Inside Analog Photo Radio - Ron Mowrey - Photo Engineer - Where Kodak Went Wrong

[Scott_Sheppard]

Hello Everybody:

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Radio for February 18th 2012 - Ron Mowrey - Photo Engineer - Where Kodak Went Wrong

http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-analog-photo-radio/id291806626

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Thanks

Scott

 

[Jim Noel]

Only the Document Tree is evident in the XML link.

 

[PKM-25]

Does it also discuss what could go right from this point, especially considering Kodak's still outstanding film line up? Because frankly, in terms of what Kodak could have done, the past is done, it does nothing for me personally as a photographer...

 

[SWphoto]

Scott,

maybe it's on the podcast, but what's up with Kodak and the "out of stock" on so many vendors' websites, esp. for 4x5 Portras? Are they going the way of the dodo?

Rick

 

[Derek Lofgreen]

Great interview Scott and Ron. What a great insight into Kodak past decision making, it's no surprise they are where the are today. Good thoughts and prayers to all the retired Kodak folks, I hope you get a longer end of the stick.

D.

 

[EASmithV]

Looks like Kodak is setting itself up for a hard fall...

Man, now I gotta start either hoarding Tri-X or switching over to Ilford.

Just when I start liking Portra...

 

[PKM-25]

Grrrr...I better listen to this after-all....

Looks like Kodak is setting itself up for a hard fall...

Man, now I gotta start either hoarding Tri-X or switching over to Ilford.

Just when I start liking Portra...

 

[PKM-25]

Good work Ron and Scott, quite a problematic attempt at a transition for sure.

Judging by the current scale of operation and the expected drop in motion picture consumables, it's really tough to say how this is going to look in even a year, let alone 2-3.

 

[Chazzy]

Great interview. Thanks to Ron and Scott.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Coming soon from Scott, an interview between him, myself and Bob Shanebrook. Very interesting subject matter and it touches somewhat on this current interview.

Thans all for listening and for your comments.

PE

 

[zsas]

Scott/Ron - Just listened, amazing, that floppy with the holes in it?! Wow...

 

[Photo Engineer]

Andy;

That happened to all Double Sided floppies about 10 years earlier but for a different reason and it was not as bad. Kodak somehow ignored that lesson. It was pressure on 2 heads squeezing the diskette and the wear on the magnetic heads embedded in the ceramic, which itself had bubbles. Jewelers Rouge is an abrasive and in simplest terms the medium on a diskette is exactly that!

PE

 

[keithwms]

Nice work Scott and Ron! I made it through about 80% of it before I wanted to stab my eardrums. informative but rather disconcerting!

 

[Photo Engineer]

??????

 

[kb3lms]

Great program guys!

Dovetails very well with what I, too, saw at EK from 1984 through 1995. I knew a number of the guys that worked at the Gerber plant and some came into my group after the demise of that project. A really talented bunch of (working) people, like most of EK, but really made you wonder what was happening at the top.

FWIW, during the demise of the high capacity floppy disk project, it started being called the EktaFlop around the Elmgrove plant. (little insider trivia there) Whatever happened to EP anyway? I can't imagine there's anything still there? (of Kodak, anyway)

But, I was just a youngster. Ron, you obviously understood much, much more. One interesting thing, though. My group was staffed with a bunch of recent college graduates. (Our manager really had his work cut out for him. ) About 1985 we conducted a review of the digital technologies we might employ on our project - kind of a kaizen event, if you will - and we all concluded the game would be over in about 15 years, give or take a few, due to the obviously coming digital capture. So, very new (my group) and experienced people (your group) came to largely the same conclusion but the larger company just couldn't accept it. Amazing.

Anyway, looking forward to more of these excellent programs!

 

[Photo Engineer]

I love that! Ektaflop!

PE

 

[keithwms]

??????

Oh I didn't mean to imply anything negative about the nice interview It was just painful to hear about the many management errors and miscalculations....

 

[ME Super]

Ron,
You are definitely right about the Electrical Engineers and Chemical Engineers not knowing what the other side was doing. I'm an EE by degree and a software guy by career, and don't pretend to understand 1% of what you film guys were doing at Kodak, only that it worked really well. You Chemical Engineers definitely know your stuff!

You're also definitely right about nobody printing photos at home. Why, when you can upload and print on someone else's printer/lightjet so inexpensively (and conveniently, I might add), would you want to print on your own printer with less than stable inks? If Kodak was going to go into the printer business, they should've beat Fuji to the punch with their Frontier digital minilabs and dry minilabs (shh, don't tell the guys I work with that I prefer prints on real photo paper, not inkjet!), not by tring to get into the home printing market.

FWIW, I'd much rather have a color laser printer than an inkjet. Much lower cost of operation than inkjet. And I still wouldn't print photos for sharing or putting in photo albums on it - maybe the occasional DVD cover for home videos, but that would be about it.

ME Super

 

[hoffy]

I'm going to listen to this on the way home.

With all due respect to Ron and Bob (for the upcoming podcast, I presume?), I really want to know whether Scott has had contact with anyone from Kodak since the filing? THAT is the interview I want to hear!

 

[Sean]

Great interview guys!

 

[Scott_Sheppard]

Thanks Sean !!

Wait till you here the next one with Ron Mowery & Robert Shanebrook... It will blow your mind !!

And THANKS everybody !!

 

[Photo Engineer]

Ron,

You're also definitely right about nobody printing photos at home. Why, when you can upload and print on someone else's printer/lightjet so inexpensively (and conveniently, I might add), would you want to print on your own printer with less than stable inks? If Kodak was going to go into the printer business, they should've beat Fuji to the punch with their Frontier digital minilabs and dry minilabs (shh, don't tell the guys I work with that I prefer prints on real photo paper, not inkjet!), not by tring to get into the home printing market.


ME Super

FWIW, one of the last pieces of work I did in the Exploratory Color Photography Lab was to design a pollution free high speed processing and printing unit. It ran at 120 deg F and produced a print in a few seconds using Ektacolor 30 paper. (this was 1978)

The unit used mixed bed resins to clean the water and it produced no pollution. Wash water was totally recycled. The project was cancelled in favor of several other routes including Instant.

Re-Ektaflop, we were going to call our instant product Kodaroid in honor of Polaroid, but since we were only half way there and were straining hard, we called it Hemiroid (misspelling deliberate to convey meaning)

PE

 

[pbromaghin]

I have a question that I hope will not stir up a storm. I am not trolling.

Ron, you said that Kodak makes all it's own film base and if they stop making film, the other base suppliers will benefit from the increased demand from other film manufacturers. But in the recent controversies, one of Aristophanes's main points was that Kodak buys base from other manufacturers, and if Kodak goes under then the base suppliers may also go under and this will threaten the supply for Ilford, Efke, Foma, etc.

I don't remember you pointing this out at the time (I bailed out of those threads). Would you elaborate on this?

 

[keithwms]

I'll just insert my thoughts. If the largest consumer of base goes under, then sure, the base price will go up, but not catastrophically. It's not like Kodak stops making base and *poof* no more base available in the world. On the contrary, the demand is still basically there- remember that Kodak has become less and less relevant in terms of market share and it hasn't adversely affected others in the market. We know that because the prices for Ilford's and Fuji's products have not shot up astronomically (knock on wood).

Also, Ron pointed out that base can probably be stored indefinitely. That is a very important point which also mitigates a big spike in base cost.

Ron knows a lot more of course, I am just throwing in my half penny

 

[Photo Engineer]

Bob Shanebrook points out in his book that all or virtually all of Kodak's film base support is made in-house. Film supports are made for other applications than photography though so the production of support such as Estar or Acetate is not dependent on Kodak's consumption of the material. They are a minor player due to their own capacity.

The major differences in films industry wide is the subbing or lack thereof for each application. Kodak makes unsubbed and subbed film supports. You can buy subbed or unsubbed supports from ICI in England for a variety of applications and IIRC, Ilford buys from ICI. Jim Browning used ICI produced Melenex support for his dye transfer Matrix Film. It was pre-subbed to a given standard for the dye transfer process.

There will be no major problem if Kodak stops making (or buying) support. In fact, they may stop making entirely and start buying which will probably be good in a sense. Prices will go up though due to increasing labor and materials costs, but not because Kodak changes anything.

PE