"It's the labs, stupid" should become the marching song for APUG.
I empathize with your own situation but I don't agree with that. I don't think that's a good fire line to work on. Lab overhead, the equipment cost, the personnel cost and idle time, the shipping issues... I think we'd be much better off educating people on how easy it is to do their processing at home. Like it or not, processing labs will be gone long before the film and chemicals are.
I empathize with your own situation but I don't agree with that. I don't think that's a good fire line to work on. Lab overhead, the equipment cost, the personnel cost and idle time, the shipping issues... I think we'd be much better off educating people on how easy it is to do their processing at home. Like it or not, processing labs will be gone long before the film and chemicals are.
No Aristophanes, you are the one who doesn't get it.
You keep asserting conditions A+B+C+D+ etc ad nauseum to keep film production alive. Gotta have motion pictures, gotta have labs, gotta have lots of new cameras, gotta have mass marketing, gotta have mass produced chemicals etc. ... gotta have Kodak!!! ....or else the whole industry will just go *poof* and vanish entirely . Nonsense. This is an entirely new kind of market, post Kodak as we know it, and most of us have already adapted ourselves to that many years ago. And the remaining companies that adapt to that will turn a handsome profit. You keep trying to press a square peg into a round hole- to make the future market the same as the past. Of course that won't work. Isn't that stating the freakin' obvious? :confused: But that does not mean that film will vanish. It means that end-user costs will rise, that there will be fewer suppliers and fewer varieties of film (so what), but those of us who know the value of the products will continue to produce photographs and enjoy ourselves. But at the same time, we shall see the value of our work go up, not down. People who understand that and embrace it will see their film work increase in value.
Obviously, we have 40 pages of you wanting one thing to happen, and most of the rest of us scratching our heads wondering why you keep insisting that we all need to follow you on some incredibly narrow and tortuous slalom down a very steep hill towards the eventual demise of film. If your motive is to say that and make it clear that you think it's an impossible mission and cry about it, haven't you accomplished that already? I mean, has it ever once crossed your mind that we've heard it all before... years ago? And that if you offered one, just one creative idea then perhaps people might be more willing to listen?
If we all need to take fewer shots, then let's make 'em count. Let's print, let's help people understand the worth of what we do, and let's not try to play CEO of a bankrupt company, okay? Plenty of ways we can increase the value of analogue output. Getting teary eyed over every lab that goes belly-up will not help anyone. If I need convenience or speed, I use the other technology. If I need one of a kind output and I want to own every step of the process, I shoot film. Guess what, the vast majority of us do that. Surprise.
I think there are two types of film users.
1. Those who do everything on their own, because they want to, for lots of different reasons, like liking the results better, or enjoying the process, etc.
2. Those who simply like the results, and it's for these people the convenience of a quality lab is important.
I believe the future market will be made up of both types, and Kodak will be faced with the trouble of trying to serve both.
Ron, I suspect that there is still considerable value in some of Kodak's chemistry and hence it will be sold as part of the restructuring. Anything of value will be sold off... it has to be. Creditors simply won't take no for an answer. You'll get to see Perez's undies on fleabay, just watch and wait.
Aristophanes, there's nothing to rebut. You've locked yourself into the old-Kodak business model that requires scaled-up production of consumer and MP film and "convenient" processing to compete with digital. That's your problem! And you're asking people to solve an impossible problem of your own invention and then implying that film production at other companies will grind to a halt if Kodak doesn't solve their own internal problems i.e. legacy costs. Will you ever see this point? If not then I simply see no reason to continue discussing this with you.
Look, Kodak's current leadership wouldn't hire George Eastman himself if we were back in 1892. They are clueless. We get that. Everybody gets that. It's not worth anybody's time to belabor the point and try to solve their current structure- we don't have all the inside facts and figures. We do know that they'll have to spin film production out from under their other deadweight or it'll die under their current direction. If and when their film production does go under, Ilford and Fuji and others will get a nice little bump. Good for them, they earned it.
Aristophanes said:#1 is dependent economically on #2.
This is why the Kodak motto included "...we do the rest."
If #2 goes poof due to a critical mass loss, then #1 is coating plates at home.
It's all about demand and factors shaping it. Why the sustained incomprehension of the irrefutable direction in demand?
Because it's moot! It's blazingly obvious to those of us who shoot film and digital what the strengths and weaknesses are. People who grumble and argue to try to wind back the clock are... well, they're going to get their clocks cleaned. This isn't about bringing back a mass market for consumer products, or convenience, or cost per print; it hasn't been for a decade or more. It's about the value of the final product.
Moreover, regarding the market left in Kodak's wake: you guys keep implying that Kodak's current problems = problems for other manufacturers = demise of film. It's as if you are completely oblivious to the fact that Kodak's mismanagement got them into this spot. Fuji is not bankrupt; Ilford is not bankrupt, and neither of them has all of Kodak's high-priced dead weight. So now you're going to argue that because you can't make the numbers work out for Kodak... after they clearly effed themselves over for a decades or more... that the rest of us need to accept that the end is near? lol
Look, this is what chapter 11 does, is separates the wheat from the chaff. It won't happen overnight, and it isn't something you can do in a forum thread using public domain info from google. But it'll be clear soon enough where the core value of the company was, and if there's any left after Perez.
Value of the final product? I know no pros now who make a living any longer--if ever--from film-based photography.
Does anyone know how many plants world wide Kodak has still producing film?
One. And the world wide demand can apparently be met with about 35-50% of its capacity, but that demand is shrinking rapidly.
But I think it also makes paper, so there's other demand. Irrespective, there's no place left to cut production. At least that's how I understand it. Ron probably knows better.
This is nonsense and complete hearsay.
That's what I've heard them say to me for the last 5-8 years--yup, hearsay. Some never shot film for commercial/editorial work at all. What's so surprising about that?
As for professionals making a living from film photography, there are thousands world wide doing so and this does not include film cinematographers. Kodak's entire professional lineup of sheet films in B&W and Color is geared to the professional. I knew quite a few personally and that over a span of 60+ years. And it was not hearsay, it was personal 1:1 conversation with professionals, sometimes at the PPA meetings. (Professional Photographers of America) for those here who are clueless. I was a member for many many years.
Hilarious, this is exactly what hearsay is - what you've heard them say to you. You cannot possibly know every pro photographer in all encompassing styles.
Think the joke's on you. Can only speak for those I know and none shoot film as part of their business--hardly unusual in 2012.
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