More Rochester news about Kodak

[waynecrider]

Stupid question, but where is Kodak at the forefront in any technology outside maybe film? I was under the impression that they're core photo business was imaging chips. We all know it's not their printers or P&S's. So what's their big money maker?

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

So what's their big money maker?

Methinks you've hit the nail squarely on its head...

Ken

 

[fong]

Do some REAL marketing to convince photo enthusiasts and artists that film is a beautiful (but, yes, niche) medium and they are missing something by not using it. Continue to introduce films that make digital even more so look like crap. Find a way to apply your film technologies to readily available, economical, everybody can afford it, digital output. Market film to people (ie your mother) who don't want to ^%$#% around with computers. Get the photo magazines to run an article about film here and there. Make up with Walmart.

Generally, I don't disagree with what's being said here (and I do wish Kodak and other film manufacturers would make some sort of a marketing push), but there are a few factors that make me think this strategy would be ineffective at getting the general public into using (more) film.

For starters, the lack of easily-available film cameras is a big impediment. Sure you can get some crappy P&S at the local pharmacy or top of the line Nikon F6 or rangefinders but the variety isn't there. And you need to know and be determined enough to find the cameras that do exist. (Not everyone has the time or desire to seek out used gear in good condition.)

Shooting with a crappy P&S is not a good way to showcase film (just like shooting a crappy digital P&S are not a fair representation of what digital is capable of). You may end up doing film a disservice by pushing people to try film with a crappy camera when people think they can get similar results by using a crappy digital camera but without the perceived hassle of film.

Now, think of yourself as Joe Consumer (or mom) who already has a digital camera that's "good enough" (often as part of their cell phones). What incentive is there to try film when I already have what I need and is predictable?

So, ultimately, Kodak ends up trying to sell film to the artist or photography enthusiast, people who typically know what they want and know where to get it. Advertising would basically be preaching to the converted, so what's in it for them? Would it grow their film market? It's hard to predict whether it would.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Those "crappy" P&S cameras are one of the biggest sellers for both Fuji and Kodak, so don't run them down!

PE

 

[fong]

Those "crappy" P&S cameras are one of the biggest sellers for both Fuji and Kodak, so don't run them down!

PE

Ha, OK, point taken. I didn't mean to disparage the P&S, anything that gets people shooting film and keeping it thriving is fine with me.

But if they are already the biggest sellers, then why have film sales not grown? Are the cameras being sold to people who use them once and never go back to them? Are they disposables that just end up in the back of people's drawers? Or is it saying more about Fuji and Kodak's inability to sell their other products?

 

[Photo Engineer]

See the other threads! Motion Picture film sales are going down as are E6 film sales. On balance, and factoring in the economy, things are sliding downhill fast.

PE

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Ektachrome 100 vs costs 14 dollars , plus 6 dollars development and 4 dollars scan here. And I have to mile 70 kms 3 times and invest 15 hours total at the traffic. I think in US everything is cheaper but distances are larger and life is faster and time is more limited to a person who works.
So there is no way to rescue Kodak from here or there , I guess .

Other way , Panasonic new camera costs 40 dollars and offer couple of ten thousands picture that you can print at home. No home consumer is dumb enough to spend his her life and money to save Kodak , except me , I will always use tri x but at 8 mm format after all. When the winter spending cuts , I will buy a 8mm camera with single shot option and 4600 APUG photograps per 11 dollars. I will pyro and palladium tone the positives and fill my gallery with scans.

 

[removed account4]

threads like this are quite depressing ...
if there is a huge push to get people to buy film and shoot film
it will fall flat on its face because most of infrastructure
to have film processed has been dismantled. not everyone wants
to process film themselves. mom+pops are boarded up, and fuji+kodak
have stopped "send out / pick up " services at most places.
it seems the niche/boutique market is for people who process themselves
or have the means to have a custom lab process+print their film.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Agree ,

E6 film is ultra expensive and my photolab said there are two persons per month to come and negative film got developed. His main business is weddings and printing ugly red cheeked , margarine look skinned new married digital recorded couples pictures for chinese made thick albums.
I think no digital people goes and orders prints from their machines also. And lcd screens are excellent and hated the prints myself also. I had been bought a Sony for 70 dollars with Tessar zoom lens with 5 aspheric Zeiss lens elements !!

 

[nickrapak]

When the winter spending cuts , I will buy a 8mm camera with single shot option and 4600 APUG photograps per 11 dollars. I will pyro and palladium tone the positives and fill my gallery with scans.

I would recommend a 16mm camera over an 8mm or super 8 if you are looking to do stills, unless you are into an incredibly grainy look. 16mm is still cheaper than 35mm, and you still get a massive amount of frames per roll, but you have approximately 4x the image size.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Nick ,

I would never buy this kind of camera until there is the Leica one. I love grain , especially at Leica and I dont think that it would be unusuabally grainy cos they cast it to the big screen. I will not print anything with it but scan and put to the APUG. I did not go more than 300 meters from my home 5 times in 2 years and I have no one to photograph or show the prints except here.

Umut

 

[DWThomas]

threads like this are quite depressing ...
if there is a huge push to get people to buy film and shoot film
it will fall flat on its face because most of infrastructure
to have film processed has been dismantled. not everyone wants
to process film themselves. mom+pops are boarded up, and fuji+kodak
have stopped "send out / pick up " services at most places.
it seems the niche/boutique market is for people who process themselves
or have the means to have a custom lab process+print their film.

Yes, I see this as a pretty discouraging factor. I shot a roll of 35 mm Provia around the end of December and took it to what passes for my nearest pro oriented store. They send it to another store location and apparently now hold work until they get enough to justify running the machine -- took me two and half weeks to get the film back. I've also shot some 120 color in various forms to get the thrill of seeing it, but I have to admit for most stuff where I want color, I go with "other" technology.

B&W I do here -- it's my "art" medium -- and hey, it's fun!

 

[erikg]

Maybe half frame would be thrifty enough? Before going this 8mm route I would suggest picking up a home movie shot in this format and test out scanning a few frames. They are crazy small!

 

[hpulley]

Develop it yourself to be thrifty! People say they don't want to but it is so easy and cheap, cents per roll for B&W (HC-110) and under $1/roll for C-41. You can see it in minutes, not weeks and it will be done properly.

Kodak makes some good film but they really need to think about what they're doing. Living off patents, some sensors in cameras, the cut throat inkjet market and business to business just isn't unique these days; you can't swing a dead cat without hitting companies doing the same thing. Portra, that's hard to compete with! Don't they realize this? No, obviously not.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Erik ,

I watched Leicina at youtube and I did not more smooth , rounded , three dimensional face than it. Its like a balloon filled with full pressure and ready to explode. I learned that it is possible to take single shots with it , why ? Because Leica feeled its feasible. Small scans are ok for me. And it is possible to make your Eisenstein like movie with it. I hope nothing goes wrong and I could invest in it. I have a Rollei 35S and it doesnt mean I will not use it but unable to take whatever I see and want to see later and investing 15 dollars per roll , making me nervous.

 

[removed account4]

while it is possible to use a 8mm camera to make stills it is probably
less time consuming to buy a thousand feet of movie film ( 5222 ) and just
use that ... in a half frame ..

can you get 8mm movie film processed in turkey ?
there aren't many places left that process the b/w film. whenever i shot it
on my bolex i was shipping it to switzerland via fujilabs.

its about 1/4 the frame size of 110
enlarging, well you need an enlarger that can accept
a recessed lensboard a 12.5 mm lens ( "normal" ) internegative and print
or use a longer lens and enlarge a handful of frames onto a sheet of paper or film (
then print or enlarge those frames ( they will be the size of a 35mm frame ) ...
even with the leica, each step degrades the image..

 

[waynecrider]

I ran across this info on the net about Kodak's 2010 year performance and their Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group performance. They look like their doing better then the year before, so it's not all Doom and Gloom although 4th quarter was off.

On the basis of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), the company reported a full-year 2010 loss from continuing operations of $58 million, or $0.22 per share, reflecting a $174 million improvement as compared with a loss of $232 million, or $0.87 per share in the year-ago period. The company’s digital businesses delivered $301 million in earnings from operations for the year, a $308 million improvement from 2009.

For the fourth quarter of 2010, the company reported revenues of $1.927 billion, a 25% decrease from the year-ago quarter. Revenue from the company’s core growth businesses increased by 23%, while overall digital revenue totaled $1.488 billion, a 25% decrease from $1.991 billion in the prior-year quarter. This revenue decline largely reflects the timing of intellectual property licensing revenues as well as industry-related pricing pressures in Prepress Solutions and Digital Capture & Devices, partially offset by the revenue increase in the company’s core growth businesses. Revenue from the company’s traditional business decreased 25% to $439 million for the fourth quarter.

Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group full-year 2010 sales were $1.767 billion, a 22% decline from the prior year. Full-year 2010 earnings from operations for the segment were $62 million, compared with $159 million in the prior year. Fourth-quarter sales were $439 million, a 25% decline from the year-ago quarter. Fourth-quarter loss from operations for the segment was $3 million, compared with earnings on the same basis of $53 million in the year-ago period. This decrease in earnings was primarily driven by industry-related declines in volumes and increased raw material costs, partially offset by cost reductions across the segment.

 

[B&Wpositive]

Dun dun dun...

http://pmanewsline.com/2011/03/03/wsj-n-j-investors-seeks-kodak-sale-or-turnaround/

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Jnanian ,

I can find developer tank from Russia. People hang the developed film to a bathroom apparatus and wait to be dried. I am not remembering now who said that but best methodwas the German Soldiers method to open the roll on to towel and wait the water slips from 1 centimeters.
I sent a pm to you.

Umut

 

[kb3lms]

Now, think of yourself as Joe Consumer (or mom) who already has a digital camera that's "good enough" (often as part of their cell phones). What incentive is there to try film when I already have what I need and is predictable?

Yes, but where are the pictures? Mom doesn't get to sit with Joe at the kitchen table any more and look at the latest pictures from the grandkid's soccer game last Saturday. Trying to look at those pictures on the back of the camera or on the phone just doesn't do it. (The teenagers just put them on facebook straight from the phone anyway - they don't even want the P&S camera any longer.)

MY mother gave up on pictures years ago when she figured out she had to use some computerized-thing at Wally-World to get pictures from the new camera she bought. My Mother-in-law received a nice Canon P&S digital as a gift a few years back and I've never seen a picture from the thing. She's got boxes of film pictures going back to before my wife was a baby that she still hauls out, but ZERO pictures in the last 6 or 7 years.

That's my point. Somewhere, an opportunity is being missed.

 

[kb3lms]

Are the cameras being sold to people who use them once and never go back to them

Yes.

From my limited market sample of 24 parents on a kid soccer team (not counting myself), ranging from one avid photo enthusiast to several "phone to facebook" picture takers and mostly digital P&S owners, the P&S owners are mostly disappointed with their inability to conveniently get a quality photograph from their digital unit that they can show to someone. They don't see digital as easier - they see it as a pain. I know, because they always ask me where I get film for my cameras because they don't know where to get film any longer for their cameras.

The one photo enthusiast lady bought a high quality inkjet, so she's all set.

 

[kb3lms]

Panasonic new camera costs 40 dollars and offer couple of ten thousands picture that you can print at home.

Referring to the 24 soccer parents above, I can't even get these folks (who buy and try to use those $40 digital things) to answer an email about tomorrow's game. How many pictures do you think they really print off of their computer?

In the "not-so-old" days, you (as a soccer mom) dumped your roll(s) of film off at the 1-hour processor in the supermarket when you went in for your groceries (probably on the way home from the game) and you picked up your pictures on the way out the door an hour later. You looked at them when you got home. (and good picture or bad picture - it still used up a picture's worth of paper which brought Kodak, Fuji, Konica, etc. $$$)

I guess what I am saying is that in this "new, wonderful age" we don't have what we had 15 years ago. There is an opportunity being missed somewhere.

 

[Klainmeister]

My parents recently ditched their expensive Canon digital because they never printed them and now go out and shoot their old PS Minolta and get them developed at a local store and printed. It's funny how the digital cameras actually create more of a hassle. It used to be, take pictures, drop roll off, pick up prints. Now it's download, sort, print (if you feel inclined), which I find actually takes MORE time than not.

I agree, if they ran ad campaigns aimed at reminding people what is was like to once hold a picture, there's a decent chance people would start digging out their old gear for both nostalgia and practically reasons. My $.02

 

[removed account4]

the missed opportunity is a class on how to use a basic point and shoot camera
( film or that other thing ) most people have no clue how to even use "fill flash" ...

 

[lns]

Yes.

From my limited market sample of 24 parents on a kid soccer team (not counting myself), ranging from one avid photo enthusiast to several "phone to facebook" picture takers and mostly digital P&S owners, the P&S owners are mostly disappointed with their inability to conveniently get a quality photograph from their digital unit that they can show to someone. They don't see digital as easier - they see it as a pain. I know, because they always ask me where I get film for my cameras because they don't know where to get film any longer for their cameras.

The one photo enthusiast lady bought a high quality inkjet, so she's all set.

You are so right. Our friends and neighbors all have digital cameras, though most hate them, and most can't get a decent print. But everyone likes the convenience. That said, many, many folks are just using their cellphones anyway, instead of a complicated digital p&s. The cellphone is the true heir of the film p&s. As well as the videocamera.

But the people I know at least aren't going back to film. A digital camera is something you just have. It's the latest and greatest. Especially now it's in cellphones, which you can update fairly cheaply every two years.

I do think we're moving into a post-print culture. I think people don't see the need for 4x6 prints anymore. Digital cameras make getting a set of 4x6 prints very difficult. But people have discovered they like what digital cameras make easy, which is photos on the computer and on Facebook.

I do think a smart marketer could make film and prints seem hip, and could play up how easy they are compared to digital. It just doesn't appear that any of the film companies have either that motivation or that savvy. Maybe the Lomo types can save us after all.

-Laura