More Rochester news about Kodak

[M.A.Longmore]

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

.
I Am Waiting Patiently For Kodak To Realize That !
.

 

[jglass]

You are so right. Digital cameras make getting a set of 4x6 prints very difficult. -Laura

Yes, I agree. Even with "high end" inkjet printers, it's very difficult and brutally expensive. There's a discussion on this at The Online Photographer here, with folks who are very experienced in this sort of thing bemoaning the difficulty of printing in digital.

I'm fortunate to have a pro lab that does nice printing, although it takes a long time to get an RA-4 optical print from them on color.

I appreciate this discussion.

 

[MaximusM3]

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

Laura,

I think this is at the core problem, even though it may have little impact on Kodak's bottom line. The truth is that very few digital shooters ever print their images, and have no clue (nor care probably) about what a good quality print looks like. This is the age of looking at an image on computers, iPhones, iPads and that's the reality. Printing inkjet in color is a bitch. Calibration of monitor (and you need a GREAT monitor to do it properly) and printers is a royal pain, ink is expensive, etc etc. Black & white for the serious photographer is even more of a joke, since the only viable option is Piezography at the high end and, again, not as easy as it looks, with clogged nozzles, price of inks, need of the right papers, drivers, profiles, etc. Going back to film is not the answer either because, let's face it, the masses are not going back to bringing film to labs that don't exist or jump in darkrooms to do it themselves. The only options are crappy inkjets at home or crappy inkjets from Walmart/Costco, etc. Either way, again, nobody can tell the difference anymore and an image is just as easy shared via email/Facebook/Flickr, where it hits the end of the road, and that is the sad reality of it.

There is no company that I can tell interested in making film and prints hip because there is no money in it. There is a nifty app for iPhones called "hypstamatic" with an option to buy prints directly from them within the app. I have never used that option but it seems very easy and painless. I bet very few people, if any, have ever ordered prints that way.

Best,

Max

 

[Tim Gray]

That's the thing about prints for the regular person. You HAD to get them in the past to see your pictures. You usually didn't come to realize the value of them until long after you had them made. Now, you view the picture instantly, get your satisfaction, and then for the most part forget them. There's no rediscovering them years later when cleaning out a desk drawer or the closet.

 

[MaximusM3]

That's the thing about prints for the regular person. You HAD to get them in the past to see your pictures. You usually didn't come to realize the value of them until long after you had them made. Now, you view the picture instantly, get your satisfaction, and then for the most part forget them. There's no rediscovering them years later when cleaning out a desk drawer or the closet.

Bingo. One day, these people will realize that they have no memories. Hard drives crash, computers get thrown away, file handling may change, ...and your 10,000 images from 50 different digital cameras...gone.

 

[Dave in Kansas]

Tim,

There is a lot of truth in what you said about not realizing the value of pictures until long after you take them. It's interesting how many pictures I find that were made in the past and I never thought much about them at the time. As years go by and family members and relatives grow old or depart, these photos become much more valuable to a person. They certainly mean more to me now than they did at the time.

I suspect we in a point of time when kids will grow up to have 8 or 10 pictures of themselves that had actually been printed. In some ways it similar to 80 years ago when people didn't have many pictures. Those of us who were brought up in the 50's - 80's generally have a fairly large supply of photos, but that won't be the case with the current generation.

Dave

 

[Tim Gray]

Hopefully it will be different for my kids, if I ever have any. One of my most treasured possessions is the trays and trays of slides my dad took of my brother and I when we were kids. The bulk of those are from 1980-1995. Most of them are Kodachrome too

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

There is no company that I can tell interested in making film and prints hip because there is no money in it.

Dead Link Removed?

Ken

 

[MaximusM3]

Dead Link Removed?

Ken

True, Ken, forgot about Impossible. That's more like a self contained universe though (instant film). Where we have a roll of film, sheets, developing, and printing involved, things get obviously a bit more complicated...and expensive.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

That's more like a self contained universe though (instant film).

Agreed. But the point is also that with a concerted marketing effort it's possible to sell almost anything to anyone. But first one must want to sell it.

Restarting a market for instant film had to have been a far more daunting task than simply expanding a currently shrunken - but not yet extinct - conventional film market. Conventional film will never be what it was in the 60s and 70s, but neither must it continue dancing with the Grim Reaper, which is what Kodak seemingly wants us all to believe.

There is much to be hopeful for concerning film, just not Kodak film.

Ken

 

[Photo Engineer]

Where is the Impossible Project nowdays, and how does their product look? Last I saw was not very good.

PE

 

[hpulley]

Where is the Impossible Project nowdays, and how does their product look? Last I saw was not very good.

PE

Sadly still not very good. The name is a bit of a joke in itself, this picture will self destruct in... Development temps and conditions are also a bit of a joke and the quality is quite low though it suits the 'instant art' crowd. They have marketed it as art film because it is very inconsistent. Great marketing but poor engineering.

Polaroid was much better. Fuji Instant film still is much better.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Where is the Impossible Project nowdays, and how does their product look? Last I saw was not very good.

Last I heard they sold something like 500,000 units their first year, with a projection to sell two million units this year.

How does it look? With respect, that's not the question to ask. The question is, how does it SELL. As we all know, by original Polaroid standards it doesn't look very good at all. (See my early in-depth review of the b&w First Flush.) It is getting better - but very, very slowly.

But by using savvy marketing (damned savvy, actually) TIP has managed to turn their lemons into lemonade. In a brutal worldwide recession they are looking for a quadrupling of their unit volume for a previously totally extinct product category.* It's like a modern-day Jurassic Park story, but for a film dinosaur.

And as those of you who may be subscribers to their online "newsletters" also know, the TIP marketers leave absolutely no stone unturned in finding creative ways to bring in additional revenue. Refurbished cameras, old seriously outdated (or even defective) Polaroid film stocks, contests, gizmos, ego appeals. The list is endless...

All of this is happening because they want to sell film. If they didn't, they wouldn't bother advertising. And in this digital photography world if they didn't advertise, no one would even know their film products existed, would they?

Ken

* And as has been repeatedly noted earlier, no other film product category was closer to digital photography's bulls-eye than instant film.

 

[jglass]

Exactly, Ken. Kodak's films are wonderful, of unbelievable quality, but if they go under that really won't help any of us. Impossible is selling enough of their odd product to finance improvements in their products, just as Kodak did many decades ago. Just as Ilford is doing today. I love Kodak films and will shoot them till they're gone but I fear that will be all too soon, and all too much due to Kodak's inability to adjust to a new market reality.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Ken;

Lets wait and see where they are next year or the year after before we say that this is a savvy move or not. The results are not all in yet. You have to admit that even with savvy ads, neither Kodak, Fuji, nor Polaroid could have sold such a product.

PE

 

[MattKing]

Up in our end of the woods, there are a fair number of places where you can download one or more digital files over the internet, and then later the same day or possibly the next day go and pick up your prints. The prints are RA-4 or the Fuji equivalent.

The other week I experimented by sending three files to a local business. Then, the next day, I picked up three 11x17 colour enlargements, printed on Kodak Supra Endura (IIRC). I paid less than $20.00 for the entire order. If I hadn't had one of the prints done on metallic paper, it would have been less than $16.00.

The files were a bit small for that size of enlargement (6.1 megapixels) but the results are quite nice.

By all accounts, that particular business is very busy. Unfortunately, they are entirely focused on the digital market (they don't even have a good resource to forward film to).

They also seem to sell a lot of digital cameras, many of them high end.

I think the reason they are apparently successful is that they emphasize having prints made.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

May be Kodak could invest in impossible project , create a better product and collect thee money.
Who buys Polaroid now ? Old followers or young fellows ?
I think new Polaroids are romantic , like Palladium tones. If you study the material well , it creates excellent nudes , naturmonts. Yes my 350 is hungry and its lithium battery still active after 15 years.
I think I will invest in it for my sisters visit.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Lets wait and see where they are next year or the year after before we say that this is a savvy move or not.

Ron,

At rate and direction events are currently trending, where is Kodak going to be at the end of next year, or the year after?

In the current worldwide economic environment, a case could reasonably be made that the working definition of "savvy" is "survival."

Ken

 

[Sirius Glass]

In the current worldwide economic environment."

If we know that we could get rich either by buying Kodak stock or short selling Kodak stock. We only need to know whether to buy or short sell.

Hence, why are you bothering Ron with your question?

 

[lns]

Up in our end of the woods, there are a fair number of places where you can download one or more digital files over the internet, and then later the same day or possibly the next day go and pick up your prints. The prints are RA-4 or the Fuji equivalent.....

Oh, sure, we have that here in the US too. Costco, Walgreens and real photo stores all have some variety of that service. You can bring in your digital card or a hard drive or CD containing photos, or you can upload your photos over the internet. The problem is, unless you're a photo enthusiast who post-processes and sharpens and color-profiles and all, the results tend to be underwhelming.

With film, someone else did all the processing adjustments for you, making it easy to get an acceptable print. With digital, which is supposedly so convenient, the shooter is responsible for post-processing. But folks don't really know that. My friends who aren't photo people just bring in the jpeg. They are then disappointed that it doesn't look very good printed. Color film is really so much easier.


-Laura

 

[lns]

If we know that we could get rich either by buying Kodak stock or short selling Kodak stock. We only need to know whether to buy or short sell....

Well, that's easy. The short interest in Kodak's stock is huge. According to dailyfinance.com, almost 27 percent of the company's float is sold short.

In contrast, about 1.2 percent of Microsoft's stock is sold short. About 1.5 percent of Kraft Food Inc.'s stock. About 4.3 percent of stock in Motorola, which is struggling.

-Laura

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Hence, why are you bothering Ron with your question?

I wasn't "bothering Ron" with a question. I was replying to his question regarding how TIP's current products "look" since at one point I had posted an extensive series of test exposures using their earlier materials.

Then later replying to his observation to me that perhaps we should wait to see where TIP is in another year or two before judging their success.

Why are you policing member exchanges? Are you a new moderator, Steve?

Ken

 

[Photo Engineer]

Ron,

At rate and direction events are currently trending, where is Kodak going to be at the end of next year, or the year after?

In the current worldwide economic environment, a case could reasonably be made that the working definition of "savvy" is "survival."

Ken

Ken;

Considering my OP, IDK where Perez is going to be in a years time and that might make all the difference in the world wrt where Kodak will be.

But then we don't know where the Impossible Project is going to be either and that is even in the face of their "campaign". After all, the product was pretty bad and unless they offer something better, discerning photographers will finally "catch on".

PE

 

[hpulley]

May be Kodak could invest in impossible project , create a better product and collect thee money.

Perhaps Kodak could buy the patents that Polaroid sued them with in the '80s? Then they could perhaps sue Fuji...

Who buys Polaroid now ? Old followers or young fellows ?
I think new Polaroids are romantic , like Palladium tones. If you study the material well , it creates excellent nudes , naturmonts. Yes my 350 is hungry and its lithium battery still active after 15 years.
I think I will invest in it for my sisters visit.

Both young and old, Polaroids are ironically seeing a real resurgence now that Polaroid itself just sells silly Zink Lady Gaga stuff. Very popular for nudes as you say and the artistic value of TIP really is being embraced widely.

Your 350 can't use TIP film however. Impossible did NOT buy Polaroid's pack film machines sadly so you'll have to buy Fujifilm Instant to satisfy your 350.

 

[Photo Engineer]

The decree against Kodak enjoined them to refrain from all forms of Instant Analog Photography. I don't know if that is still in effect or how far it went or what! I do know that the RAMs, FAMs and COMAMs (machines to make the packs and assemble them) were destroyed as scrap. They are hugely expensive to build and it takes miles of film to fine tune them. In fact, TIP films right now may be what they are using to tune up the machines and process. They are just making the customer pay. IDK at all of course, this is pure speculation and kind of tongue in cheek, but you see my point, I hope.

PE