No more Kodak papers

The majority of you must already know. I knew yesterday. Kodak stopped making paper. I don't understand why they maintain chemicals and film in production (without paper). Perhaps they stopped making them too and I don't know.

Kodak announced that they were discontinuing paper and stated at that time that they were not discontinuing film and chemistry. They also didn't state that they were committed to making film and chemistry, so who knows how long that will last. Their market position in both film and chemistru seems to be stronger than paper, so hopefully they will continue to manufacture them.

For Kodak, making film is the cash source to develop digital.

Digital is not profitable for anybody, yet its considered the future. Everybody is fighting to be the last guy standing. Canon ? Kodak ? There will be only one winner.

SO film ( and chems ) will contiune. The film plant is new, efficient, and profitable.

It's likely the paper situation was not.

We all face the same problems. I KNOW I could have a big income from doing some types of photography. But the overhead would be so great, the profit would be tenuous. SO, I opt out of that market. For Kodak, why not abandon the b&w paper market, and put their eggs someplace else ? They had long ago focussed their attention of commercial products rather than 'fine art'.

Making D-76 is easy, so it's VERY profitable.

It's difficult to fathom quite where Kodak are heading. In the UK & probably elsewhere they are dropping their professional digital SLR's. They have just announced the introduction of 2 "bridge" digital cameras but already the Technical Editor of "Amateur Photographer" magazine has criticised them for the very restricted ISO range (50 to 200). Unfortunately for Kodak they may be throwing everything they've got into the digital arena but they have very much slipped into the second rank of players.

Brac said:

It's difficult to fathom quite where Kodak are heading.

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Perhaps the handbasket they're riding in is a clue...

Brac said:

In the UK & probably elsewhere they are dropping their professional digital SLR's.

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'Bout time. It was the Ektra all over again--build a camera that is in many ways a world beater, but with a couple of horrible flaws, refuse to fix it, wonder briefly why it loses money, and go back to what they're good at, spewing consumer crap.

Brac said:

Unfortunately for Kodak they may be throwing everything they've got into the digital arena but they have very much slipped into the second rank of players.

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They've acknowledged their incompetence in the high-end digital world. They're king of the hill in a market segment--low-end consumer digital--that Sony has admitted they believe will go extinct due to better cell cams. And they're throwing the shrinking--but profitable--traditional photography business away, one line at a time. Ten years out, Kodak's about as screwed as a diabetic hummingbird.

And they're trashing stuff that actually has a future in a digital world--things like Tech Pan that'll clobber digital as soundly ten years from now as it does today, B&W Lightjet paper they could make a killing on if they spent a little time promoting the superiority of real silver prints. Instead they keep junk like Portra 800, something with zero future in a digital world.

They don't even have the decency to sell off the facilities and formula to a niche player who could make a good business off the sales still possible in tomorrow's limited but not lost analog market. All that wonderful Rochester R&D lost forever to leave us relying on what, 50's Efke technology? Yuck.

Very well put, Roger!

Paul Sorensen said:

Kodak announced that they were discontinuing paper and stated at that time that they were not discontinuing film and chemistry. They also didn't state that they were committed to making film and chemistry, so who knows how long that will last. Their market position in both film and chemistru seems to be stronger than paper, so hopefully they will continue to manufacture them.

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Does anyone know if Kodak just discontinued B&W paper or did they include color as well?

esanford said:

Does anyone know if Kodak just discontinued B&W paper or did they include color as well?

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I haven't seen anything on this, but suspect that they still sell a lot of color paper to labs, including a lot of minilabs. I'd be surprized if color paper were discontinued.

Lee

I was told that in the digital age, B&W film sales have remain strong (probably for the same reason B&W fans didn't buy Colour film and desaturate it) Even thought some B&W photographers have gone digital mainly because its convieniant.

Trouble is that Poeple will shoot B&W and then scan it. Infact acording to AP the sale of B&W developer is increasing?

Ah, this would be the same AP that said that both Ilford and Kodak had sold more B&W film the previous year in the UK than any time before. Six months or so later Ilford went bust quoting a 25% downturn in the previous year... IIRC, Kodak have since reported similar film sales drops (not sure if they included colour).

I was surprised because I had assumed B&W sales would not be hit anything like as much as colour (wrong again; remind me never to take up betting on the horses)...

Silverprint have quotes from the new Ilford management in their news section (http://www.silverprint.co.uk/News05.htm). They say decline is now around 15-20% and they hope it will stabilize to 5-7% (one would have hoped that they would have hoped that it would stop declining completely at some point!)

Cheers, Bob.

Bob F. said:

Ah, this would be the same AP that said that both Ilford and Kodak had sold more B&W film the previous year in the UK than any time before. Six months or so later Ilford went bust quoting a 25% downturn in the previous year... IIRC, Kodak have since reported similar film sales drops (not sure if they included colour).

I was surprised because I had assumed B&W sales would not be hit anything like as much as colour (wrong again; remind me never to take up betting on the horses)...

Silverprint have quotes from the new Ilford management in their news section (http://www.silverprint.co.uk/News05.htm). They say decline is now around 15-20% and they hope it will stabilize to 5-7% (one would have hoped that they would have hoped that it would stop declining completely at some point!)

Cheers, Bob.

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Acording to Jeff at AP its the decline in Paper sales that hit Ilford, If you ask me companies should be more positive about there tradtional products and promote printing in a darkroom like a model plane company would promote there kits.

More on Kodak:

From the Associated Press:

Eastman Kodak is trimming its traditional film business
once again. The company is scaling back film manufacturing
in China and is closing some businesses in Rochester and
West Virginia. About 1,000 U-S jobs will be cut.
The moves are part of a dramatic overhaul begun by the
world's biggest film manufacturer 20 months ago to
eliminate up to 25,000 jobs by mid-2007.
To fortify its growing digital business, Kodak has moved
to slash deeper than it set out to do in January, 2004,
when it targeted up to 15,000 job cuts.
Kodak will consolidate color photo paper manufacturing
at factories in Colorado and in England, by shutting down
an operation in Rochester, N.Y., by the end of October.
By year's end, the company also will close a polyester
recycling plant in Rochester and next year shut down a
printing-plate factory in West Virginia.

BTW, this remark may be a bit off topic, but I have a similar problem with Agfa not making production sizes of analog paper for color anyway. SO before I spent a lot of money replacing some critical glass in my shop, I tested my enlargers with a 10" roll of the laser color paper. It works just fine. Slight color adjustment, but that is likely with every new roll opened. . . otherwise it is really pretty nice. With aerial film as the source, the colors and contrast maintain as well as the "analog" paper did, and the exposure time is only slightly less than the analog paper.

Personally I think it is darn near the same stuff, but the digital branding makes it more expensive. . . but the Agfa tech swears that I should not be able to use it on the regular enlarger lights.

Anyway, my point is to investigate buying and testing some of the so called digital silver emulsion papers. Fuji has one that my digi-printer uses when I have b&w mosaics which I have liked. . .anyway, don't just assume digital laser paper means anti-analog.