Kodak Files for Bankruptcy Protection 1/18/2012

keithwms · Feb 3, 2012

Alan, I think the grand connection is that for some of us, Kodak was a symbol of what US sci & tech innovation was... and should be. My other blog rant was that companies like Apple and Google and FB don't seem to be producing many jobs... yet if you ask most young kids where they'd like to work, guess what they pick. Usually not anything at all involved with making real stuff! So for some of us, this is all a big interconnected problem that starts with education.

Alan W · Feb 3, 2012

I read your blog recently on Apple and I concur,just having a little fun.I don't have any answers to the whole kodak thing,I just use their film.Strangely enough I've started using more of it recently.Subliminal I suppose.

keithwms · Feb 3, 2012

Alan W said:
I don't have any answers to the whole kodak thing,I just use their film.Strangely enough I've started using more of it recently.Subliminal I suppose.

Indeed it seems this chapter 11 thing is by far their most successful marketing ploy of late...! Maybe they should have announced they were going to stop doing digital about 10 years ago...

Polaroid products had a similar dead cat bounce.

Photo Engineer · Feb 3, 2012

Interestingly enough, Kodak rather disdained military experience. Most former military people were rather looked down on. I found that out rather quickly.

PE

keithwms · Feb 3, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Interestingly enough, Kodak rather disdained military experience. Most former military people were rather looked down on.

Really? Bizarre. I would guess that pretty much anybody with photographic knowledge was pressed into some form of military service. Jack (J.W.) Mitchell, who did a lot to advance the theory of the latent image, made some pretty important contributions to high speed photography during the war. I recall that they wanted to figure out how to make better armor and needed to see what was happening when projectiles made impact.

Then again, Jack did grumble quite a lot about Kodak but I always assumed it was about theoretical differences. He told me they willingly dropped the ball on more sensitive emulsions.

Photo Engineer · Feb 3, 2012

Yes, it is true unless one worked in one of the government contract divisions.

PE

railwayman3 · Feb 3, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Interestingly enough, Kodak rather disdained military experience. Most former military people were rather looked down on. I found that out rather quickly.

PE

I remember attending an industrial recruitment seminar quite some years ago....there seemed to be a feeling that the regulated military environment didn't encourage initiative and responsibility when people tried to move into civilian and commercial employments.
Though for good training in many areas, particularly engineering, the military training was top class, and military experience in specialist fields was sought after.

(Not saying I agreed...in fact, can't remember now why I was at the seminar!!!)

DREW WILEY · Feb 3, 2012

A bit oblique to this topic - but the Kodak r&d connection to the military etc has always intrigued me, esp with respect to film mfg. Several times over the years I have seen classified color shots which were technically far superior to anything commercially marketed during those same years. I'm aware of some of the lens distinctions
because there was a contractor for those locally (and 75 to 100K per lens would buy something pretty unusual).
Lots of question about the optics remaining, however. But I've always tended to believe my brother's old hypothesis, that classified espionage films tended to be a couple of decades ahead of commercially available fim.
Now satellite imagery has taken over to some extent; and I've seen many commercial aerial photographs from the past, like the kind the USGS used for mapmaking. Maybe a new paperback? : "Smiley's People Sneak Into
Kodak Unnoticed"; or perhaps more realistically today, "Austin Powers Sabotages Kodak's Market Shares".

Photo Engineer · Feb 3, 2012

Drew;

Kodak cameras made for the military were the best in the world. No one could beat them and only the government could afford them. We had a talk once and in it, a particular comparison was made between a Nikon F with a 50 mm lens and a Kodak military camera of very superior quality. The camera and lens, in the 70s, would have cost over $10,000! That was about 10x the Nikon.

And, having taken Kodak and USAF "management" and "planning" courses, I found that the AF was using methods in the 50s that Kodak did not even think of using until the 70s or 80s. Military management was far superior and it showed up in some of the recent military "projects". The military is not perfect, but from my POV they were superior in some ways to EK and acted more swiftly to change. Kodak was slow and stodgy. Their estimates placed digital as becoming important vs film in 2020. I argued against this BTW and was shouted down by my boss! Kodak also misestimated the cost of bulk CDs and DVDs by about a factor of 10, and thus they overpriced them.

PE

maarten m · Feb 9, 2012

a bit of good news?

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-j...03/kodak-phases-digital-businesses-film-alive

mm

michaelbsc · Feb 9, 2012

maarten m said:
a bit of good news?

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-j...03/kodak-phases-digital-businesses-film-alive

mm

I saw the bit about dropping the digi-cams come across my phone earlier this morning. That report said nothing about film, but there's no surprise in that.

As for printers, I sure hope the can make a go of the kiosk printers. I just bought one of the consumer printers this past weekend. It was on sale, I'm holed up in a hotel room for a few weeks and needed a printer/scanner (and didn't want to use the one in the hotel "business center" downstairs at all ours of the night), so I bought it.

I'm here to tell you, if this is what Perez is hanging his hat on, Kodak is doomed. I certainly won't say that it's the worst printer I've ever owned. But it's a far cry from a 21st century marvel. The fact that the help files tell me that I may have to go turn off the setting for bi-directional printing all the time is just stupid. If you know that, just have the software turn it off.

DUH!

"Push the button and we do the rest" has become "Get 25 years of software experience and it isn't too bad." That ain't gonna fly with the real world.

MB

bowie · Feb 10, 2012

maarten m said:
a bit of good news?

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-j...03/kodak-phases-digital-businesses-film-alive

mm

thanks for sharing

Film departament should be the jewel in Kodak's crown.
Imagine, Kodak making "limited edition": good old Tri-x 1960 emulsion, Technical Pan, Aerochrome, and maybe even Kodachrome, etc.
Keen Kodak users would be pleased as well as new users hooked by catchy advertisements (facebook, lomo etc)
Long live KODAK!

maarten m · Feb 10, 2012

220 film please

Ken Nadvornick · Feb 10, 2012

No no no...

I want Ilford to buy Kodak's 220 packaging machine at the yard sale!

Ken

keithwms · Feb 10, 2012

Ken Nadvornick said:
No no no...

I want Ilford to buy Kodak's 220 packaging machine at the yard sale!

Ken

Get in line, I suspect that Ron Mowrey is already holding vigil outside the gate.

Photo Engineer · Feb 10, 2012

Ilford has a 220 packaging machine. Simon has already posted here that getting the two pieces of paper and coating on the special thin support is the problem for making 220 film.

PE

Ken Nadvornick · Feb 10, 2012

Usually I go back and research earlier posts to try to keep from making bad references. This time, however, I didn't. So I could be wrong.

But I thought I remembered Simon saying that the Ilford machine was at the end of it days and would cost something like 300,000+ pounds to replace, and they didn't feel there was enough market potential for 220 to allow them to spend that kind of money and expect a sufficient return.

He very well may have also referred to paper and support issues and I missed it.

Ken

clayne · Feb 10, 2012

I believe Ilford said their 220 machine is flat out broken and has been for a while.

Photo Engineer · Feb 10, 2012

There may be more than one cause or more than one post. I remember that the "heads" and "tails" were hard to get due to low demand. But, I can agree to all of the above. It is different paper and film support involved as well so it is not just a simple issue.

PE

GraemeMitchell · Feb 10, 2012

I've skimmed some of these big yellow threads out of curiosity, and generally don't have anything to add, only that I use a great deal of Kodak film so I can only offer the limited view of someone in the trenches. I don't think the problem is not enough advertising. I think the problem is that there's a product that is nearly perfect (I mean Portra and Tri-x are incredible) that has become exceptionally difficult to use. Film is much more difficult to get good results form than digital. The good commercial film techs are a dying breed, even in big cities they're becoming rarer. Man, just try and find a decent scan. Almost everyone I know, especially pros, prefers the look of film, they just jumped shipped b/c of how difficult the workflow became. The problem of usability is what I think needs to be solved.

I've no idea what the answer would be, but film shouldn't be so difficult to use well. Why are the brownie snapshots Kodak sent out 50 years ago so much better than anything being done on a big scale today? Maybe Kodak could go full circle. Send your film back in an overnight mailer, they process it and do really top notch machine scans, not auto stuff, but actually put some good techs into it, upload to FTP, prints, etc, send the film back. But do it really well. Don't try to beat them on price, beat them on quality. Especially the scans, since scanning has always been the weak link in the film chain for prosumer and consumers.

Make it turn key high end. Sort of a portra botique that can remind people how good the stuff is. Get a ton of free coupons out via social media that gives it a test run if you order a 5 pack of film, get people going into it.

Maybe even the same thing could be done for indie and student film makers. In my mind, anything should be possible given the resources and pedigree kodak has on this stuff.

I'm dreaming w/ this stuff. I know. I'm sure there's more problems in those ideas than there is possibilities, but seems like all ideas would be good at this point.

Rudeofus · Feb 11, 2012

Graeme, Kodak went into the digital field and failed miserably. There is a big difference between expertise in chemistry and optics vs. experience in electronics and software (just watch a bunch of software engineers goof around with photo chemistry in the b&w forum here), and Kodak completely and utterly failed in this transition. PE has already elaborated somewhere in this thread on the difficulties Kodak encountered in the software field.

Ian Grant · Feb 11, 2012

Rudeofus said:
Graeme, Kodak went into the digital field and failed miserably. There is a big difference between expertise in chemistry and optics vs. experience in electronics and software (just watch a bunch of software engineers goof around with photo chemistry in the b&w forum here), and Kodak completely and utterly failed in this transition. PE has already elaborated somewhere in this thread on the difficulties Kodak encountered in the software field.

There was a point were Kodak made some of the best high end DSLR cameras in cooperation with Canon & Nikon so they could do it.

Kodak haven't had a good track record with cameras both film and digital over the past 50+ years. At a point where Fuji were beginning to enter the Western market (late 1950's) with films they were also selling some sophisticated modern cameras, Kodak were still selling Box Brownies, Brownie 127's etc and tired looking folding cameras. Sure they tried to stay as the mass market leader for entry level cameras with the repackaging of essentially 828 film in a lightproof cassette as 126, then later came up with 110 and then Disc film formats but people soon wanted better image quality and Kodak didn't have products for them to upgrade to.

A consequence was that Kodak had made a name and reputation as a supplier of down market cameras where as other manufacturers had gone the other way becoming known for high quality cameras. That reputation was impossible to shake off.

Ian

MDR · Feb 11, 2012

Ian you're so right Kodak produced some of the best sensors in term of color fidelity not so much high iso but the colors were correct. Kodak scientists and engineers knew/know their stuff both in the analogue and digital world. Their compact digicams weren't bad at all. This thread shows pretty well why Kodak failed in the digi market lack of customers trust in the companies, superior, to a lot of other companies products. Until recently most high quality Digibacks were equiped with Kodak sensors. But this is Apug so we all should rejoice that Kodak is back to Film. I am sorry for all employees that will lose their jobs and wish them the best of luck for the future. Long live Kodak long live.

Dominik

Rudeofus · Feb 11, 2012

Ian Grant said:
There was a point were Kodak made some of the best high end DSLR cameras in cooperation with Canon & Nikon so they could do it.

They could but many have stated here recently that the software driving the DCS14 was awful and one of the reasons it was hated. My point stands.

MDR · Feb 11, 2012

Rudeophus Kodak produced a lot more cameras than the DCS 14 I still use the SLR/n sometimes btw. The JPEG wasn't very good but the raw file were incidently the sensor was not produced by Kodak. The Kodak Backs were in fact a class of their own in term of color fidelity the DCS 14 still beats most modern DSLRS. Kodak shortcomings was high ISO noise and jpeg. Kodak sensors are used in a lot of High quality cameras that make Canon's and Nikon'S super DSLR look like toys in comparison.

Dominik

Kodak Files for Bankruptcy Protection 1/18/2012

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