So what exactly should Kodak have done?

[Xmas]

Few Ge company's had underground railways and management in Nazi holiday camps.

 

[Wallendo]

Kodak couldn't have "saved" film and I believe their leaders recognized that, but they were clueless of how to deal with it.

Kodak's PhotoCD's were a great idea, but too expensive and impractical. To add photos to a disc meant sending the original disc back to Kodak or buying an expensive new disk. The images were saved on disks with an unusual CD disk format which made it very difficult to make backup copies. Kodak was fixed on file formats which included multiple resolutions of each image, an idea that was carried over to their FlashPix format. No-one bought into this idea.

Kodak's consumer digital cameras were often priced higher with fewer features than their competitors, and often used proprietary connectors and chargers. Apple gets away with this by selling well-designed and engineered products as well as snob appeal, Kodak could never get past its Instamatic reputation.

Their purchase of Ofoto at the time made sense, but didn't really work out. I suspect that few of us then realized that the overwhelming majority of digital photographs would never be printed.

US anti-trust laws likely limited the company in many ways, but at the start of the digital transition, Kodak was a profitable company with lots of cash to invest in "right-sizing" their film business and investing in other businesses. Entering the highly competitive and low-margin consumer printer market was a strange choice. I remember reading a Wall Street Journal article at the time wondering why that choice was made.

A well-run Kodak would likely be producing a similar film line as currently, but would have at least protected the pensions of its workers and investments of its shareholders. It almost seems like at some point management decided the ship was sinking and simply tried to get every last penny out of film before filing bankruptcy.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

Kodak's PhotoCD's were a great idea, but too expensive and impractical. To add photos to a disc meant sending the original disc back to Kodak or buying an expensive new disk. The images were saved on disks with an unusual CD disk format which made it very difficult to make backup copies. Kodak was fixed on file formats which included multiple resolutions of each image, an idea that was carried over to their FlashPix format. No-one bought into this idea.

PhotoCD was actually a very clever format structure. The problem was Kodak wanted to sell proprietary PhotoCD media at something like $20 each when quality writable CDs were selling for less than $1 each. There was a formatting hack released that made it possible to use these regular discs, but Kodak squashed it. As it became apparent that the PhotoCD system was going away, I tried to convince the folks at Kodak to release the format to the public domain and let people use the formatting hack, but they refused and the PhotoCD system disappeared.

 

[NJH]

Spotted at advert on the TV tonight for Kodak eyeglass lenses. Never knew they made them but I will keep an eye out for those pardon the pun.

 

[Xmas]

US anti-trust laws likely limited the company in many ways, but at the start of the digital transition, Kodak was a profitable company with lots of cash to invest in "right-sizing" their film business and investing in other businesses. Entering the highly competitive and low-margin consumer printer market was a strange choice. I remember reading a Wall Street Journal article at the time wondering why that choice was made.

A well-run Kodak would likely be producing a similar film line as currently, but would have at least protected the pensions of its workers and investments of its shareholders. It almost seems like at some point management decided the ship was sinking and simply tried to get every last penny out of film before filing bankruptcy.

Kodak were not well run from Eastman's hand slipped of the tiller.

Film was a magic cash cow and they had had a monopoly!

 

[RattyMouse]

Spotted at advert on the TV tonight for Kodak eyeglass lenses. Never knew they made them but I will keep an eye out for those pardon the pun.

:confused::confused:

 

[Sirius Glass]

Spotted at advert on the TV tonight for Kodak eyeglass lenses. Never knew they made them but I will keep an eye out for those pardon the pun.

Are you PUNishing us?

 

[ME Super]

Oh deer [sic]. You have inspired me to start punning around. You should shutter to think how poorly these puns will click.

Okay, okay, I'll f/stop for now. Kodak eyeglass lenses don't seem all that far fetched. The lenses they use in their disposable cameras and used in their Instamatic cameras were actually pretty good.

 

[NJH]

Good luck to them if they can make some money in that market. I have Zeiss lenses in mine with the same sort of coatings as on the camera lenses, very expensive though. I have to admit I had to pause the sky box and watch it again as I don't even recall seeing Kodak on UK TV back in the heyday of film.

Found the TV add on their website:
http://www.kodaklens.co.uk

 

[NJH]

OK it looks like another company which just licenses the Kodak branding
http://www.signetarmorlite.com/resources/company-profile/

 

[railwayman3]

OK it looks like another company which just licenses the Kodak branding
http://www.signetarmorlite.com/resources/company-profile/

As with the Kodak batteries, here in the UK, Kodak branded, licenced to a UK company, Made in China. Mostly sold in "Poundland" low-price shops (for the equivalent of about $1.50 for 4 AA's).

 

[RattyMouse]

As with the Kodak batteries, here in the UK, Kodak branded, licenced to a UK company, Made in China. Mostly sold in "Poundland" low-price shops (for the equivalent of about $1.50 for 4 AA's).

It's practices like this that dragged the brand name of Kodak into the ground. What was once America's highest tech companies sank into being a laughing stock and synonymous with failure.

How can making batteries, floppy disks, and VHS tapes be worth that?

 

[benveniste]

Non-industry specific thoughts,

When, like Kodak, you build your public business around a high-volume cash cow, it's extremely difficult to walk away from that cash cow even if and when you know a disruptive technology is about to kill it.

A cash-cow business spawns an "it ain't broke" culture. A seemingly unassailable competitive position fosters not only an unimaginative executive culture but a risk averse one. Change tends to be cosmetic rather than structural, and product development more evolutionary than revolutionary. The reaction to disruption is first denial, and Kodak was in denial over one thing or another for as long as I can remember. For decades, they refused to embrace 35mm as a consumer format, and instead trotted out cameras in a myriad of other film formats. They did all the hard work of creating C-41 color film, and then let other companies beat them to market with minilabs. They failed to respond aggressively to Fuji's entry into the consumer film market. And all three errors came to haunt them when "disposable" cameras became a thing in 1986, with Kodak's 110 and APS-based offerings losing out to Fuji and Generic 35mm offerings.

Another problem a cash-cow business has is what to do with the money. The employers, managers, and, to a certain extent U.S. tax laws discourage giving it back to the shareholders. So, like companies such as Polaroid, Lotus, and Digital Equipment (to name 3 local to me), the natural tendency is to sink retained earnings into developing new lines of business. All too often, senior management is ill prepared to understand those businesses, and think of them as a distraction. As a result, the technology graveyard gets littered with products such as Kodak copiers, Polaroid PC accessories, and non PC-compatible personal computers.

In short, I think Kodak's demise was as inevitable as the fall of the Roman Empire. Digital Imaging only provided the death blow to an internally weak company.

 

[AgX]

And all three errors came to haunt them when "disposable" cameras became a thing in 1986, with Kodak's 110 and APS-based offerings losing out to Fuji and Generic 35mm offerings.

APS was backed by all three major film manufacturers.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

APS was backed by all three major film manufacturers.

APS was too little, too late. I was at the Hollywood introduction of APS, and George Fisher promised all sorts of digital imaging tie-ins with APS (like putting a magnetic coating on the film to store preview images) that never happened.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

...
For decades, they refused to embrace 35mm as a consumer format, and instead trotted out cameras in a myriad of other film formats.

I've always wondered why they introduced formats every decade providing lesser quality than 35mm, viz. 126, 110, disc, APS. What if they'd taken 127 size film (which they introduced in 1912 and is between 35mm and 120 in size) and adapted that for both consumers and amateurs?

Just another one of those paths not taken.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

What if they'd taken 127 size film (which they introduced in 1912 and is between 35mm and 120 in size) and adapted that for both consumers and amateurs

They did in 1957 with the introduction of the Star cameras which were great little cameras.

 

[Ian Grant]

They did in 1957 with the introduction of the Star cameras which were great little cameras.

I don't remember the Star Brownie's. however the second camera I owned (the first was aged 2 I never had film for it) was a Brownie 127 which had been my mother's camera until she bought an Instamatic.

I think Kodak under estimated the abilities of the users and dumbed down far too much, my mum went from her Brownie 127 to an Instamatic, to a Praktica SLR, then a Pentax MV and finally a Canon compact with a zoom lens, she had no interest or understanding of photography apart from taking her snapshots.

In hind sight it's easy to see that Kodak made huge mistakes, still selling Box Brownies in the 1960's, cameras of infer image quality through using the 126, 110 and later Disc camera formats. It sold these customers films, and made huge profits with 110 and Disc cameras but ethically it's not good business practice.

We here on APUG see or think of Kodak for the high quality films etc, but others saw digital as an enormous improvement over Kodak's consumere 110 and Disc cameras

APs was a format that never made sense except as a marketing format, with no real potential for serious users of small format films.

Ian

 

[Prof_Pixel]

I don't remember the Star Brownie's.

http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Kodak_Brownie_Star_series

 

[Sirius Glass]

I've always wondered why they introduced formats every decade providing lesser quality than 35mm, viz. 126, 110, disc, APS. What if they'd taken 127 size film (which they introduced in 1912 and is between 35mm and 120 in size) and adapted that for both consumers and amateurs? Just another one of those paths not taken.

That is an easy one to answer. Each smaller format used less film base, less silver and other chemicals, and more film packages per master roll, thus increasing profits.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

That is an easy one to answer. Each smaller format used less film base, less silver and other chemicals, and more film packages per master roll, thus increasing profits.

Did the consumer-oriented film processing labs complain about the extra expense required for equipment to handle disc and APS formats?

 

[Prof_Pixel]

That is an easy one to answer. Each smaller format used less film base, less silver and other chemicals, and more film packages per master roll, thus increasing profits.

I suspect that isn't true. Yes, each roll used less sensitized material but the finishing and packaging process became much more complex.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I suspect that isn't true. Yes, each roll used less sensitized material but the finishing and packaging process became much more complex.

Thus increasing Kodak's bottom line. This was a common discussion that I heard at Kodak while I worked there.

 

[Xmas]

I still get stopped in street to unload and reload film cameras.
That used to be a normal function provided in pharmacies.
Eastman original Kodak was a return camera for reload.

My 1st photo experience was fixing a Pop photo I had just seen in a contact frame, of me, that my Uncle had just printed.

 

[AgX]

I've always wondered why they introduced formats every decade providing lesser quality than 35mm, viz. 126, 110, disc, APS.

Because with growing image quality yielded by more modern emulsions film-use by consumers did not exploit the capabilities of the larger format.

The same time there was a general tendency in society of miniaturisation.



I'm very happy with the 8x10 prints from type 110 hanging at my wall. I don't always see them with the eyes of the engineer...