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Kodak Failing, But Camera Phones Not To Blame
An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from The Conversation: "According to the Wall Street Journal, camera manufacturer Kodak is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, following a long struggle to maintain any sort of viable business. The announcement has prompted some commentators to claim that Kodak's near-demise has been brought on by: a failure to innovate, or a failure to anticipate the shift from analogue to digital cameras, or a failure to compete with the rise of cameras in mobile phones. Actually, none of these claims are true. Where Kodak did fail is in not understanding what people take photographs for, and what they do with photos once they have taken them."
Continues the reader: "Looking at camera data from Flickr, of images uploaded in 2011, camera phones only make up 3% of the total. Dedicated cameras from Canon, Nikon and yes, Kodak were used to take 97% of the images. What Kodak failed to understand is that people have switched from taking photos for remembering and commemorative reasons to using photos for identity and communication. The shift changes the emphasis away from print to social media platforms and dedicated apps."
Dedicated cameras from Canon, Nikon and yes, Kodak were used to take 97% of the images
Kodak makes its money (or used to) from film, not the camera hardware itself. All those 'dedicated cameras' are busy taking shots without a single bit of negative being exposed.
flickr is a horrible source to do a study like this, it is going to bias towards 'real' cameras because it's more of a photography sharing site then it is a "drunken pics at the bar last night" site. mobile phones can upload photos straight to facebook and twitter
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
If business was slowing down a lot, why weren't they sacking workers and reducing expenditure? I think this is more of a failure on management to restructure the company in a way that identifies that they can't really compete in the digital age how they once used to. I think that sometimes the management just have to realise that the company can't exist like it once did, and in order for the company to remain and still employ some people, they'll have to downsize a lot more than management might be comfortable about.
Let's pretend the data is accurate and reliable. Kodak's core problem would remain the same: if you're business model is built on selling photographic film and paper, and people don't need that anymore, the company is going to fail.
It first tried to rebuke the claims of Kodak being not able to innovate, etc, and then discussed "how people today use photos" in the examples of Flickr, Facebook, and such. It concluded with the weak argument of essentially one sentence, that "[It] is hard to see a role for Kodak in all of this." The problem with this reasoning is that exactly the same thing can be said about many of Kodak's competitors. I'm not aware whether Nikon or Canon is doing significantly better in this regard, which is to ease the "sharing and distribution" of photos through the Internet and social networking.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I always hated helping someone get their pictures off a Kodak digital camera.
Why Kodak could not use the standard USB mass storage device is beyond me.
Kodak has lost money each year but one since Mr. Perez, who previously headed the printer business at Hewlett-Packard Co., took over in 2005. The company's problems came to a head in 2011, as Mr. Perez's strategy of using patent lawsuits and licensing deals to raise cash ran dry.
Perez chose litigation over innovation; failure was inevitable and deserved.
Even though Kodak saw digital photography coming, the problem was Kodak's whole financial structure was tied to film, and digital technology was disruptive technology. They might have been able to sustain the brand by merging with or buying the right company at the right time (e.g. Canon), but most companies have a hard time dealing with technology shifts that vaporize their main profit center. It's not as simple as just knowing what the next trend is; it's figuring out how to gracefully wind down the existing cash cow while giving the new technology the management attention and resources it needs to thrive. Even then, there still ends up being a lot of pain because you can just put all of the same people you had producing film to work in a digital camera business.
I mean, just mention "Kodak", the go ahead and mention "Canon" or "Samsung" or "Casio" or "Sony" or "Nikon", then compare all those entities to see which one has the so called "swag". I doubt Kodak would come close.
To me, (and I am a bit old fashioned btw), Kodak and businesses I will not mention here, represent the past. The name simply does not sell these days. It's a bit like Microsoft. Their names are "tired" for lack of a better word. Not that they do not produce good stuff, but they've been around for so long without any real innovation.
Other companies can boast of a host of publicly known innovations by the most important demographic - the teens and young adults.
Someone I knew uploaded their photos to the Kodak site for printing, and had deleted them from her camera.
Rather than making it easy to get a copy of these photos, it was impossible. I think you basically had to order a PhotoCD or something, which I wasn't going to do.
They could have made a proper website to allow people to share their photos and print them. But they made it annoying.
at this: "It would be interesting to repeat this analysis using Facebook data, but there is no reason to believe the results would be substantially different."
Yes, because the millions of smartphones out there with a camera and a Facebook app (as opposed to a flickr app) aren't going to skew the results at all.
Flickr is for people who like photography; ergo, the data is going to be skewed heavily towards actual cameras.
Facebook is for people sharing themselves with their friends and the world. One only has to peruse a random person's Facebook profile picture page to find hundreds of self-snaps taken in the bathroom, or at the pub, or on a train, or whatever.
Kodak, in my opinion, failed because they neglected to make quality products in their particular niche (easy to use, inexpensive, easy to share). They offshored their production, so Kodak cameras were notoriously hit-or-miss in regards to actually working right. They missed the highend market (then again Kodak was never known for that anyway), letting Sony, Pentax, Canon, and Nikon beat them there. They failed to leverage their gigantic photo paper experience into anything worthwhile (I own a Kodak printer that, as I type this, refuses to print due to some bizarre error I don't have time to diagnose).
In short, Kodak failed because Kodak fucked up. Photography isn't going anywhere. Hell, film photography isn't going anywhere. Kodak just stood still and let the world pass them by.
They took our Kodachrome away, and nobody cared.
hookers and grits.
The article doesn't make much sense. It talks about "frictionless photo sharing" and how Kodak has totally missed it in that area, and how camera phones can share photographs via Facebook seamlessly with little effort. But then it shows Flickr stats asserting that Kodak isn't actually competing against camera phones, but other dedicated camera makers like Canon, Nikon, etc. So in what way is Canon and Nikon integrating with FB, or otherwise "getting it", where Kodak isn't? I've owned a couple modern Canon cameras, and they just throw pics onto an SD card like Kodak does, so Canon's success has nothing to do with beating Kodak in the way the article claims Kodak has failed. That's the real question - why did Canon and Nikon trounce Kodak when it comes to digital cameras?
Simply put, the article is talking about two different things, and doesn't correlate the cause and affect between them at all.
Better known as 318230.
As someone who knows a bit about digital photography I do believe it has everything to do with Kodak's camera product lineup. Kodak made no serious effort in high end photography, and being a typical American company they bungled what they did do, then gave up. They wanted to keep on producing cheap cameras like they had always done. But this was disrupted by two factors; along came cameraphones and knocked the low end down, and the march of technology have made the low end camera so cheap that there are no margins in them. Additionally, for a brand to have the prestige to sell a low end product, it must have a high end and upper mid-end product; Canon has dSLRs, Kodak had film... but now it doesn't.
The only way to make real money out of digital cameras is to produce high end cameras. By the time Kodak would've realised that they would have both lost the money and talent to get back into that game like Fujifilm has.
They sold off their Healthcare division (think expensive imaging equipment) in 2007, their graphics division was closed and the programmers replaced with Chinese & Israeli ones in 2009. That outsourcing flopped, competitors brought out major upgrades, Kodak stagnated.
http://printplanet.com/forums/kodak-systems/19947-prinergy-dead-they-laying-off-dev-team
So you might think their problems are just the loss of the low end digital camera business, but the CEO there makes some bad bad decisions in all divisions. A decent CEO could turn that place around.
As far as I understand, film still has its use - in very low temperatures (say, -30C), CCDs do not work as well as film. I am sure that there are special cameras with heated CCDs, but they would cost a lot, where film can be used with a (relatively) cheap camera.
was the biggest piece of crap ever made. After working with tons of residential customers who need their computers cleaned up and ask for an explanation as to what caused their machine to take so long to boot, Kodak Easy Share was the culprit in many cases. I know they're simply trying to make it easy for old people to just plug in their camera to the computer and magically have all their photos transferred to the All Users\My Pictures folder (which is stupid btw), but the software is just pure autorun garbage and why on earth it needed to execute during start up, I have no idea. Regardless of the quality of the cameras, having any negative response on your product cannot be a good thing. I don't think it's the main reason Kodak is filing bankruptcy obviously, but I do think it may have contributed to Kodak's negative consumer image.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
As far as I understand, film still has its use - in very low temperatures (say, -30C), CCDs do not work as well as film. I am sure that there are special cameras with heated CCDs, but they would cost a lot, where film can be used with a (relatively) cheap camera.
Actually, that's backwards. At low temperatures, photographic film becomes brittle and must be heated. On the other hand, CCDs have less noise at lower temperatures. Astronomers use cooled CCDs extensively. IR cameras often have cooled CCDs; if you want to image heat, you want as little extraneous heat as possible at the imager.
I think you mean a Steve Jobs, whereas I mean a more boring hum-drum one like Mark Hurd.
Basic competent leadership is enough to turn Kodak around, it doesn't need a superstar CEO, or a major new innovation. That graphics software they killed, it was doing well in the marketplace before the credit crunch hit them. Credit crunch hits, idiot CEO sacks all the programmers and outsources it to China to cut costs. Competitors Agfa/Heidleberg etc. hire all the programmers while they're cheap and come out with major upgrades in the next cycle, customers switch from Kodak and Kodak product dies. Why? Some idiot CEO read an outsourcing article and like a gullible idiot believed it???
Cameras still sell, and sell well, and Kodak are still a respected camera maker, but they make slightly overpriced, ugly looking cameras. Just basic CEO cost cutting, and trying out new designers, and adjusting teams, boring CEO 101 stuff would be enough to bring Kodak back.
Kodaks problems are just bad CEO problems.
They can't wait to scoop up all that IP.
Rick B.
Ofoto.com was the premiere photography web upstart at the millennium. At that time, Ofoto was the largest buyer of KODAK paper. In fact, since they were clearly in a position of market dominance, Ofoto's brand looked very appealing to Kodak. Kodak greedily gobbled up that magnificent Berkeley dot com upstart, and made it Dow Jones blue chips.
From that moment forward, it was all down hill for Ofoto. It went from being the technological and artistic leader to falling into stagnation and total alienation of Ofoto's loyal customer base. They tragically proceeded to delete the customer archives, to save on cost. For most people, this cloud was the ONLY back up of their precious data. Kodak refused to allow customers to download their data:or transfer it to other servers. ONLY the purchase of measly 700mb/ $20 CDs was offered as a means of accessing gigabytes of sacred customer data. I recall doing the math and finding that it was more expensive than all of my camera equipment.
Kodak MURDERED Ofoto like they self destructed themselves when they realized that Corporate America is no place for a retired labor force. So just die, rob the shareholders, and let go of all those ballooning pension and health care commitments.
Photography no longer needs the Kodak Korporate Karma.
*Smile*
What Kodak failed to understand is that people have switched from taking photos for remembering and commemorative reasons to using photos for identity and communication.
eh? Where did that premise come from? You look at Flickr photos and decide that people use photos for identity and communication? I don't see any evidence that the majority of the population DON'T take photos to remember and commemorate.
Someone I knew uploaded their photos to the Kodak site for printing, and had deleted them from her camera.
Rather than making it easy to get a copy of these photos, it was impossible. I think you basically had to order a PhotoCD or something, which I wasn't going to do.
They could have made a proper website to allow people to share their photos and print them. But they made it annoying.
Ofoto.com was the premiere photography web upstart at the millennium. At that time, Ofoto was the largest buyer of KODAK paper. In fact, since they were clearly in a position of market dominance, Ofoto's brand looked very appealing to Kodak. Kodak greedily gobbled up that magnificent Berkeley dot com upstart, and made it Dow Jones blue chips. From that moment forward, it was all down hill for Ofoto. It went from being the technological and artistic leader to falling into stagnation and total alienation of Ofoto's loyal customer base. They tragically proceeded to delete the customer archives, to save on cost. For most people, this cloud was the ONLY back up of their precious data. Kodak refused to allow customers to download their data:or transfer it to other servers. ONLY the purchase of measly 700mb/ $20 CDs was offered as a means of accessing gigabytes of sacred customer data. I recall doing the math and finding that it was more expensive than all of my camera equipment. Kodak MURDERED Ofoto like they self destructed themselves when they realized that Corporate America is no place for a retired labor force. So just die, rob the shareholders, and let go of all those ballooning pension and health care commitments.
And sadly, you are correct.
Split off the old film division into a maintenance company for film cameras. Commit to some old school film camera models and maintain them indefinitely. Preserve the ancient art. Support other manufacturers old equipment with parts and film. Raise the prices to maintain the business.
For the digital division come out with a few models of slightly oversized modular cameras. Focus on the amateur photographer. The cameras should be designed to be supported for 10 years and not obsolete in six months. Have the electronics internals replaceable/upgradeable. Build them more sturdy such that they can be dropped and used in the rain. Have unusual models useful for art type stuff such as multiple offset lenses of different types. Be the brand name people look for when what they are looking to do isn't standard. What if people want to use an IR/UV sensor for alternative photography, they won't find that at best buy.
Stop putting filters in the cameras and instead simply take raw images. Put out your own inexpensive inter-operating photo editing suite that will rival Photoshop to "develop" the images. Don't make the software point and click... make it capable. Make the image algorithms transparent though a compiled scripted mathematical language rather than purchased modules/addons.
Bring the people. Then do collaborative deals with commodity hardware companies.
You hinted at a big reason they utterly failed to enter any market that had a future. They tried with low end to middle of the road digital cameras but they didn't realize that their recognized name could only go so far in a new market. Their products sat on the shelves because they kept adding the "because we're Kodak" surcharge to the pricetag. They were easily outsold by respected brands in consumer electronics that were willing to actually compete for business.
That and, of course, consumer electronics companies were actually better ad developing consumer electronics than a film company. They might have made it if they could have grasped that for the purposes of a consumer electronic device, THEY were the upstart that had to prove itself.
I think there are three main reasons for Kodak's failure. They are:
1. Still analog and chemical company. It is possible kick people out and just buy electronics and software from somewhere else. Does Kodak want to do it? Also how many internal processes still originate from the rigid chemical process lines? Is it possible to change the people for different industry (i.e. chef to physicist).
2. Pride. Having developed its reputation on analog (pocket) cameras. It's hard for a reputable stove oven company to start selling cheap microwave ovens. It is possible but only with company downsizing and clear selection of its clients. And being proud that you only produce stove ovens.
3. No good products and no clear idea about future progress. No good SLR products, no pro-sumer range. Well this should be clear by now. It's digital. And having read about the product line from multiple sources tells that they trusted in film. Products were secondary. When film eventually died out in practice (especially in medical industry), somebody (investors?) told Kodak they are now standing in deep swamp. I don't know if they ever realized it themselves.
Now finally they can stop ruining music videos, and even songs themselves, with their desperate product placement! Now we just need mini to go bankrupt too
I would agree with the importance of branding.. When I bought my first digital camera I never considered Kodak. Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Fujifilm were all the brand names that I seemed to be aware of.
The Canon Digital Rebel made quite a stir when it came out and having seen Canon's UI that was easy to pick up and consistent all it camera's line made it a "done deal" for having an "upgrade path" from a simple point-and-shoot, to the Digital Rebel, to the 5D, if I so wanted.
Kodak never was "on the radar."
Well, not "sucked" (mostly). But Kodak digital cameras (all compacts) were mediocre at best, and really didn't compare to similarly-priced offerings from Canon and Nikon - both of which companies got big making cameras, not making film.
Their entire digital strategy appeared to be wishing that they were still selling consumables. Canon and Nikon were actually trying new stuff.
And now it's quite possible Canon and Nikon's compact camera business will be eaten by phones. A good 2011 Android phone is a better camera (though without zoom) than a 2005 Canon compact. Everything is turning into a tricorder.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Kodak's sensors WERE the best available, they haven't been for quite some time. For a time they supplied the large sensor market, i.e. full-frame and medium format when the only other consumer competition was Canon (and only full-frame at that). But that's where they stopped. While they kept making new sensors, the basic pixel cell remained largely the same and even their recent sensors are close to 10-year old tech. They got a lot of niche customers like Leica because they would do things that other suppliers wouldn't (low volume, custom modifications).
Both the Canon and later Nikon full-frame sensors were superior in many ways, and the recent ones are superior in all respects. The Kodak FF sensors have nothing on Nikon ones, and Leica only uses them due to lack of access to the latest Canon/Nikon/Sony designs.
The medium-format sensors are also stagnant and aren't much of a revenue stream since that entire industry is dying (sales declining at around 30%/year for the past 20 years).
We need Kettlebelly to fuse Kodak and Duracell and start a project that supports many little innovative geek start-up firms to start a new era 'New Work' (I'm reading too much of Cory Doctorow's novels.. =) It's just too strange to encounter so many ideas and parts of his stories in real life..
If by never really made DSLRs you mean invented the DSLR, OKAY.
The revolution will be mocked
If the reason Kodak failed is because they failed to see the shift in attitude towards photographs, then why is it that traditional camera makers like Canon and Nikon are alive and well?
I think the writer failed to see the obvious here. The reason Kodak failed is because Kodak is primarily a film and photo chemicals maker and not primarily a camera maker. With less people using film it is obvious Kodak can't base its business model on an obsolescent technology. Nikon and Canon are primarily camera makers and they were able to make the shift to digital successfully. Kodak was not.
Kodak's error was that it decided to hold onto a flawed business model rather than just closing down the company and returning the assets to the stockholders. Some companies are destined to close down. It's just the way it is.
I just want to add that if we're talking Kodak, I'd say digital cameras are only a very minor thing, a real tip of an iceberg. If you say Kodak, I first think of good film materials (they have such a long history for this, respect is the least they should get for it), film scanners and recorders, cinema film prcoessing hardware and labs, of the cineon format (they also had a full film processing chain called cineon system back in the days which was great), and so on and so forth. I'm really sad to see them fail so hard recently.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Kodak's management who are far smarter than 99.9% of the posters on /. (not difficult) knew this and have deliberately run the business into the ground so that they can dump the pension and healthcare costs onto the government and the retired workers all the while stripping the shareholders equity (i.e your 401k) out of the business into their own pockets.
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greed.
Automated DNA sequencing software
I realize I'm posting kind of late, but how come no one has mentioned xray imaging?
Every my cheapie dentist finally moved to a little CCD imager thingy for teeth.
I have a vague memory that each sheet of chest xray film was vaguely similar in cost to all the film a typical camera bug would use on a vacation. Medical / Dental xrays are a big market, or at least it was a big market, until recently.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Wow, that article had some crappy analysis. The two standouts for me:
- the rubbish analysis of whether cameraphones are taking over from dedicated cameras. 97% of photos may be uploaded to flickr from dedicated cameras, but more flickr members are using cameraphones. It's just that they're uploading smaller numbers of photos each. If I'm selling cameras, I am interested the latter stat, not the former
- the blithe assertion that facebook photos would also largely be from dedicated cameras, just like flickr. stoopid.
After reading the comments.. I'm shocked no one pointed out something I've been thinking about since my son was born (going to be 2 in Feb).
[I]" What Kodak failed to understand is that people have switched from taking photos for remembering and commemorative reasons to using photos for identity and communication."[/I]
And with less and less places printing actual photo grade photos (vs people who use an inkjet to print photos onto generic FAX/copy paper), I can see a lot of "memories" being lost. Sure the ability to take a photo and upload to Facebook is nice.. instant gratification... but one swipe of the internet and Facebook could be gone, or lock up your photos, and all of those "memories" gone.
Its one reason I downloaded as many photos from my Facebook and my wife's and made a blog page about his leg issues.. a place where I have a backup of all the photos until I get a chance to print them all out in a photo grade fashion.
I'm just surprised no one else commented about that
Looking at camera data from Flickr,
Flickr? Flickr represents a small segment of the camera-using market.
It would be interesting to repeat this analysis using Facebook data, but there is no reason to believe the results would be substantially different.
There's every reason to believe the results would be substantially different. The average DSLR owner is a photo geek. The average random joe was an owner of a low-level point-and-shoot - was. The iPhone and Android phones are eating the wind out of the sails of point-and-shoots. Joe Bob isn't going to carry around a camera when he already has a phone that in the vast majority of cases, is superior.
Despite Flickr-nonsense, the article is topically correct at least. The deal of low-level cameras isn't to blame for Kodak's demise - Kodak gave up on cameras ages ago. They hitched their buggy to film, and they'll soon arrive at the mythical corporate afterlife where they can buy all the horse whips they'd like.
In october of this year, my son bought a "waterproof" kodak digital camera that took pretty crappy 640x480 video and crappy 2 megapixel digital photos. The lens was crap, the camera build quality was crap, and the whole thing stopped working within 3 days of purchasing it. I have never seen a more poorly designed, poorly executed thing with a formerly-major-brand on it. In my opinion Kodak-the-brand still meant something to most american consumers, and so the executives have been cashing out. They can't go after the enthusiast market, so they go after kids and senior citizens. Neither one is happy with complete crap though. Warren
Kodak tried to enter the printer market and bombed. They had a good idea, produce a printer at a reasonable but not give-away price and sell the ink at a reasonable price (unlike HP that almost gives the printer away and rapes you on the cost of ink). However Kodak did not open up their printer IP or extend support for platforms other than Windows. As a result their printers are paperweights on Linux and BSD (I don't know about MAC's). Even worse, they went to some of the worst factories in China to have their printer built (or the design has too many corners cut). Most reviews claim paper jams, "fire and smoke". They had a chance here, and they blew up big time.
When CCD's first came out Kodak thought they were just a fad and that people will never abandon film, that was when the death spiral started. A lack of understanding the last couple of years of why photos are being taken is not why Kodak failed.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I did consider Kodak digital cameras originally. However most, if not all, of the reviews I read on Steve's and DP Review spoke of them not being a good bang for the buck, and excessive "proprietariness". Kodak cameras were all over the map. They didn't seem to have a focus. They were not a good buy.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Now would be a good time for a bargain.
I work here -- http://theparkrowdentalpractice.co.uk no, really, I do.
Leaving aside the question of whether a film camera can survive in the harsh conditions of space, you have the problem of reloading film in hardware several million miles away from home.
Lunar Orbiter used a film-based system where film was shot and developed in the spacecraft and scanned for downlink to Earth. The early spy sats shot film in space and then dropped the film capsules back to Earth.
So yes, film cameras work in space. They just suck for the reason you mentioned; there's a limited amount of film and sending a new roll into orbit costs millions of dollars.
> I read on Steve's and DP Review
Yup, Steve's Digicam and Digital Photography Review were (and still are) THE place to check out camera reviews! Luckily I had a friend who caught the shutter bug and he introduced me to those two great review sites before I got my first camera. Nice to see them mentioned. Lots of good memories checking out the latest Canon reviews back in the day. =)
> Kodak cameras were all over the map. They didn't seem to have a focus. They were not a good buy.
I think that's one reason Canon and Nikon ate Kodak for lunch. Every year or so they would bring out a new model. You can tell by the fact of Canon + Nikon + others having to compete forced them to innovate -- consumers ended up winning with features & price. i.e. The 2000s were all about the megapixel (MP) war and showed us that once you reach a certain threshold the MP number starts to become pointless. Ease of Use, Shutter lag, Camera Lens options, picture quality (PQ), weight, battery life, etc. all become more important.
The only thing the camera industry fucked up on was batteries. Consumers want STANDARD re-chargeable batteries sizes and power draw, much like how we had a standard for non-rechargeable batteries (A, AAA, C, D) although someone pointed out in the past few months in another thread that we now have this ...
Of-course this bankruptcy was not inevitable even in the face of the various disruptive technologies but only when government decided to step in and tell Kodak what it could and could not do, how it could not diversify its business, how it could not invest into other businesses and opportunities that the failure of the company became inevitable.
You think government CREATES jobs? It never jobs, it has no job-creating capacity. Even jobs that are directly created with government money cost more jobs that are destroyed/prevented from being created in the private sector, because every government sponsored job is a job that should never have existed and it only exists by taxing productive sectors.
Governments are the only real reasons for the economic disasters around the world since the beginning of the man kind.
You can't handle the truth.
If only it were that simple. The big problem is deciding what to change into. A company in a declining market may have a very profitable, cash cow business. They can use that money to fund the search for a new business model. [...]
Having cash and recognition that your business is declining is not enough. The real rub is finding something else that you can succeed at. And I don't think there is any obvious way to go about that.
There is a different mindset between Japanese companies, such as FujiFilm, and American ones like Kodak. Japanese companies usually try to diversify at all times (not when in decline), so FujiFilm expanded from film to photocopiers, displays, and anything else they could (within Japan, large companies are often extremely diversified. Nintendo once ran taxis, Mitsubishi Electric makes elevators and televisions, Yamaha makes music keyboards and motorcycles). American companies have the phrase "core competency" as a mantra, and will often sell off profitable divisions (the entire technical equipment side of HP) or even wind them down if they're not profitable enough (HP calculators). The name for this is "unlocking shareholder value", and maybe it does, but it tends to weaken companies which no longer have the flexibility to adapt to market changes. Rather than one division growing while another shrinks, one spun-off company grows while another goes bankrupt.
From the site you linked to:
For example, the Operating Environment stated for the Nikon Coolpix 990 is:
* Temperature: 0 ï½ 40oC (32 ï½ 104oF)
So, no photos at -30C? A machanical film camera works at -30, I don't know about the electronic film cameras (you know, the ones that have autofocus etc).
Also, I am not talking about special cameras (which cost a lot), but about the normal ones, like a regular dSLR.
My father purchased a Kodak point-and-click throw-away digital camera, and not being very tech savy, installed the Kodak image software that came with it. The software hijacked all image formats on his PC and would revert file associations when manually changed.
He swore he would not trust or use Kodak again. IMO regardless of their history or innovations, they sabotaged themselves in many ways. And deserve what is coming to them.
You make some very good points. It is true that decent digital cameras are more expensive than film cameras of similar quality. And as I read further down your post and saw that you shoot in medium format, I think it's even more true. But keep in mind that medium format is typically used by professional photographers. Even in the days when film was supreme, most average people just used 35mm SLRs. And Canon makes some affordable DSLRs (such as the T3i) which are very good, and much better at shooting in low lighting conditions that digital cameras used to be. Not to mention the fact that they also shoot awesome video.
But for serious photographers that shoot in medium format, I agree, digital replacements are still quite expensive. And in the digital age, I'm afraid black and white is becoming a lost art.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
I shoot Neopan Acros 100 for most of my B&W landscape work. Acros is still available in 135, 120, and 4x5 sheet film, and Neopan 400 is still available in 35mm. From what I recall, Plus-X is garbage compared to Acros.
http://pinopsida.com
It's also useful for anyone who wants a sensor area larger than 35mm without paying thousands and thousands of dollars.
http://pinopsida.com
let them produce craptastic cameras instead of partnering with a camera maker
You're right that someone let them produce craptastic cameras, but wrong on the partnering front - kodak and nikon were there at the very start of the digital slr revolution, using top-of-the-line nikon bodies and kodak sensors. This was before Nikon made their first dslr (D1 I think).
The problem was - they were priced in the tens of thousands, and weren't that good. One of their last dslrs was the '14n' - a 14 megapixel full-frame camera released ahead of it's time in 2002. Unfortunately, it was very expensive and not very good, with noise at almost all ISOs.
If I were to put a reason on why Kodak have failed it's because they only achieved mediocrity. Their compact digital cameras were not especially desirable, nor especially cheap. Their photo printers didn't match canon/epson quality. Their DSLRs were outclassed and undercut by thousands of pounds by Nikon's D1 and Canon's later offerings. Their film had the famous, but expensive and difficult-to-process, kodachrome. Fuji were extremely competitive, and Kodak still can't come up with an anwser to Fuji's velvia.
Things might have been completely different if they were able to compete in any of these areas.
The sensor works just fine at -30C. It's the other bits (say, the lubrication of the shutter mechanism, or the batteries) that don't. There's also the matter of technical and warranty support -- it's cheaper to say "we don't support the use of this camera in sub-freezing temperatures" than it is to design the camera to deal with condensation, non-lubricating lubricants, under-powered batteries, and the other problems you encounter at low temperatures.
The batteries in particular are a problem. Photographers working in low temperatures usually carry two or three sets of batteries: one set cooling down in the camera, the others being warmed back up by body heat, and the batteries get changed every 15-30 minutes depending on how cold it is.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
It's a pity. I was still buying their printer paper to print my photos on (when I print photos that is). I did have a Kodak Digital camera at one stage, but switched to Nikon and have never looked back. Up to my second Nikon camera now, and they are wonderful things. But, every photographer I know recommends either Nikon or Canon for anything that is more than just a point and shoot (and my nikon works wonderful even when I'm lazy and just doing a 'point and shoot' thing on 'Auto'). So, they really didn't get a look in at that end of the market. As far as point and shoot cameras go, my old Kodak was expensive, and it is a crowded market, and as some people always point out to me, the cameras in mobile phones are getting to the point of being just as good (in some case better) as point and shoot cameras.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Is it conceivable that they had no chance in the new market?
Just because the image was uploaded in 2011 doesn't mean it was taken in 2011. For example, last year my wife and I had our first child, so I wanted an easy way to share photos with our family, so I created a Flickr Pro account. I use the Flickr app on my smartphone to instantly upload photos. But, I also imported the last 10 years of digital photos from my archive. 100% of those photos were taken with digital cameras, not phones, but that's just because I have a lot of photos from the late 90s through the mid 2000s when camera phones caught on.
Nowadays, 90% of the photos I take are with a phone. I only haul the camera out when I'm going on vacation, or there is a special occasion such as a birthday, holiday, etc. Since EXIF also includes the date the photo was taken, I bet if they ran that same query, but instead of only looking at photos uploaded in 2011, also look at photos that were actually TAKEN in 2011, the percentages would shift by a good amount.