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."

Comments

alas tis true

[MrLint]

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.

Film

[October_30th]

With the ever increasing use of digital photography, I've become wary of the same problem that plagues digital media in general: it's so volatile.

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.

Re:Film

[October_30th]

If you want to store digital media right you've basically got one option: digital tape (DLT), a tape drive and a computer that can be used to access the data.

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.

Hard drives aren't much better either.

Re:Film

[silentbozo]

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.

Ahhh, but like all analog media, when it comes time to copy the originals in order to preserve them, you lose information. Plus, you need a lot of room, and a controlled environment in order to really take care of film.

With digital, just keep multiple copies, and dup them, with no generation loss, as each new high-density storage media comes out.

I'm not saying digital is better - just that you're not using the benefits of digital to your advantage. Besides, it's kind of hard to erase write only media (ie, CD-Rs or WORMs, if you're really paranoid.)

Ironically, Kodak recently came out with a write-once storage unit for digital information (meant to safeguard data against tampering, by generating a read-only version) by using film...

Re:Film

[Soruk]

Very good point. I make a point of archiving my photos to my fileserver which is regularly backed up to tape, and will be put on to some CDRs (or even DVD-Rs) when I've taken enough of them.

The huge advantage over traditional film has to be that there was a significant cost overhead with traditional photography - if a photo didn't come out as intended that was money down the drain, so I very rarely dug out the camera and used it. With digital, if the image isn't as intended then nothing is lost, you can just delete it and try again. Indeed, you can just be trigger-happy and take multiple shots and just use the best of what comes out. And, once you've archived the photos, unlike a traditional film camera, you can erase the media and use it again.

I know this seems obvious, but recently I was talking to someone who actually didn't realise this advantage over traditional film (and he spent nearly GBP1000 a year on film and development, with that he could have a top-notch digital!)

Re:Film

[Zakabog]

With the ever increasing use of digital photography, I've become wary of the same problem that plagues digital media in general: it's so volatile.

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.

With the ever increasing use of digital photography, I've become wary of the same problem that plagues film in general: it's so volatile.

Properly stored compact flash cards last decades, whereas film is gone in the blink of an eye when your negatives are damaged or you accidentaly spill something on them.

It's the same thing as with snail mail. I routinely type out and store all my snail mail correspondence (sent and received) these days because I've lost my mails too often.

To quote the daily show "That was a stupid thing to say and you're a stupid person for saying it."

Re:Film

[evilviper]

If you want to store digital media right you've basically got one option: digital tape (DLT)

You've got to be kidding...

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 can't comment on the quality of Plextor CD-Rs, but I haven't had experiences anything like that. In fact, I've never had a CD-R fall apart on it's own... only after being handled (never touch the top) and I've been archiving CD-Rs since the first (1x) CD-Recorders came out.

Use good quality media, put them in jewel cases. Don't double them up, don't even think about using soft cases (flexible plastic/rubber, or paper). Be careful to handle them properly. Go easy on the labeling, etc.

I suspect DVD-+R(W)s are even worse due to the higher data density.

You can suspect, assume, and theorize all you want, but they don't have anything to do with the facts.

Hard drives aren't much better either.

Umm, why not? I've never seen (nor heard of) a hard drive, unplugged, unused, going out. It's only after a very large number of hours of use that they finally die. No deathstars need apply.

Besides, you'd be crazy to have only one copy of anything. The chances of one stationary HDD failing is tiny, the chances of two failing are nominal.

Re:Film

[archilocus]

Indeed, photography is 10% skill and 90% luck. You need the luck to capture the moment but if you don't have the technical skill with film you'll miss your opportunity. Digital gives you more opportunities for no additional cost.

I'm a 'good' photographer and my hit rate has gone from maybe 10% per 'shoot' (roll of film) to 50% per shoot (full flash card).

One important point that is overlooked is I get to post-process my own pictures with digital. That way, since I know what I was trying to achieve originally, I can rescue a less than perfect picture, where some ham-fisted instant lab operator would have torched it.

creative destruction: changing markets

[Reinout]

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

Late on the uptake

[FeltTip]

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.