Why did Kodak not make cameras?

Rol_Lei Nut said:

Though branded "Kodak", they were made by what was Nagel in Stuttgart, Germany.

II'd be curious to know what Kodak's input was, if any...
(General marketing strategy? What type of product to come out with?)

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And I would be curious to know if EK in Stuttgart made any money between 1939 and 1945; and if so, where the profits went? Imagine the thought of some little old lady in Britain or the U.S.A. receiving dividends from EK in Germany, if EK in Germany were making, say, gun sights for the Luftwaffe or some kind of wartime production, which it would have HAD to have done, were the production capabilities not to be wasted during war time.......???????:confused:

Don't forget the Leica copy Kodak developed during WWII (under military contract, wasn't it called the Xtra?) but as '40s pricing of $20K per copy, obviously didn't go very far. Kind of makes those $600 hammers sound reasonable.

Paul

John,

Kodak made profit in Germany within WWII until war had been declared on the USA itself.

AgX said:

John,

Kodak made profit in Germany within WWII until war had been declared on the USA itself.

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Do you think, then, that EK Stuttgart profit could not, say, be paid over via Switzerland or Sweden? Just a question, conditioned (perhaps) by my suspicion of the old multi-national corporations.

Anscojohn said:

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Do you think, then, that EK Stuttgart profit could not, say, be paid over via Switzerland or Sweden? Just a question, conditioned (perhaps) by my suspicion of the old multi-national corporations.

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IIRC (too lazy to look it up), after the declaration of war with the USA, Kodak/Nagel was confiscated until the end of the war.

BetterSense:

I think you had to be there.

The market for 35mm SLRs took off in a way that was probably surprising to many in the photographic industry. Starting in the mid to late 1960s, and then accelerating through the 1970s, 35mm SLRs went from being tools for specialists to being incredibly popular mainstream cameras.

Kodak was servicing that market with greatly expanded film and photofinishing products. At the same time, Kodak was manufacturing a large quantity of cameras that were aimed at a less sophisticated market, but not necessarily an inexpensive market. Kodak sold tens of millions of 126 ad 110 cameras, for instance, and some of them were quite advanced.

We tend to think of SLRs or advanced rangefinders as being the most important part of the photographic industry. For Kodak, the film part of the 35mm equation was very important, but cameras, not as much.

Matt

Matt,

Well said.

It took a lot of crappy snapshots from the 30's to present to finance the research and develop the film advances that we have today. In the 60's, a friend and I worked one summer at EJ Korvette near Rockville Maryland. We would work eight hour shifts ringing up Instamatic 104's and Instamatic film all day. We were so busy that we did not take any breaks but lunch breaks.

There were probably only a few of those Instamatics that got serious photographers started, but the sales volume provided a lot of jobs in Rochester New York. The money was in the film and processing for Kodak.

Steve

i wish they would re-introduce the medalist series cameras but for 120 film.

[ In the 60's, a friend and I worked one summer at EJ Korvette near Rockville Maryland. We would work eight hour shifts ringing up Instamatic 104's and Instamatic film all day. We were so busy that we did not take any breaks but lunch breaks.

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That would have been about 1964. Where was the retail clerk's union with you guys working without breaks? Even with a summer job, they made you join. At least they did at the EJK store I worked at in suburban Philadelphia, PA at the time. BTW, that's the same store where I bought my Weston Master V exposure meter. $19.95, iirc.

104 advertising copy said something like "Take pictues like this with your Instamatic 104." Illustrations were shot with a Blad, I was told years later. The Instamatic 500 was made at the German factory; had a Xenar lens, iirc, compur shutter, and selenium auto exposure by Gossen.
The drop-in loading of the Instamatic (not to be confused with a self-developing system) really did help to bring on a new surge in consumer-photography because it eliminated all the loading problems amateurs had loading roll film cameras.
EK also got to be able to sell all new equipment to all photofinishers


Steve[/QUOTE]