Kodak Axes Digicams, but keeps film

CGW said:

Point is that labs can't won't do it for 120. No shortage of so-so quality Noritsu/Frontier 35mm dev/scan/print service. Hybrid, much loathed hereabouts, is about all I can do--and I suspect I'm not alone.

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bummer ... i know around here there are very few labs that process 120 as well ( 1h30min round trip ) ...
will your local lab process the film at least ?
i might be in the vocal minority, but i see nothing wrong with hybrid ...
as zero mostel / max bialystock would say: when you got it, flaunt it baby ...

i hate to suggest this, but film scannnerz that accept 120 format are pretty inexpensive
compared to not too long ago, if you can get the film processed ... you can do the other stuff yourself
and probably do it better than they would at a local lab.

jnanian said:

bummer ... i know around here there are very few labs that process 120 as well ( 1h30min round trip ) ...
will your local lab process the film at least ?
i might be in the vocal minority, but i see nothing wrong with hybrid ...
as zero mostel / max bialystock would say: when you got it, flaunt it baby ...

i hate to suggest this, but film scannnerz that accept 120 format are pretty inexpensive
compared to not too long ago, if you can get the film processed ... you can do the other stuff yourself
and probably do it better than they would at a local lab.

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No worries with quality processing--4 hr service. Problem is neg/tranny to proof and/or prints. Down with scanners and reasonably adept with CS4. Would just like minimize computer time. Quality printing is easily accessible. Not happy about doing the hybrid/survivalist dance to get what I got just a few months ago. It's the new reality--sliced thick. Should be fun!

keithwms said:

Sorry but this rant has been a long time coming...

Would people please stop whining about not being able to get same-day local processing!!!!!!! Who gives a fig? Not I, that's for sure. I didn't invest in a bunch of 11x14 provia with the assumption that Costco or anyone else would run it for me.

Good grief, I've never seen so much pointless whining. And on a forum where members make their own emulsions and developers and papers and wax poetic about owning the whole process

Look, if convenience is your thing, or if you think your own film-derived art isn't investible any more, or if you think the splitup of Kodak is the end of analogue photography then go get a dSLR and leave us in peace!! We'll get along just fine without you, somehow...

That's all, I feel better now.

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Not everyone lives in your tiny bubble, mate. Don't own a wind farm, either. Chill.

CGW said:

No worries with quality processing--4 hr service. Problem is neg/tranny to proof and/or prints. Down with scanners and reasonably adept with CS4. Would just like minimize computer time. Quality printing is easily accessible. Not happy about doing the hybrid/survivalist dance to get what I got just a few months ago. It's the new reality--sliced thick. Should be fun!

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CGW, I don't want to get into it in details here since it's not the place, but if you want to PM or email me I'd be glad to discuss my hybrid workflow. The proof or digital contact is actually the easy part imo. The harder part now is getting the good final scan since prosumer scanner prices have shot up across the board in general, but it's still doable. Drop me a note if you want.

Scott Sheppard, feel free to chime in here to back me up since you were there, but when we were at Kodak with the VP, then head of marketing, etc. we heard Josh Root of Photo.net flat out tell them that there is no infastructure to digitize film, so since people want to do that for email, flickr and the like, it would do Kodak well to make at least a decent consumer level scanner to make that happen and to make sure the ones at the labs are doing it with some form of quality and consistency. This is what could very well be the nail in the coffin for color film, no way to make a cost effective digital rendering of it. I have a 9000ED and it pretty easy to do color neg or E6 emulsions with it, but most can not afford the flat out crazy prices for it. I really prefer to avoid the hybrid workflow, but since I am still published, I need to do it anyway in terms of color. Ektar and Portra scan crazy good, enabling one to make enormous prints from the 120 versions of it. I am currently doing a (there was a url link here which no longer exists) on Endura Metallic and it looks damn good thus far.

There are a few new scanners coming out including a 120 version, but it is slow to arrive. One thing that might be in the works is with high res cameras like the D800E, they could very well be used in "Slide Copy" mode to help this along, I have talked about this with Nikon for some time now, it would be real easy to create a setting that maximizes range and color consistency and outside of price considerate scanners, this might be the only way forward in terms of color. I also don't think most have any problem sending film out and waiting a few days to get it back, the problem is that through the tired machine of the media, most think that is not even an option. I am out shooting every day, I meet tons of people and when it comes down to it, more people than you might think would use film if they knew that A, it was still available to buy and B, they can send it off to fine labs like Dwayne's and get back good prints, a CD and little proof sheet. It's baffling, no one has any problem buying books on Amazon, but when it comes to film, they just accept the doomsday message and instead, buy into the digital hype.

It's not that people do not want to use film, if anything some wish for when it was that simple, shoot and someone else does the rest. One of the biggest problems is that people are either too lazy to seek out the truth or just assume that what they read on dpreview is gospel.

How bright or how dark is the future for film, depends on who you talk to, especially here. I have my concerns but figure why keep beating the crap out of those issues when I can do my part to show good work, get the message out and get people excited about film again. It does work, I even have magazines covering the tab for film and soup lately...

jnanian said:

film is an agony ?

drop it off at a lab, and get the cd is an agony ?
process + and scan it ... is an agony ...?

i worked at a portrait studio where
they shot in film and digitally at the same time.
this allowed them to sell the pages of images
AND make high quality prints.

it would kill 2 birds with one stone if a camera was made
that looked like a stereo camera ( or used cheap beam splitter )
and captured one image on film and the other digitally, so images could be shared instantly
and processed as well. it would boost both the film end, and allow people who
"are in agony" to feed their instant gratification ...

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Four local labs closed down here in the last 24 months in part because they could not get customers cost effective scanning. No lab, no film sales. Contributing to the decline. I'm just relaying the experience and the gap between what Kodak could technically offer (mass scanning a la MP ID) to help sustain mass coating production. All pieces of the Kodak puzzle. Why can this be done for billions of feet of MP film and not for still photos?

keithwms said:

Sorry but this rant has been a long time coming...

Would people please stop whining about not being able to get same-day local processing!!!!!!! Who gives a fig? Not I, that's for sure. I didn't invest in a bunch of 11x14 provia with the assumption that Costco or anyone else would run it for me.

Good grief, I've never seen so much pointless whining. And on a forum where members make their own emulsions and developers and papers and wax poetic about owning the whole process

Look, if convenience is your thing, or if you think your own film-derived art isn't investible any more, or if you think the splitup of Kodak is the end of analogue photography then go get a dSLR and leave us in peace!! We'll get along just fine without you, somehow...

That's all, I feel better now.

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I don't whine any more but the fact that I learned to do my own processing was because before the day of the 1 hour lab I had to wait to long to see my pics. Nowaday, I don't mind any more but it seemed difficult to get stuff to do it myself or find a good lab to send stuff out.

Kodak missed an opportunity with scanning to share because they still saw the 4x6 print as the cash cow. But online phot sharing obviates a lot of printing, though it is still a sizable market.

I can order RA paper prints at processing for about 12 cents per. That's peanuts compared to the cost/image scanning now costs, yet printing is down because no one drive the cost of scanning down as was done for MP DI. Prints could have been sold not as the final product, but the archive. I am still amazed at how the while kiosk thing gets it wrong.

I read somewhere that Steve Jobs initially opposed Apple print services until the hard copy photo as archive was explained, and the great margins along with it. In 1 year Apple's iPhoto apparently took in more revenues from its printing than Kodak ever did through its Gallery services, the latter of which drove the consumer to print first, share last. Dumb.

And iPhoto was only available on 5% of PC's while Kodak still had a billion customers. Sigh.

I too use a hybrid work flow due to having my darkroom tied up for emulsion making and chemistry testing.

I take photos using 4x5, 120 or 35mm and have them professionally processed (or do them myself), and then scan them and make proofs. I then pick the ones I want and print on Endura or I print digitally with custom adjustments as I would do on-easel for density and contrast.

Some of this work is as good or better than the Endura prints, but I can't judge the keeping of the digital.

PE

If I was as prescient as some on this thread appear to be, I would have bought Apple stock 10 years ago and now would retire on their good fortune. Predicting the market direction for any product/company is beyond my intellectual level, so I'll leave that to the 1%ers.
But it does seem evident that photography as we know it will become far more of a craft experience. Those waiting for Labs to process their film or print their images need to find another avenue for their creativity. I like Kodak products, but am not wedded to them. Live in the present for the future is unknowable.

CGW said:

Not everyone lives in your tiny bubble, mate. Don't own a wind farm, either. Chill.

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And what bubble is that? I am really curious what perspective you think I have...

I also confess that I have no idea what the windfarm comment is about.

doughowk said:

If I was as prescient as some on this thread appear to be, I would have bought Apple stock 10 years ago and now would retire on their good fortune.

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Absolutely right!

And the main issue here is probably EK's lack of strategy and agility over the past decade or so; there's not much reason to suspect that EK will suddenly develop a clever strategy. Unfortunately it doesn't compare well at all to, for example, Fuji. The best hope seems to be that the film business is spun out. But again I really doubt that anybody here has any info beyond what is known to all, and contrary to what some seem to think, their logic is not watertight. We're all guesstimating and hoping. Well, some of us are hoping.

doughowk said:

If I was as prescient as some on this thread appear to be, I would have bought Apple stock 10 years ago and now would retire on their good fortune.

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Apple Stock Hits $500...
By Aaron Task, The Daily Ticker, via Yahoo! Finance

Ken

There is still a good niche for small labs dedicated to specialized services like color film development
or quality optical enlargement. Several such labs are doing well right down the street, but not in direct competition with one another. The older model of big do-everything labs is doomed by huge overhead in relation to how much business is currently available. Scale down and once again its a
realistic mom-and-pop business. And some local labs have gone out of business simply because people wanted to retire - they weren't failing financially.

keithwms said:

And what bubble is that? I am really curious what perspective you think I have...

I also confess that I have no idea what the windfarm comment is about.



Absolutely right!

And the main issue here is probably EK's lack of strategy and agility over the past decade or so; there's not much reason to suspect that EK will suddenly develop a clever strategy. Unfortunately it doesn't compare well at all to, for example, Fuji. The best hope seems to be that the film business is spun out. But again I really doubt that anybody here has any info beyond what is known to all, and contrary to what some seem to think, their logic is not watertight. We're all guesstimating and hoping. Well, some of us are hoping.

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Sorry but this rant has been a long time coming...

Would people please stop whining about not being able to get same-day local processing!!!!!!! Who gives a fig? Not I, that's for sure. I didn't invest in a bunch of 11x14 provia with the assumption that Costco or anyone else would run it for me.

Good grief, I've never seen so much pointless whining. And on a forum where members make their own emulsions and developers and papers and wax poetic about owning the whole process

Look, if convenience is your thing, or if you think your own film-derived art isn't investible any more, or if you think the splitup of Kodak is the end of analogue photography then go get a dSLR and leave us in peace!! We'll get along just fine without you, somehow...

That's all, I feel better now.

I've no need to resort to this sort of survivalism, thankfully, and doubt I ever will. My world isn't yours, so why the snarky tone? What's next, generating your own electricity just because you can?

Lots of ways to handle analog/hybrid workflow.Given the turbulence in the film world today, a little practical ecumenism would make this a happier place.

Back to the OP, the really sad thing is that Kodak is now only selling cameras of any kind that are disposable and have plastic lenses.

hate to say this, but it seems like a great time for someone
with a scanner and a stack of cd's to scan and cd-ize 120 film
in your neck of the woods. i wish i lived up there, i'd offer to it for you

it stinks that all the labs are closed down -- near me too. i have 1 mini lab
no one else for miles and miles and miles. there used to be 3 or 4 pro labs
that did knock out service even processed 11x14 chromes, now, no one left to even
process 4x5 sheets ... and 120 c41/e6 is a haul ... not consumer prices either .. $$$.
the mini lab sometimes has customers that want to have b/w film processed, the place she sent it to closed down ( see above )
so i give her a hand--- 120+35mm ... 35mm she scans, 120 i do that for her too.
its a weird world out there, as you said cgw, turbulence, who would have thought in a million years i would be processing film for a lab ?

if you want to send me your film, i'll scan it for you ... it won't be a drum but i have splurted 16x20s via laser and they look nice ...

Aristophanes said:

Back to the OP, the really sad thing is that Kodak is now only selling cameras of any kind that are disposable and have plastic lenses.

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I'm diggin' it. Two buck Holgas!

CGW said:

I've no need to resort to this sort of survivalism, thankfully, and doubt I ever will. My world isn't yours, so why the snarky tone? What's next, generating your own electricity just because you can?

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Survivalism???! Generating my own electricity?!

All I did was point out the obvious irony that APUG is a place where many take pride in "owning the whole process" and cite handcraft as being the thing that most distinguishes our work from the other thing; yet some now lament every minor inconvenience or imply that The End is Near because there isn't a full service lab next door.

All I see ahead are new beginnings and opportunities to make even more individual photographs. I don't know how my tone could possibly be any more positive.

It's abundantly clear where the sour-grapes negativity has come from throughout this thread and recent related ones.

Here's a specific example of successful small labs working symbiotically to keep overhead low: the digital lab employs only about six people in a modest space, but they sell real film and send it out to another small lab
doing traditional analog services. It comes back, they scan it to disc, then
do the digital printing in house, both color and b&w. They also have a small gallery area. It's very popular because lots of folks in the city can't
afford their own darkroom space, and want better digital work than their own skills can provide. The analog lab provides true enlarged C-prints when these are preferred. In fact, several smaller outfits work together
rather than directly competing, and they all win by needing far less space,
equipment, and personnel than big traditional labs.

Another thing that can work well in some communities is for people to band together, equip a common space very well, and share overhead cost. These collectives do very well in some areas. I wouldn't have any problem at all with sharing most of my equipment with colleagues. Now, I have to admit that the place where I live is very special in terms of the number of great people with respect for art. But collectives can work well if there are a few people with enough time on their hands to keep things in working order.

When I worked in a photofinishing lab in the 50s, we had 3 people. We worked 9-5 M-F. Our output was about 200 - 300 rolls of B&W Monday, about 150 - 200 Tuesday and down to about 50 on Friday. Holidays were bad with as many as 500 rolls. Film was mainly 620 or 120 with some smaller sizes and larger sizes.

While one person packed, one processed and printed and one delivered and picked up and also sorted and sent back some for reprints. I was process/print, my boss was driver/packer/sorter and the other person was packer of the final work.

We made our living or in my case College tuition that way.

Now, that was not a lot of film but it represented the "take" from a huge portion of Pittsburgh in the '50s and that was about 1M people. Color was on top of the figures above and would have increased it by about 20 - 50%, if that. It was all send out. People took it to their camera store, they sent it to us and we sent it out. Color was not very big then. We did some but only on rush orders with an big surcharge.

PE

keithwms said:

Survivalism???! Generating my own electricity?!

All I did was point out the obvious irony that APUG is a place where many take pride in "owning the whole process" and cite handcraft as being the thing that most distinguishes our work from the other thing; yet some now lament every minor inconvenience or imply that The End is Near because there isn't a full service lab next door.

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There wasn't a "lab next door" when George Eastman took us down this path, remember?

EK was founded on the principle of Kodak and later franchise and distributed labs owning a part of the process because it was the ONLY way to keep film produced in enough volumes to grow the business and be affordable. It was NEVER a handicraft from the EK industrial perspective. That's a particular and minuscule economic flavour you are reading in based on your personal experience, but not the market reality.

So it's not an inconvenience. It's what keeps the coating plants going, then as now, to the benefit of the "handicraft" people out there.

Do you honestly think that Kodak (or Fuji) can keep rolling billions of linear feet per year of film and have that industrial output matched by a corresponding # of darkroom geeks who pride themselves on "owning the whole process" through handicraft consumption? The bottleneck to film consumption is precisely the loss of efficient, affordable, full service labs which—in not even the remotest possible way—be compensated for by the "handicraft" darkroom set.

Those who are into "owning the whole process" owe their entire film-shooting and home processing existence to those who do not. That's an economic fact and George Eastman knew it. The entire Kodak (and Fuji) business models depend on it. Handicraft film processing and printing of roll and cartridge film is a luxury enabled by the mass consumption of lab services.*

And it's not just colour negs either. All the other raw material and supply chains feeding the substrates and emulsions depend on an aggregate economy of scale to function economically with an affordable and saleable end product. B&W film survives as a decimal point through the sheer carrying power of the whole range of colour products now, from MP film to what is left of the C-41 and E6 markets.

* Again I will point out that Ilford in the UK has perhaps figured this out. Kudos.

Aristophanes said:

... B&W film survives as a decimal point through the sheer carrying power of the whole range of colour products now, from MP film to what is left of the C-41 and E6 markets.

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Think of it this way. Pretend that tomorrow morning we wake up and Washington, in their infinite wisdom, has outlawed all private petroleum powered automobiles. But because many folks need gasoline to run their lawnmowers they didn't outlaw gasoline. Just the cars.

Hurray!! We can still go down to the local gas station and buy gas for our lawn mower, except the local gas station will be out of business. And even if some enterprising souls decide to set up lawn mower distribution stations, they can still legally buy gasoline from the refineries, but without the demand from the gajillion automobiles the refineries will close down.

Same with film. Without the critical mass to keep the suppliers of film substrate making the "film" to coat, then Efke and Lucky won't be buying any large rolls of film to coat.

And the giant in that room is Kodak. So when Goliath falls, it may not be the end. But you can bet everybody is going to look long and hard.

Kodak's got to stop being stupid fast.

What did people do before there were supermarkets on every corner?
Starve? Maybe an asteroid will collide with earth in a few years and end
photography once and for all. When the alien archaeologists arrive in a
few millions years, what a shame it will be if all you doomsayers give up
film, and nothing of that final event will be recorded except on the last
working cell phone camera on earth. Just go out and shoot film, process it, buy and shoot some more, and we'll all be fine.

Aristophanes said:

Do you honestly think that Kodak (or Fuji) can keep rolling billions of linear feet per year of film and have that industrial output matched by a corresponding # of darkroom geeks who pride themselves on "owning the whole process" through handicraft consumption?

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No, of course it's not sustainable in the long run. But yet again you seem to think that just because EK can't keep churning out products at past levels that all is lost and the sky is falling. False. A tidy profit can be earned for quite a while (years), even in a declining market. Which I have said, oh, a dozen times and whch you have apparently ignored. Did you not look at the lovely Philip Morris data?? Apparently not.

Aristophanes said:

Those who are into "owning the whole process" owe their entire film-shooting and home processing existence to those who do not.

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What? Not true at all. Those who truly own their own process will not bat an eyelid when mass-produced film is completely gone, in, oh, a decade or so.

Please just stop complaining about things not being the same as they always were and embrace the fact that change happens. And life goes on. People adapt. Companies come and companies go. Photography is way older than Kodak anyway. We'll be fine, just fine if and when they do go. But count me among those who thinks it'd be idiotic to fold up the profitable Kodak film line because of mismanagement and debts incurred in an entirely different sector.

DREW WILEY said:

What did people do before there were supermarkets on every corner?

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I know, right?! I swear, some people couldn't innovate their way out of a wet paper bag these days. It really raises serious questions about where our technology-driven culture is headed. It's 100% convenience and gee I hope somebody else knows how to solve the problem.