Rochester Photo News

hoffy said:

AHHH, but what if the film was $100 a sheet or roll? I'm pretty sure that the demand for film and then its supply would dry up pretty damn quickly.....

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My own feeling is that the current increases in prices must already be having an effect on demand. For many of us, photography is a hobby (in my case, one of several), and discretionary spending at a time when there are other priorities. I've totally no intention of giving up yet, but my shooting this year has, deliberately, become much more selective, and I've probably bought and used around one-third of the materials used in the same period last year.

we'll all be making lumen prints on film+paper when all that is sold
is 15-23 years old and fogged found in somene's basement and listed
by an unknowing no-nothing friend on ebay showing
all the paper + film fanned out on a tabletop so we can see we are
bidding on real photo paper and real film.
just like they were doing a few years ago when azo died

those will be the days !

c6h6o3 said:

Sure would. I guess we'll all just have to learn to pour wet plates. Or find another hobby.

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And when in my case it is more than just your job and is your entire life, you make sure you have the capital laying around to order several hundred rolls of TMax 100 in 120 and the needed chemistry. I will do more if things head further South...

MaximusM3 said:

Enough to have resurrected Leica from near death and triggering backorders of six months or more for lenses that cost $5,000+++
Keep it small, keep it focused, and, as Steve Jobs would say.."make insanely great products".

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Yes, but I was wondering if there would, overall, be better profits in making millions of lower quality sensors for smartphones that a few hundred insanely great ones for Leicas? Does Bugatti make more profit in a year from selling a few hundred insanely great luxury cars than Toyota make from selling a few million everyday cars and trucks which the average motorist can hope to be able to afford? I don't know?

railwayman3 said:

Yes, but I was wondering if there would, overall, be better profits in making millions of lower quality sensors for smartphones that a few hundred insanely great ones for Leicas? Does Bugatti make more profit in a year from selling a few hundred insanely great luxury cars than Toyota make from selling a few million everyday cars and trucks which the average motorist can hope to be able to afford? I don't know?

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I don't think one is right and the other one wrong. Just different business models. Leica is in a good spot now and apparently they are trying to ramp up lens production to meet demand. The question is how to stay relevant in a market that is essentially merely evolutionary.. at best. As we all know, there is really nothing revolutionary for these guys to come up with in Photography. They'll never catch up with Apple when it comes to the masses so they can only hope to continue to cater to a niche market of wealthy individuals.

MaximusM3 said:

...They'll never catch up with Apple when it comes to the masses so they can only hope to continue to cater to a niche market of wealthy individuals.

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Which bodes well for future used-market buyers, yes?

s-a

semi-ambivalent said:

Which bodes well for future used-market buyers, yes?

s-a

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You would think...

c6h6o3 said:

If you can shop for buggy whips on an iPad (and you can) there will always be film, certainly as long as any of us is alive. I think Ilford will be the last man standing in the film coliseum. Fuji is just as capital intensive a business as is Kodak. They'll get out of the film business, too, sooner than later methinks.

If you want to have black & white film around in future years and are running low, support Ilford and not Kodak. Your purchase there will be something more than a mere exercise in futility.

I'm down to my last 10 sheets of 8x10 Tmax. When it's gone I'll order HP5+.

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Same here. I made the switch, without regret, to PanF Plus when EK discontinued Panatonic X. When the last 32 rolls, and 20-odd sheets (?) of Tri-x sitting in my freezer are done, it's over to Ilford for everything B&W. I'll continue to buy E110G and E100VS in 35mm and 2 1/4 as long as they are available. As soon as they are gone, however, all my film work will be B&W Ilford; and all my color d#*@*#l. (What a hell of a letdown from the glory days of Kodachrome!)

hoffy said:

AHHH, but what if the film was $100 a sheet or roll? I'm pretty sure that the demand for film and then its supply would dry up pretty damn quickly.....

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100$ per roll will not happen.
One can make a roll of 35mm film (perhaps in plastic casettes in the future) for les than 10 USD (todays value) in very small quantities in 100 ASA or less. Making 400 ASA is a bit more difficult. More than 400 ASA I would leave to digital.

Our small factory can make quantities of a few thousand rolls of film at about 3-5 USD per roll.

Mirko

Mirko, thanks for your realism!

I'm getting a bit tired of reading the same BOOHOOO ALL FILM WILL DISAPPER SOON bullshit. It's been going on since early 2000's. It has not happened so far and will not happen in the future, either. Of course, if the society crumbles completely or the Earth explodes, film will be gone, but otherwise, black and white film and paper will be commercially produced at a reasonable price. It's because it is so easy to manufacture (compared to many other niche industrial products). Even niche market is ok for B&W film. Even I could start a company to produce small amounts if I really wanted to. There are at least 20-30 people just on APUG who could do that, if not more.

So, there is absolutely no question about BW film!

However, it is not so easy to guarantee the availability of color film. Still, I'm quite sure it will be available for decades in some form. This is a guess. I'm quite sure I'll be right on this, too ;D.

Kodak just placed portions of its main office for sale to MCC (Monroe Community College) as downtown office space. They have also apparently changed attorneys or hired new ones for assistance with financial woes.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Kodak just placed portions of its main office for sale to MCC (Monroe Community College) as downtown office space. They have also apparently changed attorneys or hired new ones for assistance with financial woes.

PE

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Having spent the first 30 years of my life in Rochester this is all very sad news. My grandfather was hired by EK in 1942 fresh out of High School; following the war they hired him back and he stayed until retirement in '82. With only a high school education Kodak paid him well enough to buy a house and support a wife and three kids - with enough left over for a boat, vacations, etc. Of course some remember the yearly "bonus", which came to be seen as an entitlement after a while. They were good times. All of my uncles and great uncles worked there as well. My best friend's dad was a chemist there and would often take us to their (Kodak's) bowling lanes and camera club back in the early 80's. The food in the cafeteria was cheap and delicious!! I bet the guy washing the dishes there made enough $$ to own his own house as well LOL

Photo Engineer said:

Kodak just placed portions of its main office for sale to MCC (Monroe Community College) as downtown office space. They have also apparently changed attorneys or hired new ones for assistance with financial woes.

PE

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OUCH. Most sad indeed.

To be honest, I never thought I would see anything even remotely resembling what is going on with Kodak. Methinks I'd better stock up on TMX and TMY while I can.

Photo Engineer said:

Kodak just placed portions of its main office for sale to MCC (Monroe Community College) as downtown office space. They have also apparently changed attorneys or hired new ones for assistance with financial woes.

PE

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I heard on the radio a couple of days ago that Kodak is working on a plan to avoid bankruptcy. I wonder if the measures mentioned in your comment are part of that plan.

They have changed attorneys and strategy, but no one as yet has said what is going on.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

They have changed attorneys and strategy, but no one as yet has said what is going on.

PE

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Maybe Kodak doesn't know, either.

Dieter Zakas
Speculation, NJ

Thank you for posting this link, very informative. As a side note, I was never aware of the details surrounding George Eastman's demise.

Every time I read a new bit of news about Kodak, my heart breaks. It could have, and certainly should have been, much different. Sad.

This is so painful to watch. How can it be clear to me that Perez is and has been a disaster, but the board seems blind?

Photo Engineer said:

http://news.yahoo.com/kodak-struggles-eastman-chemical-thrives-131648939.html

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I've been willing to give Perez the benefit of the doubt, given so much of the trouble was caused by his predecessors, but the corporate jet bullshit is just not leadership! Over $300,000 in personal travel on the corporate jet last year? Now the board is limiting him to $100,000 -big deal. The damage is done. Sure a third of a million or a tenth of a million isn't going to break the company by itself, but what it indicates about the "leadership", CEO and board, could.

When your company is faltering, it's time to give up the friggin' perks. People worried about their job see that, and it sure as hell doesn't boost their morale. When morale flags, work flags. It doesn't exactly boost faith among investors and prognosticators, either. What a jerk.

Back in the mid-90's I worked for a medical products company. The company was doing well, but for us rank-and-file the raises were barely keeping pace with inflation, if that. Like 2%, when inflation was 3%. They kept saying the company was in a tight competitive market, and they couldn't afford higher raises.
They hired a new CEO, and paid him a $300,000 signing bonus. The complete employee list, from janitor to CEO, was 301 people. Some very simple math, and you could see the resentment forming, and the question "Why should I bust my ass for this guy? Screw him." He'd lost his people before he started, and it wasn't even directly his fault! He immediately got the nickname "Bonus Bill" and no respect. The workforce went from being stressed to being resentful and cynical. He could have turned it around if he'd kicked up the raises into non-insult range, but that didn't happen. He only lasted a year.
A while later, I decided that being unhappy and working in an unhappy place wasn't worth it, and quit.

lxdude said:

Back in the mid-90's I worked for a medical products company. The company was doing well, but for us rank-and-file the raises were barely keeping pace with inflation, if that. Like 2%, when inflation was 3%. They kept saying the company was in a tight competitive market, and they couldn't afford higher raises.
They hired a new CEO, and paid him a $300,000 signing bonus. The complete employee list, from janitor to CEO, was 301 people. Some very simple math, and you could see the resentment forming, and the question "Why should I bust my ass for this guy? Screw him." He'd lost his people before he started, and it wasn't even directly his fault! He immediately got the nickname "Bonus Bill" and no respect. The workforce went from being stressed to being resentful and cynical. He could have turned it around if he'd kicked up the raises into non-insult range, but that didn't happen. He only lasted a year.
A while later, I decided that being unhappy and working in an unhappy place wasn't worth it, and quit.

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^ Typical US corporate mentality.

Not directly related to Kodak, but related to corporate culture in general, I once worked for a small company that was having financial difficulties. A new board of directors took over and replaced the CEO. The new CEO was chairman of the board.

Things then went from very bad to very much worse. One of the first actions the board took was to give themselves a deferred compensation package with a minimum payout worth more than the entire net assets of the company. Then they sold off the product line, becoming a shell company looking for a merger partner. Among their long-time Wall-street stock promoters were a couple of crooks. (Literally, crooks. They got their securities licenses suspended by hiring a couple of people to take their licensing exams for them, but no problem, they just kept doing business under their wives names.)

The promoters had previously engineered a pump and dump scheme on the company shares that had been very damaging to the company. Then, after the new management took over at the company the promoters helped the company leadership engineer a reverse merger with a high tech company of dubious quality. Among other problems with the merger is that the management of my company did not do enough due diligence on the new company to seen of the technology of the merger company was any good.

To make a much longer story a bit shorter, the NASDAQ threatened to de-list the company if the merger were to go through. The merger then failed and the shares (which had soared to astronomical levels in previous months) lost something like 98% of their value in just a few months, and then the NASDAQ de-listed the shares anyway.

Interestingly through some creative arrangements the company management profited handsomely through all this, despite the fact that the employees all lost their jobs and the shareholders lost nearly all their investment. Along the way the SEC was informed of some of the shenanigans but as far as anyone can tell the SEC didn't lift a finger against the perpetrators.

With one of the major US political parties believing that we still have too much regulation, even after 30 years of eliminating and/or not enforcing what we had, expect it to get much, much worse before it gets better. The game is rigged. The modern corporate culture is such that upper management gets rich and everything else be damned.

Ed

alanrockwood said:

Not directly related to Kodak, but related to corporate culture in general...

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"Just win, baby..."

Ken