Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Kodak! What are you going to do?

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Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-11-2013, 11:56 AM:

What is Kodak going to do? They have already heard that the Major Film Studios and independants
are no longer going to use 35mm/70mm film.They have recently laid off another 67 employees from their work
force and they have increased the prices on their Film Stock.

That sounds like a company that is approaching desperation for its future.I believe they waited too long
to be serious in the Digital Market which is ironic since they were experimenting with Digital back in 1975
and even produced an early Primitive Camera.

What do you do when you are so desperate for Capitol that you are selling off your numerous patents.I certainly
as a person who invests in common Stock,aren't going to be buying shares of Kodak anytime soon.

Well even the mightest through the decades have fallen by the wayside. I never in my generation would have ever
thought two Car Companies like Oldsmobile and Pontiac would have died. Harley Earl would be rolling over in his Grave!

As much as this company had become a house hold name in past decades I don't see a bright future. Maybe they
shouldn't have put all their eggs in one basket thinking Film was here forever!!! [uhoh]

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 12-11-2013, 12:13 PM:

Kodak will just continue to make film products for those who want to shoot in film. There won't likely be much 35mm exhibition soon (not like there is already) and 15/70 gets more rare as the days go buy.

From what I have read and heard from various sources online, it really makes no difference if you shoot in 35mm or digital, from a cost standpoint it all balances out at the end.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-11-2013, 12:22 PM:

As the OP points out, Kodak missed the digital imaging bus, but there were other exacerbating factors for their decline as well: for example, their shift from a diversified chemical manufacturer (EK made everything from dry cleaning fluid to industrial lubricants once) to one that only made photographic products in the '80s and '90s, and then Antonio Perez's disastrous attempt to break into the consumer inkjet market in the late '00s.

I suspect that they'll try to do long term is what IBM has successfully done and what HP is currently trying to do: quit the manufacturing business altogether and sell services rather than products, leveraging the EK brand to do so. They don't have anything close to a market-leading presence in any of the things they make except film and processing kit chemistry, and the market itself for those products is in decline.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-11-2013, 02:41 PM:

Dang! They better not, I have a lot of nice cameras here that I use...

Kodak actually has no plans to discontinue Vision 3 negative products. In fact there were recently contracts signed between a few of the studios and Eastman Kodak to supply film stock for a lot of the Sitcoms and Films going into production over the next few years. European producers also just won a lawsuit that allows them to make a choice of weather to originate on Super 16 or to shoot digital. Apparently many were forced to shoot digital but wanted to shoot on film. Imagine wining a lawsuit to be able to do that! So don't expect film to disappear as an origination medium any tme soon. It has seen better days as an exhibition medium though...

Mark

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 12-11-2013, 03:31 PM:

Mark, well said.

As long as Kodak is still around, I think Kodak will always make film for someone who will pay for it.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-11-2013, 04:47 PM:

The Eastman Kodak company discontinued a lot of different kinds of films especially for still professional photographers like myself. I know Both Kodachrome and Ectachrome are gone and I do not think Vericolor the color negative film I had used for most of my film based work is no longer available in the 120 size as well as the different size sheet film.

As far as motion picture film is concerned, I think duplicating film will be around for awhile as well as regular stock as long as there is a demand for it.

-Claude

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-11-2013, 10:40 PM:

Well Kodak has been a Household name for several generations and average americans associate them with their photographic memory albums and old home movies.They have always seem to have had a moralistic business sense at least to joe Citizen...

My suggestion to them is do what the Big Automakers did a few years back.Go to Congress and ask them(the American tax payer) to bail them out.All they have to say to Congress is we miscalculated technological advancements and found ourselves behind the eight ball.We have been both a beneficial and necessary Corporation to generations of Americans and our demise would leave an empty crater in American History...

My only other piece of advice to Kodak's CEO and other bigshots is don't do what GM and Chrysler did. Show up in Washington in Private Corporate LEAR JETS and arrive at Congessional hearings in Chauffer Driven Limos. Congress tends to frown upon that even though they do it themselves... [beer]

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 12-12-2013, 01:08 PM:

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens

As long as Kodak is still around, I think Kodak will always make film for someone who will pay for it.

This makes more sense if you reverse it to read: "As long as there's someone who will pay for film, Kodak will still be around."

Note that I said "more" sense. Not "perfect" sense.

As orders become fewer and farther between, the cost of manufacturing (and using) film will increase. Even so, at some point, purchase orders will become so few and far between, that it won't be cost-effective for Kodak to stay in the game.

There's probably a formula that determines how long of a gap they'd be able to endure between major orders, assuming orders of a certain magnitude and frequency.

And profit margin.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 12-12-2013, 02:03 PM:

quote: Steve Matz
My suggestion to them is do what the Big Automakers did a few years back.Go to Congress and ask them(the American tax payer) to bail them out.All they have to say to Congress is we miscalculated technological advancements and found ourselves behind the eight ball.We have been both a beneficial and necessary Corporation to generations of Americans and our demise would leave an empty crater in American History...

I don't think this will work for Kodak. First of all, can you make the argument that Kodak is still a major employer in the US? Are there a number of other businesses in the US which supply parts to Kodak? Does Kodak still make products which are deemed essential for the American economy?

When the auto industry when to Washington asking for a bailout, they were able to make the case that they were essential to the American economy. In terms of both jobs and the production of durable goods, automakers are an essential industry. Plus, allowing any one of the big 3 American companies to go under would have had a ripple effect that would have hurt other companies which provided components for cars.

Although Kodak may be important to certain niche markets, I don't see how they hold the importance of an auto maker.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 12-12-2013, 02:06 PM:

quote: Manny Knowles
This makes more sense if you reverse it to read: "As long as there's someone who will pay for film, Kodak will still be around."

Note that I said "more" sense. Not "perfect" sense.

Manny, it actually makes better sense the way I said it and not the way you said it. Kodak currently makes more than just film, they make printers, digital cameras, document imaging solutions etc etc. It is possible they could end their manufacturing of film and still be around.

So, as long as Kodak is around, they will likely still make film for those who will pay for it.

Note that I said "better" and not "perfect" sense [Razz]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-12-2013, 03:28 PM:

They may be around, but they certainly won't make film as long "as there are people around who will pay for it"... there has to be ENOUGH people. They quit making Kodachrome... but I don't think all the Kodachrome fans died en masse. There are still a lot of them left, just not enough to buy enough film to make the manufacturing pay.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-12-2013, 04:09 PM:

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Manny, it actually makes better sense the way I said it and not the way you said it. Kodak currently makes more than just film, they make printers, digital cameras, document imaging solutions etc etc. It is possible they could end their manufacturing of film and still be around.

Kodak could survive in those other market segments (digital cameras, printers, etc.) if they were a leading player in those areas and those areas weren't struggling badly.

At the end of Sept. Kodak announced it was dropping out of the consumer inkjet printer business. The company isn't much of a player in office printing or large format printing. All of those niches are dominated by other companies, such as HP, Epson, Roland, Konica-Minolta, etc. Changing attitudes among consumers and businesses are sapping demand for printers. More and more people are displaying and sharing photos and other documents electronically. Businesses are under pressure to go paperless for numerous reasons.

The digital camera industry is kind of in the shitter right now. Nikon and Canon (the leading DSLR companies) have both been having a rough time. Smart phones have been killing off a big part of the one piece "point and shoot" camera market. A very strong Japanese Yen has made professional level camera gear extremely expensive. A 400mm f/2.8L lens made by Canon used to cost $7000; its "II" replacement costs nearly $11,000. I paid $1400 for my L-series 24-70mm zoom lens. Its new "II" replacement, still with no image stabilization, costs nearly $1000 more!

Kodak has no entries in the DSLR space. Its point and shoot cameras have been derided as junk compared to PAS cameras from Nikon, Canon and others. Even Nikon & Canon have reduced the number of PAS models they make. Kodak could try the fairly new "mirrorless" market, but Nikon and Sony are already pretty far ahead.

A decade ago Kodak was a leader in the digital back market (a digital back is an imager that can fit into a medium or large format camera originally designed to shoot film). Kodak stopped making digital backs in 2004. Phase One, Hasselblad, Mamiya/Leaf are in control of that high end market now.

Like or not, without the film business, Kodak is toast.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-12-2013, 04:09 PM:

quote: Steve Matz
Well Kodak has been a Household name for several generations and average americans associate them with their photographic memory albums and old home movies.They have always seem to have had a moralistic business sense at least to joe Citizen...

Exactly, so the brand has intrinsic value. People trust it. So that should be a plus when EK tries to diversify into another business. Their problem with inkjet stuff was that Perez was trying to muscle into a market that was already dominated by other big, trusted names - he was late to the party. Playing the armchair CEO for a moment, I'd be looking for another market that is vaguely related to imaging and/or chemistry (consumer 3D printing, perhaps?) and which has not already been sewn up, in which to deploy the Kodak branding.

quote: Steve Matz
My suggestion to them is do what the Big Automakers did a few years back.Go to Congress and ask them(the American tax payer) to bail them out.All they have to say to Congress is we miscalculated technological advancements and found ourselves behind the eight ball.We have been both a beneficial and necessary Corporation to generations of Americans and our demise would leave an empty crater in American History...

I don't want to sail too close to the political wind, but my understanding is that the number of jobs potentially at risk if the Detroit automakers went down was in the millions: just those three automakers shutting up shop would have put a significant dent in the United States' GDP (and it would have had significant international relations implications, too, when their overseas operations closed, as demonstrated by the reaction to GM's recent decision to pull out of Australia). So, as with the banks in 2007-08, Detroit played the "too big to fail" card, and successfully. I'm afraid that EK simply isn't that big or that strategic. Yes, EK is an American icon, but so was RCA and eventually cold, hard economics caught up with it.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 12-12-2013, 04:16 PM:

quote:
but my understanding is that the number of jobs potentially at risk if the Detroit automakers went down was in the millions:

Yup you are correct. The ripple effect would be massive, all of the suppliers, dealers, shipping of parts and cars etc would all be affected.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-12-2013, 06:20 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
the brand has intrinsic value. People trust it.

That's right, so the brand itself will probably be the last thing to "go." Once everything else has been sold off, then they will sell the brand name which will then get slapped on anything from printer paper to drawing boards...pretty much anything that might even be remotely associated with imaging of any type. It'll be the same as the "Crosley" brand you now see plastered onto cheap machines that make CDs from LPs or cassettes...Crosley being a well-respected brand among the over-50 set. But Crosley the actual company is long gone.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-12-2013, 06:37 PM:

I am curious about Bobby's point: is the camera business really that bad? If anything, I would expect that digital would result in more camera bodies being sold as technology improves. A quality film camera (and lenses) is basically a lifetime investment, and fifty-year-old cameras are still in daily use today. With the same lenses and film, a 1950s Nikon F will take pictures that are just as good as those taken with a modern F6. By contrast, digital necessitates regular upgrades (is anyone regularly using even a ten-year-old digital camera?). I would think that camera body sales have significantly increased since digital cameras became a common thing, but maybe not.

As for Kodak--the company has been mismanaged for decades and has still been able to produce some good products and have at least some divisions (including the Motion Picture division) that are still profitable. I hope that they will survive without another bankruptcy or (worse) a bail-out.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 12-12-2013, 09:30 PM:

Scott
I am not a professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination, and my camera often goes weeks without use. However, my Sony A200 DSLR is about 7 years old and it's working just as good today as it was the day it was purchased - maybe even better since I know how to use.

I have considered purchasing a new body, but only because I purchased the lowest end model and I was looking for more features. If I do upgrade, it will likely be to a used body which is a couple years newer. At this point any new body I purchase will be the result rather than need.

One thought about the cost of DSLRs vs. film cameras. Would the savings in consumables over a 10 year period be fairly comparable to the cost a new camera body? Looking at the current line of Sony Alpha cameras, a new body for the lowest level camera would be about the same as what I purchased mine for 7 years ago - $500.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 12-12-2013, 10:09 PM:

quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Kodak currently makes more than just film, they make printers, digital cameras, document imaging solutions etc etc. It is possible they could end their manufacturing of film and still be around.

Possible. But not probable. Time will tell.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-13-2013, 09:49 AM:

quote: Scott Norwood
I am curious about Bobby's point: is the camera business really that bad?

Yes. It's bad. Sales of interchangeable lens digital cameras are, for the first time, now in decline.

Canon cut its annual profit forecast in October. DSLR sales overall are down 4% and sales of their compact cameras are down more than 20% compared to 2012 figures. The weakening Japanese Yen (now trading close to 100¥ to $1 instead of 75¥ to $1) is helping to cushion some of the losses.

Nikon issued two negative reports in a row (March & November). The company posted a 41% drop in operating profits for the April-September 6 month period. Their new retro-styled "Df" full frame sensor DSLR isn't selling well. The company is also re-thinking their mirror-less 1 System.

Various articles I've read on the topic speculate on various causes. The global economy is still pretty sluggish, particularly in Asia. Smartphones have definitely put a big dent in digital camera sales, although I think compact, one piece point and shoot cameras have been hurt far worse by smartphones.

The market may also be getting saturated. Anyone who cares about shooting good quality photos probably already has at least one DSLR. Once you get a good DSLR that meets pretty much all your photography needs there's no reason to replace it until it breaks and can't be affordably repaired. Some of the new DSLR bodies being released have some nice new capabilities, but are those advancements good enough to replace a still properly functional DSLR body?

They also got too damned high with their prices. For instance I really don't see the justification for Canon making the 5D Mark III cost $1000 more than the 5D Mark II. The main improvement was adding more auto-focus points. But even cheaper DSLR bodies have that. They went nuts price-gouging on their new lenses.

quote: Scott Norwood
With the same lenses and film, a 1950s Nikon F will take pictures that are just as good as those taken with a modern F6. By contrast, digital necessitates regular upgrades (is anyone regularly using even a ten-year-old digital camera?).

A DSLR isn't going to last nearly as long as a high quality film camera body. But it's easy to get upwards of a decade's worth of service out of one. My Canon 5D Mark II is four years old and I haven't had to get any service work done on it (such as replacing the shutter curtain or cleaning the image sensor). I have no plans on replacing that camera body anytime soon. If I buy any new photography equipment it's going to be in other areas, such as lights, accessories and new lenses. Canon will have to do a hell of a lot better than the 5D Mark III, and price it a LOT better, to get me to replace my 5D Mark II at this point.

quote: Justin Hamaker
One thought about the cost of DSLRs vs. film cameras. Would the savings in consumables over a 10 year period be fairly comparable to the cost a new camera body?

There's tremendous cost savings with shooting digital. That doesn't necessarily mean "better" but it is a lot cheaper. A 24 shot roll of 100 ASA film cost a few bucks and a few more to get it developed. I can shoot hundreds of shots at some event and it would get expensive pretty fast when shooting on film.

BTW, a good film camera body isn't (or wasn't) cheap. I worked at a camera store in midtown Manhattan during my senior year of college and was kind of shocked at some of the prices then. A new Nikon F4s body cost over $2000 in 1990. Factoring inflation that price would probably be about $3500 today. Leica cameras cost considerably more than that.

Posted by Jeff Missinne (Member # 8039) on 12-31-2013, 06:59 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
That's right, so the brand itself will probably be the last thing to "go." Once everything else has been sold off, then they will sell the brand name which will then get slapped on anything from printer paper to drawing boards...pretty much anything that might even be remotely associated with imaging of any type.

Likewise Bell and Howell, a name now associated with luggage, electric razors, flashlights, and electronic gopher repellers. [Shrug]

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 01-01-2014, 12:55 AM:

Same thing with Polaroid. I have a Polaroid DVD player. Polaroid was ready to produce instant movie film aboutbthe time consumer videotape came out.

Another long lost brand is RCA. Once a sign of quality, now on pretty much anything.

Harold