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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.
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
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
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
Or their ProSumer version the DigitalRebel (EOS 300D) for (drumroll) ~$900.
Uses all the Canon Lenses and flashes, just some features 'dumbed down' slightly.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
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.
It does have a huge amount of pixels but it's still a crappy camera compared to the others. Check out those photographic tests... just terrible. Such horrible noise. I LOVE canon DSLR's (and canon camera's in general but then again my first camera was a Canon Powershot A20 and I've had 2 more cameras since then) and I hate kodak digital cameras so much, my aunt had one it was like $600 with some useless crap the guy at best buy tricked my uncle into buying. The picture quality was TERRIBLE, and the camera was dropped once from a VERY LOW height (one of her kids dropped it when taking a picture) and it never worked properly again (all the pictures come out horribly overexposed, and blurry too). My canon Powershot A20 was dropped onto a concrete train station ledge, bounced off, fell 6' and landed in some rocks. Did it still work? YES! And I'm not even exagerating the fall, I swear I thought that camera was toast (the lens was out too, I'm so lucky it didn't crack.) Sure the body had a few scratches (minor really) but the LCD screen was fine, the picture quality was unchanged and the camera still functioned properly.
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.
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).
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.
...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
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.
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.
yup, i have a friend with a 29 picture digital camera that used to be disposable but is now... just a digital camera. no view screen, but if you're comparing it to film that's not a problem anyway. somehow this makes me think of DRM schemes. I don't know why, but I can't shake the feeling that we're going to see subscription-based digital cameras, and 99 cent pictures. ...yes yes I know it won't happen, but I can dream about terrible business ideas, can't I?
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
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
Kodak seems to target the consumer/non-professional market to a higher degree than the others named. So cheaper product and quality is more merited. Most people don't need an 8 megapixel SLR to take pics of the kids or automated image splicing, and wouldn't know what to do with it if they did have one.
This does not excuse silly products like trying to pass off useless base station for disproportionate price compared to cheap low-end digicam. IMO the only reason they made base station sales was because of it being rather unclear that the part was completely unnecessary. When I bought a Kodak a year or so ago (again, it was cheap) the box did not clearly state that it could connect using a standard USB cable and that power was up to 2xAA batteries. The labeling (and the salesperson's knowledge, though you can't blame that entirely on Kodak) made it appear that you HAD to have the base station to power the camera and to transfer files to computer without having a card reader to take the files directly off the flash media.
Not saying it was intentionally misrepresented...but if a techie can't tell for sure from the packaging/flyers/grilling the salesperson, and then opening the sealed box and consulting the manual, whether or not the base station is required then I seriously doubt that your average layperson would be on much better footing. There was however an enclosed USB cable which cleared that question up for me. Then again if I hadn't unsealed the box in the store, I would have had no way to know.
At the time the base station was priced for roughly 1/3rd the price of the camera. Might just be bad technical writing, but I'm going to keep my tin foil hat handy for now. FUD FUD and more FUD.
Oh yeah, and the image quality isn't too great either. But whee.
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.
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.
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
> 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
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...
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).
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.
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 ?
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.
Or, are you saying you plan on doing TTL metering with an AIS lens on a Nikon N80? It's mount compatible, but that doesn't mean a thing. The N80 doesn't support TTL metering with old glass.
Again, I revert back to the point I made in a previous post, that canon's glass is garbage, and the fact that they have specific digital-optimized glass is a testament to this fact.
Sure, you can use the other 90% of Canon's glass on the digital rebel, but you will have issues with image quality, with the exception of their high-end glass.
Need more verification?
Did you catch that? Tamron's Di glass is compatible with normal 35mm bodies... Canon's OWN EF-S line which they say is "specifically designed for the Digital Rebel" is only usable on the Digital Rebel.
----- Serious people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious. - Paul Valery