News today from Kodak

Bob;

B38 will never, AFAIK, make paper based products. The cleanup is very very expensive due to dust, which film coating does not produce. Nor do I envision the Harrow plant ever making film.

Sal;

The reason I said things are unclear... A few months back, Kodak Rochester announced a marketing agreement for film products. Due to the present announcement, it is currently unclear what kind of arrangement will be made regarding this previous agreement and the current one.

PE

PKM-25 said:

I don't shoot much color anymore, shoot black and white at a ratio of 20/1 but I want Kodak color to stick around in order for those who really want to use it to be able to....see the pattern there? It's not really cool to say you don't care about a film that some of us depend on to earn a living, next time just leave that opinion out, ok?

Portra should be fine for several years as like other Kodak still films, it is riding on the coat tails of the making of motion picture stock which Kodak is under contract to produce through 2015. If that is not good enough for you, I suggest you be responsible to your needs and stock up like many of us do.

As for the new speculation on this thread, I bet it is time for Colleen to weigh in again as thoughts seem to have drifted instead of being patient to wait for the next *Official* statement from Kodak in regards to this latest development.

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If Kodak stops making B/W film, you can switch to Ilford film. If Kodak stops making color film, that's the end of the road. There's nowhere else to go. Obviously I care about Kodak's film production, no matter what the film in question is, but I'm not particularly concerned about what they do with B/W film. Ilford is committed to making their film and is in sound financial condition. As no one else makes C41 film right now, Kodak's color film production is of far greater concern to me. If Fujifilm was still making their 400h film and was committed to it, I wouldn't be as concerned as I am. I'm not really into the particulars of a given film, since they're all great. It's just a matter of having one to use.

I can't really afford to stock up, and certainly not with much at a time. I'm a student, not someone with a lot of money to invest in film. Even if I could stock up, it would be good enough for perhaps one body of work and that's all.

shutterlight said:

If Kodak stops making color film, that's the end of the road. There's nowhere else to go. ... As no one else makes C41 film right now, Kodak's color film production is of far greater concern to me...

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What do you mean by that?

Photo Engineer said:

...A few months back, Kodak Rochester announced a marketing agreement for film products. Due to the present announcement, it is currently unclear what kind of arrangement will be made regarding this previous agreement and the current one...

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Are there any links that describe the earlier announcement? Whatever it said might be just as much history as the previously announced sale to Brother is.

Update: Might you be referring to this post by Fred?

If so, it sounds like the same arrangement.

shutterlight said:

As no one else makes C41 film right now [...] If Fujifilm was still making their 400h film

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Have I missed a major announcement?

Fuji is still making C41, or at least they are still selling it. The one kind of film I CAN buy easily in local stores, even Wal Mart, is Fuji consumer 35mm C41. It's not what many of us want, but it IS C41. If they can make it in 35mm then it's easy enough to make it in other sizes, at least for Fuji. Now whether they would or are, those are other questions.

Reala is listed as discontinued by B&H. It stopped being made in 35mm some time ago, and only 120 was left.

I'm not sure what I was thinking about 400h, though. B&H is still selling it, and hopefully Fujifilm is still making it, and will continue to make it. Apologies for the mistaken post a bit earlier.

shutterlight said:

Apologies for the mistaken post a bit earlier.

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Jeez! I damned near had a stroke!

Under a less serious illusion General Jack D Ripper sent Slim Pickens over the North Pole to bomb the Soviet Union...cue Vera Lynn against a backdrop of mushroom clouds created by the Soviet Doomsday Machine, singing "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when....

pentaxuser

Sal Santamaura said:

Are there any links that describe the earlier announcement? Whatever it said might be just as much history as the previously announced sale to Brother is.

Update: Might you be referring to this post by Fred?

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)​

If so, it sounds like the same arrangement.

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Sal, this is part of the entire problem. We do not know if there were 2 companies involved or just the one in the UK representing the pension plan.

That is all. And, I am reminding all that there might be 2 agreements.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

You dingbats! An exec never ran a coating machine nor made an emulsion! Get real!

PE

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They never promoted through the ranks?

I suspect that, even if an earlier "agreement" announcement involved another company (which wasn't identified), the recent English KPP agreement is the only one progressing. Similar to Brother's announced "purchase" of the DI business failing to be consummated. It would be good if Colleen could confirm this.

All I can say is that someone needs to hide the dynamite from the madmen...



Ken

These threads are so much fun to read. Not very informative, but a thousand laughs!

lxdude said:

They never promoted through the ranks?

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Was Perez?

Ron,

Remember the days when Kodak used to talk about a dual ladder; one in management and one in technology? That didn't last long, did it? Few scientists/engineers made it to the highest levels at Kodak.

Fred

I know. My post was a response with that in mine.

Best wishes Fred.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Was Perez?

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You said "execs", which had me thinking more of department heads up to vice presidents and such, than of CEO's. Mine was a sincere question, as I figured that Kodak would have developed managerial talent where they saw it, as many companies did. I figured in a company as old and established as Kodak, there would have been a fair number of management types who knew the business from the bottom up.

Wow.

Prof_Pixel said:

Few scientists/engineers made it to the highest levels at Kodak.

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And I guess it shows.

lxdude said:

You said "execs", which had me thinking more of department heads up to vice presidents and such, than of CEO's. Mine was a sincere question, as I figured that Kodak would have developed managerial talent where they saw it, as many companies did. I figured in a company as old and established as Kodak, there would have been a fair number of management types who knew the business from the bottom up.

Wow.

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Before Fischer, there were a lot of promotions from within, but as Fred said, there were often few scientiists and engineers promoted outside of KRL. Most were bean counters. With Fischer, we saw an influx of outsiders that sped up with Perez.

And so, top people often were those who knew little about the actual work going on under their supervision and the number of those doing pure management all the way up the ladder increased. Many managers knew the photo industry well, but did not know the manufacture of their own products. Some few were the reverse.

Carl Kohrt, VP and manage of KRL became CTO but instead of making him President, they selected Dan Carp, COO who was the bean counter of the two. IMHO, Kohrt would have been a far better choice given the decisions and directions taken by Carp.

PE

Yep, that's how I recall, too. About the time Whitmore went out and Fisher came in, there was this campaign that Kodak was too insulated, too much of a "not invented here" mentality. This was in a WSJ article as well. Chandler was an engineer of some sort and I think Fallon was as well. The WSJ people said that Kodak "needed some quirky marketing types" and they had to "teach the elephant how to dance." So they started with this idea of NOT promoting from within with the intent of bringing in fresh blood. They wanted to try and grow through acquisitions, too, rather than invention. Again, to bring in some fresh blood. While that was a good idea to start, like many corporate fads, it went too far. No managers came from within and likewise, to move upwards you had to at least go elsewhere than where you were, if not outside the company. Slowly they built up a management force that didn't understand the peculiarities of the business, first at the corporate level and then down into the division level. Add to the that the 3 year cycle of RIFs and soon the best and the brightest that had no particular attachment to Rochester went elsewhere.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/tag/eastman-kodak/

This link is a replay of a Fortune article from the time, just a little before my time at Kodak. Not the article I was looking for but, you can see where the pressure was starting for Kodak to conform to the world outside and dismiss with the "invented in Rochester" idea to try and impress Wall Street and chase after the analysts. So just a little historical background. Bringing in fresh blood is one thing, wholesale cleaning out the management ranks is another.

This is where I hope the UK folks will help out. as I said in my earlier post, I think outside the US there is more of an attitude of creating value, rather than just chasing the profit of the week. So although not everything might be understood about the structure of the business, I think all this KPP stuff is good news for the Kodak silver halide product lines.

Fallon coined the phrase "making the elephant dance" in terms of Kodak. But as you point out it went back a few years over what I mentioned. I've met Fallon, Chandler, Fischer,Carp and Kohrt personally. In fact, Carl Kohrt and I shared an office way back when, and his family and ours were great friends for many years.

(Parenthetical notes - One of his sons water ballooned one of our daughters at a family picnic at our home. Geez, wkat a day! Then his exchange student spilled a sugary drink on our furniture on another visit. What memories and fun!!!!! - Love ya Carl!, wherever you are. -vita meta-vegamin!)

It was sad to me that they promoted bean counters over such a great person.

PE

It seems that they forget that what bean counters do is count beans that someone else created.

lxdude said:

It seems that they forget that what bean counters do is count beans that someone else created.

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++!

lxdude said:

It seems that they forget that what bean counters do is count beans that someone else created.

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Yes, and they treat everything as if it were only a bean.