Kodak Warning + Later Clarification

[pentaxuser]

. Is there a requirement in England for public exposure?

I thought it was obligatory but was wrong. As a result I was arrested and will appear in court on Monday

I couldn't help an attempt at what used to be the stock-in-trade of the one liner end-of-pier comedian beloved of seaside holiday audiences



pentaxuser

 

[bluechromis]

This is wrong on many levels. Kodak was the pioneer of digital tech. They invented the digital camera in the 70s, and the first wave of digital SLRs had Kodak-made sensors.

The reality was that there's nothing the Kodak management could do. Absolutely nothing. You are forgetting how huge Kodak was at their peak: over $200 billion (!) in annual revenue (adjusted for inflation), which is about as much as Microsoft made in 2024. And Microsoft is a $3.9 trillion (!) company.

The imaging market today, all of it, cannot support a company of such size.

What they did is similar to what Fujifilm did - mostly got out of imaging and diversified into completely different fields, but unlike Fujifilm they ended up splitting into smaller companies. The healthiest part of former Kodak is Eastman Chemical today (EMN) which is worth $8 billion, followed by Carestream Health which is private but doing over $1.5B a year in revenue. Eastman Kodak is microscopic in comparison, with total enterprise value of less than half a billion.

TLDR: Kodak management wasn't nearly as incompetent as most people think, and the most successful survived parts of their business simply aren't as known because they no longer use the brand.

Some people say that Kodak management squandered its early lead in digital and threw away its chance to dominate that market. Xerox PARC pioneered the graphical user interface. But Xerox upper management failed to appreciate its potential. Apple and Microsoft made billions with it instead.

 

[bluechromis]

Well, maybe MACO will acquire the rights to the Kodak film brands. Then they can sell Tri-X under five different names with different box speeds.

 

[dcy]

Some people say that Kodak management squandered its early lead in digital and threw away its chance to dominate that market. Xerox PARC pioneered the graphical user interface. But Xerox upper management failed to appreciate its potential. Apple and Microsoft made billions with it instead.

Fun fact for any non-Unix users on this thread. The Unix/Linux graphics system is called "X", named after Xerox.

 

[Steven Lee]

Some people say that Kodak management squandered its early lead in digital and threw away its chance to dominate that market. Xerox PARC pioneered the graphical user interface. But Xerox upper management failed to appreciate its potential. Apple and Microsoft made billions with it instead.

It was simply not appealing (borderline stupid) for Kodak to dominate such microscopic market as the digital imaging market. If you combine the revenue of digital imaging divisions of Sony, Nikon, and Fujifilm today, combined they are much smaller than Kodak alone was at their peak!

For some reason people keep missing the crucial point: digital tech was a massive value destroyer in imaging. From the perspective of a trillion dollar company, there is no money in imaging. It's a market not worthy of being in. Period. And back then, adjusted for inflation and modern P/E ratios, Kodak was a trillion dollar company. And Kodak's management understood this really well.

They squandered nothing.

 

[koraks]

EK recognized perfectly well in the mid 1990s that they were a consumables company, with a business model and structure geared towards continuous process and batch manufacturing. They also understood that digital photography would revolve around equipment/devices, much like other consumer electronics, and that this just wasn't really part of their DNA - and they likely understood quite well that this would never make the kind of massive, recurrent-revenue business model that they had been running up to that point. If we look back at it from today's perspective we can only admit they were right all along. The digital camera bubble burst several years ago. Fuji put its money right where Kodak also tried to put it, i.e. consumables, and proved that this was the right approach. There are plenty of contributing reasons for Kodak's relative lack of success; managerial oversight however is grossly overstated probably because it's so much fun to take the p*** on 'bean counters'. When in doubt and excrement has hit the ventilator, find a scapegoat.

 

[dcy]

In the end, the era of digital cameras was very short. A blip in Kodak's history.

 

[koraks]

In the end, the era of digital cameras was very short. A blip in Kodak's history.

Yes, precisely.

 

[thinkbrown]

Fun fact for any non-Unix users on this thread. The Unix/Linux graphics system is called "X", named after Xerox.

I don't think this is true? I believe X was chosen as a name at MIT because Stanford had a windowing system named W. So X was logically the next big thing.

 

[dcy]

I don't think this is true? I believe X was chosen as a name at MIT because Stanford had a windowing system named W. So X was logically the next big thing.

I checked. It looks like you're right.

 

[albireo]

Well, maybe MACO will acquire the rights to the Kodak film brands. Then they can sell Tri-X under five different names with different box speeds.

They'll call it Rollei Quad-X.

but don't be too hard on Maco. They have good deals going from time to time. I just bought a few bricks of 120 HP5+ from them for 7.5 Euro/piece.

That's a great price which renders Kentmere 200/400 in 120 essentially meaningless for me.

 

[bluechromis]

In the end, the era of digital cameras was very short. A blip in Kodak's history.

Yeah, digital "camera shipments dropped 94% between 2010 and 2023."
One could say that phones are technically digital cameras. But they seem different enough from standalone cameras to be considered a different animal.

But the instant photography market has been growing and generates considerable revenue for Fuji. This is presumably partly because it is more consumable-based.

Digital camera makers tried to make their products more consumable by constantly promoting new designs with more megapixels and features. But for some users, the need for new designs has plateaued, and they don't feel they need tons more megapixels.

Cell phone manufacturers do similar things to convince consumers that they frequently need to replace their phones. They have been pretty successful with this. But this may plateau as well, and people feel their current phones are capable enough. This is where software comes to the rescue. Eventually, the older phones get to where they cannot support the latest software, even though they are otherwise perfectly functional.


https://petapixel.com/2024/08/22/the-rise-and-crash-of-the-camera-industry-in-one-chart/

 

[bluechromis]

There's something I don't understand about the fall of the old Kodak. People say that Kodak's not playing a bigger role in the digital photography market was not due to management's failure to anticipate the growth in digital sales. People say that Kodak viewed digital as a small market that didn't use consumables, so it wasn't worth it for them to get into it. Based upon this, it seems Kodak management foresaw the growth in digital and thus must have anticipated the decline of analog sales.

It is said over and over that the rise of digital photography was pretty much the sole cause of Kodak's collapse. But if Kodak was such a huge company that film was just one part of the business, and if they knew film sales would decline, why didn't they just offload the film division and carry on with the other divisions?

 

[MattKing]

There's something I don't understand about the fall of the old Kodak. People say that Kodak's not playing a bigger role in the digital photography market was not due to management's failure to anticipate the growth in digital sales. People say that Kodak viewed digital as a small market that didn't use consumables, so it wasn't worth it for them to get into it. Based upon this, it seems Kodak management foresaw the growth in digital and thus must have anticipated the decline of analog sales.

It is said over and over that the rise of digital photography was pretty much the sole cause of Kodak's collapse. But if Kodak was such a huge company that film was just one part of the business, and if they knew film sales would decline, why didn't they just offload the film division and carry on with the other divisions?

Most of Kodak's employees - Eastman Kodak and its international subsidiaries - were engaged in distribution and marketing of relatively high margin products.
Photographic film, printing industry film products, X-Ray and microfilm, big expensive ($100,000.00+) photocopiers and chemicals.
Plus a bunch of lines like commercial AV.
Chemical manufacturing was based on the photo-chemical world, but arguably could have been re-purposed effectively. But instead of being re-structured, it was sold off and became Eastman Chemical.
After several very tough years, Eastman Chemical became very successful on its own.
All the rest were massively affected by changes in the marketplace - photography, commercial printing, X-Ray, AV, even photocopiers.
And when those markets changed, Eastman Kodak and its subsidiaries were left with a large and expensive employee base, trying to chase a dwindling market.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Most of Kodak's employees - Eastman Kodak and its international subsidiaries - were engaged in distribution and marketing of relatively high margin products.
Photographic film, printing industry film products, X-Ray and microfilm, big expensive ($100,000.00+) photocopiers and chemicals.
Plus a bunch of lines like commercial AV.
Chemical manufacturing was based on the photo-chemical world, but arguably could have been re-purposed effectively. But instead of being re-structured, it was sold off and became Eastman Chemical.
After several very tough years, Eastman Chemical became very successful on its own.
All the rest were massively affected by changes in the marketplace - photography, commercial printing, X-Ray, AV, even photocopiers.
And when those markets changed, Eastman Kodak and its subsidiaries were left with a large and expensive employee base, trying to chase a dwindling market.

Eastman tried in the early digital camera market, producing many different models. They had the patents on much of the digital environment back then. But I guess their film-loving heart wasn't in it as the regular camera makers like Nikon, Canon and the others just made better cameras, digital and all.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Yeah, digital "camera shipments dropped 94% between 2010 and 2023."
One could say that phones are technically digital cameras. But they seem different enough from standalone cameras to be considered a different animal.

But the instant photography market has been growing and generates considerable revenue for Fuji. This is presumably partly because it is more consumable-based.

Digital camera makers tried to make their products more consumable by constantly promoting new designs with more megapixels and features. But for some users, the need for new designs has plateaued, and they don't feel they need tons more megapixels.

Cell phone manufacturers do similar things to convince consumers that they frequently need to replace their phones. They have been pretty successful with this. But this may plateau as well, and people feel their current phones are capable enough. This is where software comes to the rescue. Eventually, the older phones get to where they cannot support the latest software, even though they are otherwise perfectly functional.


https://petapixel.com/2024/08/22/the-rise-and-crash-of-the-camera-industry-in-one-chart/

Cellphones aren't technically cameras, they are. Especially when compared to P&S cameras that many of these people would use otherwise. Aftre all, billions of people shoot bilions of pictures daily. Many are people who wouldn't have a separate camera if not for cellphones.

 

[koraks]

But if Kodak was such a huge company that film was just one part of the business,

Was it? I think it relied to a very large extent on consumables associated specifically with analog photography. Today's it's different of course.

 

[chuckroast]

Cellphones aren't technically cameras, they are. Especially when compared to P&S cameras that many of these people would use otherwise. Aftre all, billions of people shoot bilions of pictures daily. Many are people who wouldn't have a separate camera if not for cellphones.

The problem is that cell phones no longer take pictures in the traditional sense. They increasingly use machine assisted processing - aka "AI" - to make the picture you wanted vs. what you actually took. This makes for better family snapshots and IG posts, but it also makes photography far less intentional.
I am not criticizing this in an of itself. But I no longer regard cell phone pictures as photographic but rather as AI constructs of a photo.

The distinction is important especially since AI generated media is already well on its way to robbing said media not only of its intentionality, but if its very credibility. One needs only to scroll almost any social media forum to see all manner of these constructs. Right now, they're easy to spot. They won't always be. This has profound importance to human interaction, journalism, fact checking and so on.

 

[dcy]

Digital camera makers tried to make their products more consumable by constantly promoting new designs with more megapixels and features. But for some users, the need for new designs has plateaued, and they don't feel they need tons more megapixels.

Yeah. Within the digital photography industry, my camera is considered lackluster --- it is a micro four thirds camera (M43) --- but I swear I have never felt remotely limited by its megapixel count. I like M43 because it's so portable (smaller lenses); my camera is water-proof and has amazing stabilization. But all this has also plateaued. My camera is two versions old, and while I am glad that there are new revisions coming out every few years, they don't yet have enough features to make me go out and actually buy a new version.

 

[chuckroast]

Yeah. Within the digital photography industry, my camera is considered lackluster --- it is a micro four thirds camera (M43) --- but I swear I have never felt remotely limited by its megapixel count. I like M43 because it's so portable (smaller lenses); my camera is water-proof and has amazing stabilization. But all this has also plateaued. My camera is two versions old, and while I am glad that there are new revisions coming out every few years, they don't yet have enough features to make me go out and actually buy a new version.

I am much reminded of the Hi Fi wars of the 1970s. Each year the big guys - Pioneer, Kenwood, Sony, Marantz, et al - would trot out their latest "improved" receivers, preamps, amps, and so on. But they were already really, really good. By the end of the decade, these improvements were pretty much inaudibly different between manufacturers who then had to try and compete in areas like speaker design. Ironically, it took the fidelity of a digital medium - Compact Disc - to expose the limitations of that equipment and the manufacturers went through another cycle of sonic improvements. That too hit a wall of declining returns. Today, any halfway decent receiver is more than good enough for most sound reproduction tasks.

Digital photography is in much the same place. I have a 10 year old 12 Mpx Leica D-Lux Typ and a similar aged 24Mpx Nikon D750. On paper, the D750 is better in every way - higher resolution, better dynamic range, lower noise, and so on. In practice the D-Lux gets far more use just because it is lighter and more convenient and just ... good enough for 75% of what I shoot digitally.

I suppose if someone comes out with a cost effective Gigapixel camera with an f/1.4 lens and no visible noise, it might be tempting to upgrade to avoid ever having to carry and change lenses, but until then I so no purpose is spending a metric ton of money to go to Nikon Z or a Leica Mirrorless/M11 ...

(Let me be clear that if someone wants to give me an M11 with all aspheric lenses as a gift, I would not turn it down

 

[cmacd123]

Tariffs

I'm trying to not let this stuff change my habits. I am extremely fond of imports

I did change my habits, I now avoid product like film that say "made in USA" I am Guessing that I will Have to Buy the ADOX version of HC-110, even if it costs more than the stuff from Michigan.. the grocery stores around here are pushing Canadian and then Mexican Produce.

 

[cmacd123]

big expensive ($100,000.00+) photocopiers and chemicals.
Plus a bunch of lines like commercial AV.

The Kodak Photocopiers were Impressive monsters, using a loop of 15 innh wide polyester film. ( with a photocathode coating ) they sold that business many decades ago. one place I worded had a couple of them and two Kodak "techs" would clean and adjust then while attempting to keep toner off the gray business suit that they were expected to wear by Kodak Policy.

 

[Agulliver]

Phones may make use of AI and do a lot of tweaking of the image before committing it to memory....but that doesn't change the fact that for the vast majority of people, phones have replaced a separate camera. Much as cameras sprouted features such as auto focus, auto exposure and them programmed exposure modes....digital cameras and phone cameras process the image because the average consumer *cannot* do it themselves. And that's not a swipe at the average human, it's not a skill they possess or particularly want to learn.

I won't go down the hi-fi/CD analogy except to say that I have inside knowledge and consider the CD to be the biggest con of the 80s and 90s. But essentially the electronics of amplifiers were so good by the mid 70s that any improvements were incremental...so the audio manufacturers had to come up with something to persuade people to part with their cash. The digital camera, on the other hand, was genuinely something new that offered possibilities that did not exist before.

A number of photo related companies didn't really know what to do when the digital revolution came around because film photography does rely on selling consumers more films and more developing services or chemicals. Digital photography was never going to result in people buying memory cards at the same rate they bought film, or a new camera every 6 months. The entire market changed radically and then changed fundamentally again when phone cameras became ubiquitous. Let's face it, even a low end Android phone today has a camera as good as most P&S 35mm cameras of the 80s and 90s....and they were sufficient for the vast majority of users.