Kodak's financial woes

[Athiril]

I think Tomalophicon may have stumbled upon a rare oasis of film availability but as a fellow Aussie I have seen very little evidence of widespread availability of these products. I live in a Qld town of about 13000 and I've just checked out the local supermarkets. We have both Coles (they carry no film) and Woolies have 5 single packs of Fuji Superia200/24 plus a few disposables. No pharmacy in town still keeps film. The one remaining minilab has Kodacolor 200 and 400 as well as disposables and a few rolls of that horrible C41 black & white film that Kodak currently makes. The minlab develops C41 one day a week. This is not a town in decline either - it has increased its population by 20% in the past 5 years.

I can think of only one outlet within 100km of me where I might be able to buy a roll of pro film such as Portra or any Ilford product and only about three places in the state capital Brisbane. Sad fact is almost nobody wants it anymore and that is not likely to change. I think we'll be able to buy B&W materials for a long time yet as long as we are prepared to pay the price but I equally think colour film is a goner. But, if things really become desperate, remember it must be a hell of a lot easier to coat B&W on the kitchen table than trying to make Kodachrome in the garden shed! OzJohn

There are several shops in cairns doing film processing, most corner stores sell E-6, and several Cairns cruise ships do on board E-6 processing last I checked.

You find things in the strangest places.

 

[CGW]

Toronto isn't anything like Australian towns or cities in that regard. From where I stand, film is very much alive and well.
I visited 3 towns with populations under 4000 over the last fortnight and was able to buy Portra 160 and Ektar in 120 in one town, Tri-x in 35mm in the next, and have 3 rolls of the colour rollfilm processed in under an hour (for 5 bucks a roll) at the next town.
Almost every supermarket sells 3 kinds of consumer film and I have never seen any that is out of date.

I have however, only seen E6 processing available in the larger cities.

That's nice. Just keep in mind market sizes. Australia's pop. is smaller than Canada's(just under 22million-vs-a bit less than 34million). California's alone is bigger than both at almost 37million. The N. American market isn't obviously film-friendly if you look over comments here. Enjoy it while you can.

 

[Erik Petersson]

Moscow and Kyiv have excellent film availability. I bought Neopan 1600 in Kyiv this month in a small shop.

 

[Aristophanes]

Moscow and Kyiv have excellent film availability. I bought Neopan 1600 in Kyiv this month in a small shop.

But it is now out of production due to low sales.

 

[railwayman3]

Another report....

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/Insight-Hometown-weary-reuters_molt-2240673646.html?x=0&.v=1

 

[j-dogg]

maybe this is a big scare to get us film nuts to go out and buy film and chemistry

 

[Jeff Kubach]

maybe this is a big scare to get us film nuts to go out and buy film and chemistry

True! The worst case if Kodak does go out of business there are other film companies still around.

Jeff

 

[MaximusM3]

True! The worst case if Kodak does go out of business there are other film companies still around.

Jeff

I see it more as a glass half empty on this one. I mean, choices already suck at this point so Kodak going out just can't be that good. For me, the loss of Tri-X, TMX, TMY and TMZ is a big loss. Someone else MAY fill their shoes for those but nobody can tell me that availability and quality control will ever be as good as with Kodak.

 

[Roger Cole]

I see it more as a glass half empty on this one. I mean, choices already suck at this point so Kodak going out just can't be that good. For me, the loss of Tri-X, TMX, TMY and TMZ is a big loss. Someone else MAY fill their shoes for those but nobody can tell me that availability and quality control will ever be as good as with Kodak.

Those are all good films, but not SO good that I couldn't just move to HP5, Delta 100, Delta 400 and Delta 3200 and not miss a beat.

I'd miss Tri-X in Diafine and end up using Delta 3200 in light where I now use that sine HP5 doesn't respond as well speed wise. I'd miss TMY-2 in 4x5 sheets unless and until Ilford made Delta 400 in sheets again, which I bet would be a real possibility if TMY-2 went away, but even so grain isn't much of a concern in 4x5 so I could happily go to HP5 for a 400 film and Acros for a 100, very low reciprocity failure film.

Color is really where the demise of Kodak would bite us.

 

[tomalophicon]

I see it more as a glass half empty on this one. I mean, choices already suck at this point so Kodak going out just can't be that good. For me, the loss of Tri-X, TMX, TMY and TMZ is a big loss. Someone else MAY fill their shoes for those but nobody can tell me that availability and quality control will ever be as good as with Kodak.

And you think we have limited choice?

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

That's unfortunate for you. Maybe your supermarkets have die-hard digital store managers.

I have k-mart, Big-W, Coles, Woolies and all of them sell a respectable offering of film and disposables. The population is around 25,000.

There was plenty of Fuji film (C-41 and E6) in many stores I passed through on my recent around Australia journey, though not in the format I was seeking. But some quirks are noteworthy: Darwin had a very small mini-lab with a lot of Ilford B&W film and papers in it; Kunanurra / WA, had Fujifilm disposables and boxed film being sold in a toy shop, above which was RetraVision (and all goods bought in RetraVision were paid for in the toy shop! ); Besides bog-standard everyday throwaways and waterproof Fuji trinkets, Broome amazingly had no film at all — entirely sold out to pearls and digis! Downwind, Perth, the biggest store I called into at Murray Street Mall, had heaps and heaps of Fuji in fridges, but not a skerrick of anything Kodak or Ilford.

Like somebody said earlier, if Kodak does go out of business there are other film companies still around. The big question is we do not know for sure just how long we have, so get busy.

 

[tomalophicon]

Fuji and Ilford should go halvies in buying Kodak's film division; Ilford could run the black and white department, and Fuji could run the colour department. Problem solved.

 

[Roger Cole]

Humm. I pretty much only shoot 35mm black and white in very low light. If I have more light I shoot black and white in 120 anyway. Grain isn't that important, but I recognize it is to other people.

I intensely hate Dektol and it's "spoils in hours at working strength" character and haven't used it since I discovered LPD in the late 80s or early 90s. But even if I did like it, I found Bromophen looks similar, but slightly better, and dies about as quickly. Relatively simple things like print developers can be compounded yourself if you must have something not readily available pre-mixed, and there's sufficient choices already made up that I can't imagine missing any one too severely. Well, ok, I would miss LPD but I could get by without it, with only some grumbling and no impact to my images. I might spend a few dollars more because it lasts so long.

But if you want Dektol it's available by either mixing your own or buying Legacy Pro:

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/74171...r-Paper-Developer-to-Make-1-Gallon?cat_id=301

Perceptol is essentially the old Kodak Microdol-X and if you want it without the Ilford name you can get that too:

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/749710-LegacyPro-Mic-X-Film-Developer-to-Make-1-Gallon?cat_id=301

The films I concede are different enough that some would miss them. Black and white chemicals are simple enough anything you can't buy under another name you can probably mix up yourself easily enough.

 

[michaelbsc]

Fuji and Ilford should go halvies in buying Kodak's film division; Ilford could run the black and white department, and Fuji could run the colour department. Problem solved.

Doesn't that require the balance sheet make sense before they make the purchases?

 

[Steve Smith]

Or they could accept it as a gift!


Steve.

 

[tomalophicon]

 

[stavrosk]

I am only wondering. Is it bad financial management or is it just the fact that film is dying?
What I mean is that Kodak has many digital products and so they must be doing something wrong. I don’t think they are having financial difficulties just because film market is shrinking. They could have profits from the digital market and they could charge the film so that they have a benefit. Unless they production of the new films is so expensive which I highly doubt. I hope film will still be produced, and not just any film. The new Portra 400 is amazing.

 

[hpulley]

I find Bromophen actually lasts quite well, better than Multigrade for sure.

I'd like both too but today if I had to choose between Kodak and Ilford I'd choose Ilford obviously as they offer a complete B&W solution to me while Kodak just offers film and chems. Fuji has instant film, color film and cut color paper so if I could only have 2/3 companies then perhaps Ilford and Fuji, much as I'd miss T-Max and Portra...

 

[graubär]

Agfa or Rollei films are still around with a large variety of b&w films, besides Ilford, efke ....
I just hope that Fuji continues with colored slide films. They (cosina) produce MF rangefinders, which only makes sense if they also produce film!
If they would stop, I hope somebody else would take over the business, probably at a smaller scale. Ilford first vanished and then reappeared....

 

[michaelbsc]

You know - for all the angst and hand wringing we have been having here - when I talked to Keith Canham about a special film order just yesterday he reports that the best he can tell is that it is business as usual at Kodak.

Granted Keith isn't exactly on the board of directors at Kodak, but he talks to folks who would "be worried about their jobs" level several times a month.

Some years ago when I did a lot of work for Fuji I was in the same place. When Fuji was expanding or contracting I couldn't get explicit details, but it was easy to gather that people were bright and optimistic or foul and worried. You didn't have to be a psychiatrist to figure it out.

I can assure you that if looked like a sinking ship from the inside people would be fleeing in droves. Apparently that isn't happening. Not saying that they aren't polishing their resume just in case. But according to Keith there isn't any apparent internal panic.

So lets put just a little positive spin in this mix.

MB

 

[mikendawn]

That's a financial woe for Kodak!

 

[semi-ambivalent]

I can assure you that if looked like a sinking ship from the inside people would be fleeing in droves.

Fleeing? Fleeing to where? The unemployment rate is 9.1% not even counting those who have just given up looking for work.

I agree with staying (realistically) optimistic, in part because pessimism saps energy, but mostly because I have no educated reason to have an opinion on Kodak's true financial state. I have no street cred, no scuttlebutt and no massive holdings of EK shares that would make me privy to insider dumping or that have me receiving midnight phone calls from Kodak board members asking for my advice.

But I think it's safe to say if I'm going to keep buying Kodak film (and I bought 50 rolls of Tri-X and a bunch of D-76 just this week), it's going to be from a Kodak that looks quite a bit different from the Kodak I see today. I don't know what to think of that. I'm practical enough to say it's over when it's over and move to a different film but I'm human too and I've grown up with that red and yellow sign and those yellow boxes and the smell of those 'chromes. I remember learning to load my mom's Kodak Brownie and all that stuff that comes with branding. Perhaps a little irrationality is allowable here, even before there's legitimate reason for sadness.

Staying optimistic, for purely selfish reasons,

s-a

 

[Roger Cole]

Fair points but I'm not a home brew/scratch mix guy. Also I doubt legacy pro- Mic-X is Microdol-X. It's probably something similar (ie metol-sulfite plus sodium chloride and perhaps some borax). I don't think Perceptol has any accelerator. It has taken years of testing and practice with the materials I use and basically I don't want to change. It's a pain. I want my Kodak and Ilford!

Well, fair enough I suppose. But for print developers there just isn't that much difference in my experience. I could even toss my LPD and my prints and their viewers would never know the difference.

 

[Roger Cole]

I find Bromophen actually lasts quite well, better than Multigrade for sure.

I'd like both too but today if I had to choose between Kodak and Ilford I'd choose Ilford obviously as they offer a complete B&W solution to me while Kodak just offers film and chems. Fuji has instant film, color film and cut color paper so if I could only have 2/3 companies then perhaps Ilford and Fuji, much as I'd miss T-Max and Portra...

It's been decades, well more than one decade anyway, since I tried Bromophen so I'll defer to that. Memory is a slippery thing sometimes.

I agree though, if I had to lose one I'd rather lose Kodak than Ilford, at least as long as the discussion is confined to black and white.

 

[fstop]

Not going to lose Kodak, there is too much money to be made from film,paper, etc sales.