device - no tether. Sure, it was kind of flakey - the SCSI connection was prone to problems, the color balancing wasn't great, and the Photoshop plugin was awful, but I bought one. It cost nearly $10k as well.
Over the next year or so, we bought four more. And the speed difference helped us get so much business that all those cameras were occupied 10+ hours per day. We exploded in size and revenue, driven by what digital cameras could do even then. Later, we bought a couple of Leaf medium-format models for high-end work, but the Kodaks were the bread and butter of the company even a couple of years ago - years after I left.
The company that built those cameras - if you didn't catch it before, was Kodak. They saw the promise of digital photography in the media and pro markets way ahead of virtually everyone. You still see tons of their pro gear at any sporting or news event. The thing that Kodak is struggling with is the consumer market transition, but I think everyone in the film business is struggling with it as well. It's happening much faster than most people (myself included) ever expected.
I certainly wouldn't bet against Kodak succeeding, though. They may not look like quite the same company when it's over, but they'll still probably be the same relative to the new market that they were in the old one. In the digital world, you still need to print and archive your work, and that's where a lot of the profit can lie. There's also still a film market out there that can be milked for years to come, and a graphic arts business that they can keep servicing, too.
Of course, I believe anything that the Standard has to say. Didn't they go out of business a while back, too?
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
The biggest thing that Kodak has going for it right now is the name "Kodak." It's synonymous with photography. Everyone knows what a "Kodak moment" is. There's no such thing as a "Fuji moment" or an "Olympus moment."
That said, Kodak hasn't leveraged their name very well. They were slow to produce an inkjet paper for photos. "Printed on Kodak paper" has long been a focus of their advertising as a source of quality. Getting a slice of the home consumables market should've been a no-brainer, but I think they waited too long on that one.
What's worse is that they waited way too long to get into the digital "film" market. It was just last month that I first saw a Kodak-branded memory card for sale at a local drugstore. That should've been a total no-brainer. For anyone over the age of 40, given a choice between a brand you'd never heard of, and Kodak... which memory card would you buy?
Heck, they let Lexar get away with trademark dilution. For a while now, Lexar has been selling their memory cards in Kodak-yellow packages that are about the same size and shape as a Kodak retail film box. It confused me a little when I first saw it... a less technically-astute and observant person might easily think it was a Kodak product.
Others have commented on Kodak's "Gillette model" business plan, making money on the consumables. There's still money in digital consumables. Kodak's brand name should give them a huge chunk of the market, if they don't muff it up. So far, they've conceded that market by default, I think...
A number of years ago, I thought about investing in Kodak - I decided not to, because they were cutting their R&D as a cost-saving measure. What did they expect?
when you can wash the cold dead smell of Dektol from my hands.
How can this be a troll? Its a parody of whats happening in the music industry, god can some mods get a fucking clue, you are supposed to PROMOTE comments which means you have to read them?
I'm busy restoring color photos from the 1970s. Believe me, film is volatile too.
Sure, properly stored film can last decades. Properly storing color film, however, is not a trivial problem. Why do you think movies like Spartacus and Vertigo have to go through expensive digital restoration?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I work for Kodak, so just to be safe I'll post as an AC:)
The #1 thing to remember is that Kodak is a film company. That's the history, that's the culture, that's the only way they know how to operate.
They suffer from the same problem as other large companies, in that it has so much inertia that it's nearly impossible to change direction quickly enough before crashing into the rocks.
Kodak is based in a relatively small city (Rochester, NY), that has very few other options for employment. Unfortunately, the very people responsible for changes have been with the company for so long that they don't know any other way of doing things, and they know they don't really have anywhere else to go if they lose their job. It makes people scared to get noticed, so people tend to make small, safe changes that don't rock the boat too much.
I've sat in on meetings where upper management tells us that we need to take risks, try new ideas, look at things from a different angle. But, off-line, if you actually suggest something different from the status quo, "it's not the way we do things".
So, you end up seeing changes in the company that don't really change things. Stop selling film cameras in the US, but continue elsewhere. Move manufacturing to cheaper locations, but keep making film. Acknowledge that digital cameras exist, but try to "develop" the pictures in drug-store kiosks. And Kodak _has_ pretty good engineering, but unless the idea helps the film business, it's quietly ignored.
It's one of the reasons that I'm ashtonished by IBM; they transformed from a product company to a services company. They're happy to sell you a server, but would prefer to manage someone else's. They'll sell you network equipment, but would rather manage your network. They'll almost give you Lotus Notes, so long as they can manage the databases and mail accounts.
So, while I'm hoping that Kodak will pull through, I don't see them making the kinds of changes necessary to do so.
Remember, photographers need that income generated by you using their artwork. Everytime you take your own picture you're effectively robing from another professional film photographer who could have taken that shot for you and charged you for it.
P2P networks are notorious for allowing pictures to be traded illegally. When you use your digital camera to take a picture of a tall building you're commiting piracy. Since that angle has surely been photographed by someone else in the past you are killing their lively hood.
Expect new laws to be passed where taking a digital picture of a building is a $280,000 fine. That one gig flash card you're toting around with pictures of your feet could cost you millions of dollars in fines to the FIAA.
Taxi drivers will be fined for having pictures of their children on the dashboard - that's an unauthorized broadcast! Twelve year-old girls that take pictures of themselves dressing up like whatever pop idol they like can be sued for every piece of candy they get until they're 34. Grandmothers with pictures of their grandchildren!
I advise everyone to go pull out their film cameras and take some pictures. If the FIAA feels threatened they'll sue everybody. If they FIAA falls apart then there will be no more pictures in the world.
Expect Apple to open up an iSee store selling DRM'd pictures (only one view per day).
The Kodak DC20 was my first digital camera.
:-( )
Oddball (and small) max resolution (493 * 373), other artifacting issues, no preview or display screen, only like 8 pictures at 'high' resolution (16 at 320*240), no flash...
Still, it had some great qualities: tiny, durable, lightweight, battery lasted forever. It was the camera of choice for certain model rocket hobbyists I think. Not til Canon started making small cameras was there something smaller, and that's like a tiny little brick. (There are some interesting "novelty" microcameras out now though, and some even make tiny movies!)
It took some ok pictures...every gallery above the double line, though some of those were from its DC25 brother, which added a flash and viewscreen (no digital viewfinder though) and doubled the memory at the cost of size, weight, and battery life...overall less cool.
Oh, and it came with Kai's Power Goo, which was hella fun. (Too bad that software doesn't work w/ recent versions of Windows
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I've seen lenses superior to Kodak's in Cracker Jack boxes.
As a digital camera salesman, I imagine I contribute to their bad imagine, but then again, I would feel remorse recommending any of their digital products to my customers...
I tried giving them a chance last year by attending their special Digital Media Training last year in Montreal, and after 3 hours of talk all I'd learned was that digital Kodak technology still didn't come anywhere near film quality (both for video and photography).
WTG Kodak.
Sure, but not everybody wants to deal with a computer either, or a camera that needs its batteries replaced every week. Many digitals don't have the "click" feel you get with a shutter, and you have to wait for it to take a picture. Only higher end digitals can compete with cheap 35mm film detail.
People are used to dealing with film and photographs. They already know what it's all about. They fit in scrapbooks and albums without a hassle. It's easy to grab an all-in-one disposable at the store and start clicking away and get decent pictures in return. You don't have to hassle with loading the film or batteries. If it gets destroyed, it's not a big deal, you just buy another. They fit in the pocket real easy. I could go on.
Sure it's nice not having to buy film. Digitals are no utopia either. You still have a battery expense/hassle. Rechargables still need recharging all the time. You still have to buy digital media that you have to find a way to download somewhere every so often. There is still doubt about what the camera does when it squishes down the pictures to fit the media. Your going to be afraid of your camera shorting out when rain shows up.
I was just looking at the pictures taken by large format cameras.
Film is not going away anytime soon.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
This anouncement came just at the begining of the digital photography era and seemed like a promise that digital would never reach the level of film.
I never heard about that again (nor have I the time to google for it now). Note that it would mean a change in the 2 main processing systems (C-41 and E-6).
More on topic, I think Kodak's spirit of innovation has been long dead. They killed their Kodachrmoe line without replacing it with quality E6 films -> Fuji took over. Every time I've found an equivalent film from another company (usually Fuji), the other has proved better. Instead of that, they started the Adventix/APS customer ripoff, starting a completely incompatible line of film/cameras (together with many other companies) claiming that it was 'better' while it was indeed half the quality at double the price.
Also their software is garbage (have you honestly ever used a Kodak software for more than 2 minutes without looking for a better solution ?).
I also briefly worked in quality control at a Kodak film production plant and, well... Let's skip it.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The real trouble isn't even the bad quality of the pictures. The thingy that spells trouble for Kodak is the arrogance of their shoddy service. Called them about ten times to get things done; sent more than 5 mails. No solution in sight. I'm not talking about Linux; I'm talking about Windows as drain of the photos. After about two months I simply stopped talking to them after they had insisted for a few times we sent our PC to an accredited dealer and have the harddisk wiped and Windows re-installed from scratch. Even *after* it had been reinstalled their sh..... software wouldn't work and they still kept saying we should use another dealer, another re-install, another software. When I wanted to download the latest software I couldn't; not even with IE. If they could somehow give me access via ftp. They couldn't.
Not a single effort from their side to make us happy and satisfied customers. Only arrogance. *That's* what is going to spell trouble for them.
Mod me down as troll. Give me bad karma. But what I'm writing is true.
Kodak has had bolt on cameras for existing slrs from canon and nikon. The problem was they were marketed at press pros and very very expensive. I think they're at a read disadvantage against their competetors because they don't make the camera themselves.
But these aren't just scans, they're high resolution scans, color-corrected, in five different sizes. Sure there's the film, developing, and CD costs, but unless one is taking an enormous number of shots they're still a good bang-for-the-buck deal for the average special-event snapper.
Not only does one get a handy digital copy, certainly far better then all but the latest prosumer digital camera models can produce, but also one needn't invest into a new camera but continue to use one's tried, true, and relatively cheap equipment already out there.
Kodak even managed to get their PhotoCD technology put into about every CD reading device out there. Almost every PC CDROM supports PhotoCD. Many DVD players support PhotoCD. Numerous Kodak development shops can process the film and give you a CD in an hour. Even most major photo software can read a Kodak PhotoCD natively.
So where'd the blow it? They could have shared the digital photography revolution. Kept selling film for quality and offered digital prints for versatility. But truth be told Kodak had no clue how to counter the sexy new digital cameras.
Instead of trying to sell their system's versatility they offered it as a poor alternative. Instead of bringing in new customers lie digital cameras were they kept selling to their shrinking existing base of customers. Instead of doing a massive give-away promotion to jumpstart the whole thing they've steadfastly clung to their high prices.
They took their eye off the consumables business and instead tried to cash in too early on the PhotoCD tech, in the process losing both markets. They've even abandoned third parties being able to make PhotoCDs any more - their last software product went off the market years ago and there's no legitimate source left.
With folks scurrying around buying software to make VCD slideshows on often buggy players it's ironic that much of the needed tech is already working in their drives. Just the company owning it won't sell tools to use it.
Kodak's not going under, at least not soon. Polaroid's instant film market was pretty much decimated, that and years of dreadful mismanagement did them in. (To whomever now works for the last batch of Polaroid execs - SELL & RUN!) Kodak still has a viable business. Indeed they're even transitioning over pretty well. But they could have had a much easier time of it and owned a lot more of it if they'd have played their cards right.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
If kodak film is to survive, it should just forget 35mm film as newer DSLRs and some P&S now pretty much kick 35mm's butt. DSLRs can consistently print at 8x10 (if all conditions are good, up to 11x14) and we all know how much more convenient and flexible they are over film. And no, interpolation for larger prints (over 11x14) doesn't count as interpolation (sharpness) != detail.
However, medium format film and cameras, such as Fuji Velvia can still kick digital's butt all over the place in terms of resolution and color gamut. I've bought a used Mamiya 645 for $400, shot with Velvia, massively crop it (try that with digital) and scan with a $200 Epson 3170, and print on a cheap Epson 820(!), and amazed Canon 10D and digital P&S owners with deep color and sharpness they haven't seen on their cameras. I can then take the same neg and have it drum scanned and printed on a Durst or Chromaria up to 30x40. All for a package (camera/3170 scanner) less than a Canon 300D.
For digital to catch MF, it's going to take a while as MF digital backs require a 2nd mortgage to purchase for 22-40 Mpixels. Even a Canon 1Ds is what, $8000? Meanwhile, I can scan film Velvia at 6000x5000 pixels with no loss in detail for less than $1000.
That's where Kodak should be heading and forget the low end, it's gone.
The Canon Digital Rebel can use every single Canon lens made since 1987. The DRebel will work just fine with everything from the cheap-but-essential 50mm/1.8 to the 1200mm L lens. Also, Tamron and Sigma both have excellent, extensive lineups of EOS compatible lenses.
And as far as Nikon being cheaper, what are you smoking? Nikon lenses are just as good as Canon, and just about the same prices, on average. If you want top-of-the-line, you'll pay top dollar.
(Slightly offtopic, but the 50mm/1.8 makes an awesome portrait lens on a digital body. All you Canon DRebel or Nikon D70 owners new to SLR photography, consider picking one up. They're less than a hundred bucks, and have no zoom, but they work in *really* low light without a flash just fine. You won't be disappointed.)
Rather than make their own camera, maybe Kodak can buy and re-label another vendor camera and remarket here in the US.
Years ago, my yearly expense in film and processing is around 5K to 10K a year. Now, my film and processing probably no more than $200. Mostly family pictures. The rest I shoot and use a high quality DSLR camera. Of course, now the other expense is in ink, printer and photo quality paper. I havent add up that cost yet.
I still lug around a large film camera, so far no digital camera can come close to my large film format.
I bought one of Kodak's earlier digital models. The damned thing has no lens cap. A lens cap was something like $25 extra. These little things tend to piss off consumers. I didn't want to fork over $25 for a little plastic cap, but I get paranoid of the lense being exposed all the time. If I pay the 25, I feel like I am rewarding greedball jerks. (Maybe I'll check ebay or something instead.)
Table-ized A.I.
alt.binaries is a great place to store stuff, and hey, if you can't find your pictures, your sure to find something you like.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It is now the Number 2 seller of digital cameras...
...gained eight points of market share to become the No. 2 shipper of digital cameras in the U.S. in the quarter with 20%, trailing Japan's Sony Corp. (SNE) at 22%. "
check cnn money on feb 17th
"
The company is profitable paying a 1.7% dividend..
with a 30 P/E ratio not great but certainly not evidence of bad management
The goofball who posted the article seriously misquoted in what I can only call sloppy journalism.
Kodak was at its 20 year low IN SEPTEMBER, now its up 20% over its low. Carl Icahn did not bail out, he CASHED OUT.
Kodak digital cameras are not for pros thats not who they are marketing to. However many people have 35mm cameras, when they go into the store.
Yes
Kodak has trouble with its transition, but a 20% market share in digital cameras with solid growth aint a bad place to be.
There's a tradeoff between writing speed and lifetime. The archival blanks use a different dye and slower writing speeds. (The control information for this is on the blank, and standard CD-R drives read it before writing.)
Good quality NiMH rechargables can give the photographer anywhere from 200 to 300 shots in the average 2-AA point-and-shoot digital (depending on the exact model). That's the equivalent of 8 to 12 rolls of 24-exp film. An average P&S 35mm uses a 123 or CR2 lithium battery that only lasts for around 15-20 rolls. Again, it depends on the exact model. (I can provide data on request, I just don't want to make this stupid post any lengthier than it already is.) For SLRs, any serious amateur or pro will be using a AA battery grip anyway.
Not many people who use only a P&S 35mm will shoot 20 rolls of film in a year, let alone a week. As long as the P&S digital customer is told up front before buying that they'll need rechargables, they don't mind the extra hassle. And this is coming from someone who sells everything from Canon Owls to Nikon N100/F100's on a daily basis, so I know my facts here.
For printing, almost any lab these days can have digital photos printed at the same cost as 35mm on the same quality paper. Since one can choose which photos ahead of time to print, unpleasant surprises are a thing of the past. I have several regular customers who don't know the first thing about computer, much less own one, but they still love their digital cameras.
As for digital media, one can get a 256MB card in pretty much any format (CF, XD, SD, MS) for less than a hundred bucks these days. And it will last for years. Considering the cost of buying and developing a decent roll of film at an average lab, the card pays for itself after about 10 rolls.
I will concede the point on ultimate image quality being better with film at the moment. Even my lowly Canon Rebel 2000 loaded with Portra 160NC will beat pretty much any sub-$500 digital, and most sub-$1000 digitals. At the moment. Wait a few years, and then you'll see digital SLRs beating the crap out of film SLRs, and offering comparable results in medium format.
Large format will take longer to match, of course. But large format is a rather tiny market now, with the excellent 35mm and 120/220 films out there having replaced most large format uses.
(I hope this post made sense, my coffee hasn't kicked in yet.)
80% skill, 20% luck. It's lucky to be in the right place at the right time, but it takes training, dedication, and reaction time to get, compose, and fire off that frame.
Every now and then you can get lucky, but knowing what to do with that luck to make successful images takes skill.
The DC280-times were great. I had one, it was hands down the easiest and best color reproduction of cameras in its class.
The problem with Kodak is that they went to this stupid cheaper-parts and ease-of-use while trashing their quality aspect. I moved on and recently baught a 5MB Nikon Coolpix 5700 instead. Kodak really doesn't have a great presence in prosumer anymore.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
They laid me off back in November. A year before, I was told I 'had' to go to this area, that (this) individual wouldn't extend any other offers to me unless I went to that area and worked. Saved the company 1 million dollars in 1 year, invented some rather interesting ops... ... and the thanks is a pink slip.
The biggest problem with Kodak is they have two sets of managers. The have the ones in manufacturing that have been 'cleaning shop' with peoples lives and throwing them out to the street on a yearly basis for so long that there is not much of a spark left.
The other set of managers work in research and fight to protect those that are 'worthless' because their loss would diminish their empire.
Sadly most of what goes on is all power plays. Politics have dominated the research for kodak's future- every technology (oled, inkjet, IT, even film) has become a political manuvering game- the one with the biggest empire left standing apparently 'wins'.
And it will cost the company dearly.
Kodak hasn't laid off any of it's management team over the last bunch of announcements- in fact, every layoff is accompanied by several 'senior vice presidents' being promoted. The system is so top heavy that nearly any savings that one may make for productivity is immiedately sapped to pay for managers.
But I digress.
The company is ill- and in several key technologies they ahve the wrong people. And those wrong people have already extended their protection to their 'friends', thus further dimming any hopes of economic recovery for one of the greatest cultural icons of this century.
I used to work in the hybrid lab- if you have silver capture on film and silver output, but stick a computer in the middle you can produce some incredible photographs.
:)
The only camera I've seen surpass film is the Eos 1Ds. Of course, when that comes down to 2K, I'll buy it... bur right now it's still hovering around $7K. So I've a little life left in my camera
I paid $1350 for it. That would have bought A LOT of film and processing. But this $1.35K pales in comparison to my spending on lenses. For some reason Bayer based digicams need VERY good lenses to render good pictures. Foveon-based cameras don't seem as sensitive to this.
When will Kodak lobby for a tax on Compact Flash/MMC/Memory Stick mediums like the music industry has (successfully) managed to get themselves on harddrives, CD-Rs, and DVD-Rs?
I mean, every day they are being circumvented by scanners and email where consumers should be taking the original negatives or photos to have copied with true Kodak equipment.
My Fuji A101 was bought right after I ditched my DC3200 (within a week), and it was definitely not a power-hog.
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If you've been under a rock, they print out pictures (snapshot size to HUGE poster size) and do photo albums for Free.
About as involved in digital photography as you can get.
Sure it makes sense to you and me as a whole, but my point is that there is consumer reluctance in the marketplace. And film suppliers will find ways to help keep it that way.
My mother is tied to the ritual of using a film camera and getting film developed at the supermarket. She knows what she can do with a film camera and what she can expect from it.
She is fully aware of digital cameras. But she is not going to buy one herself. I will have to buy it for her and upgrade her computer to deal with the downloaded images. She might like the idea of not having the film expense. But I bet I have to plug it in and download the media to the computer for her. Sure it sounds stupid to you and me, but she is a senior citizen
To show you where she is at, I installed a CD writer on her computer.
She doen't know how/want to use it. Every once in a while she'll have me come over to back up files for her.
Sure she could get a mac blah blah blah. But she isn't going to do that either. Why spend the money when she gets everything done with office that she already has and knows how to use (sound familar?). She doesn't wan't to spend the money to upgrade anyway. I give her "upgrades" as gifts (I think she receives it the same way kids receive "clothes" at christmas).
People are stuck in their ways. There are millions like her.
Film is still not going away anytime soon.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I don't know what percentage of Kodak business professional motion picture film is, but that certainly isn't dying. And development continues.
Their latest Vision 2 negatives are a huge improvement over previous material.
In the professional field, they also seem to well understand how to marry chemical and digital. Many years ago, they introduced the Cineon to scan motion picture negative, manipulate the pictures, and output back to film. It is still the reference, and such "digital intermediates" in the film process are becoming the norm.
Of course, this is me speaking. We out here in Rochester NY (home of kodak) have known this fFor ages. downsize after downsize, kodak pulls fFarther and fFarther away fFrom a profit margin. It's common knowledge, they have officially missed the boat.
They really hit rock bottom when the CEO outright scolded the entire city, saying we cannot continue to depend on kodak as a source of employment and regional growth. Like, shame on us fFor counting on the biggest industry in town.
Word on the street is: if you are going to move to Rochester, Don't.
> But... Kodak was never a camera company
Dude, Kodak's been around for over 100 years. I think if you review Kodak's history, you'll find that Kodak was THE camera company for the better part of the last 100 years.
> they had never sold high-quality film cameras
Get a clue.
I was at PMA this year and attended a "visionaries panel" where very high level technical people on a panel discussed the future of the industry - one of them was the guy who led Kodak's choice to pronounce the shift to digital.
He did actually state that within a few years we should look for printers from Kodak. In a way it makes some sense, as in the past they have dominated output of images through photolab equipment and such - who knows if they will produce inkjets or other printing technologies even more compelling. But they are headed there.
Now, you are right that it's a tough market - I just got an Epson R800 and that has some pretty impressive output, including kind of a glaze to finish pictures, for not much money. Good luck to them I say as I hold no ill will towards Kodak.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I was at PMA this year (Photo Marketing Association, like Comdex or CES for imaging) and this year it was all about kiosks from everyone.
At a "Visionaries panel" discussion with heads of major companies (like Kodak and Epson and Sony) all agreed that the goal would be to get people to print out images (A goal I'm not sure I agree with, but they were all headed that way). On the PMA tradeshow floor there were kiosks everywhere - in the panel they even spoke of bluetooth kiosks that you could print from cellphones with cameras.
So they face a large amount of competition, but they have a good name in this space and I think they'll do well as long as Kodak kiosks keep up with competition.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can buy an M42 adaptor for the SA mount, that lets you use Pentax screw-mount lenses with the SD9 (and SD-10). Looking at the page you'll also note the promise of using Canon lenses via adaptor.
The downside is that you have to use the Pentax lenses in manual mode.
The nice thing is that since the release of the SD10 (which offers much better high-ISO support - 1600 instead of the top range of 400 on the SD9) the SD9 bodies have gotten pretty cheap (new body plus lens kit for under $1G, body alone probably much cheaper on eBay).
I have an SD9 and think it's a great camera that can generate amazing images. Take a look at sample images on Pbase.com (many posted full size) and you can really see impressive results.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley