Personal ramblings on photography
In Kodak bankruptcy reorganisation, the announcement of Ektachrome being discountinued mark the end of the Kodak slide film, after discontinuing Kodachrome in 2009 and stopping development at the end of 2010. The won’t stop producing E-6 chemistry though.
This is very hard on slide film shooters. Now the only source for color reversible film is Fujifilm. Time to stock up.
Bryan Jones comes back on what Kodak represented to the sad realisation of what it has become.
The sad part of this is that Kodak is another example of the a company that fell from dramatic heights and has gone from a name that everybody knew to one that does not have nearly the brand recognition it once had that was all things photography.
To me, Kodak rings now with good film (a very niche product today) and crappy digital camera. That last part is no longer since Kodak announced they abandon the camera business in light of their bankruptcy reorganisation. They contributed a lot to photography, with innovations like the roll film, Kodachrome that made color photography easier, the first digital camera in 1975, etc. The also contributed to make photography accessible to anybody, for the best or the worse. We, photographers, have a huge debt towards Kodak.
Incidentally I came back to photography a bit because I bought a Kodak digital camera in 1999 – which was at the time decent. Then I bought a Canon EOS film camera and ended up mostly shooting Fuji slide film… Today my TLR film camera sees a lot of Kodak film.
After inventing the digital camera in 1975, and resisting it heavily, now Kodak is abandoning the digital camera market all together during their bankruptcy, to reorganize, refocus in order to exit as smaller company. They won’t stop making disposable film cameras though, which is part of the film division.
Source Kodak press release and C|Net.
While this seems to be saddening, it is the reality of the business, and I understand this one.
Kodak was in the low-end of the market, their camera weren’t really great, albeit sufficient in the consumer market. But with the declining market for consumer compact digital camera, totally taken over by cell-phones, it seems to be the logical decision. Even the Japanese makers saw a serious fall this year, but most have a higher-end product line to sustain the business.
My only hope is that they don’t end up getting out of the film business ; the current press release does clearly state they continue. The end of Kodachrome was an unfortunate decision they had to make, and consolidating their film product line seemed to be sane ; they still make good products and it would be very sad if they discontinued them.
We’ll see.
A small documentary “Kodachrome 2010” by Xander Robin, with an interview of Dwayne’s Photo lab manager and how it came to an end.
The video was taken down on YouTube due to a copyright claim.
Robert Cohen found his last roll of Kodachrome and went to the Missouri fair to shoot it ; then drove down to Dwayne’s to get it processed, anxiously waiting to see if the film had any picture on it.
My biggest regret is to not have shot Kodachrome more often. I think that the 3 weeks turn around in France was part of what turned me off.
A quick explanation from Michael Krigman as to why Kodak is dying and Fujifilm is doing well. Michael bought a Fujifilm X-100 made of a Fujifilm sensor. But what did Kodak do?
As Kodak fades, FujiFilm embodies a new generation of photographic technology driven by genuine innovation rather than strict adherence to marketing formulas. A powerful lesson is hidden in this story.
Exactly.
Techcrunch tries to explain what happened to Kodak’s moment or how Kodak also failed to anticipate the competition of Fujifilm in the film market, including in its own market: the US.
BBC short summary of Kodak history in the light of their chapter 11 filing: Kodak: from Brownie and roll film to digital disaster.
Kodak just filed for bankruptcy in the US. This was almost expected as business has been declining over the years, being unable to make a come back from the decline of film.
The film division, still profitable after a reduction of costs, simplification of the product line like abandoning Kodachrome development isn’t big enough to sustain the rest. After deciding in November 2011 to sell their image sensor division to an equity firm, it sounded obvious that Kodak management didn’t know where to go.
Now several concerns:
First, what will happen to the film division? I’m sure that this is part of what they will try to offload for cheap. It is not growing anymore, quite the opposite, but they still have good film products and it would be a great loss to lose them.
Second, their patent pool is like a nuclear warhead that they are gonna sell to the highest bidder who will use it for patent warfare. Kodak has been known to litigate in the past to try to bring in some cash, unsuccessfully.
We’ll see how the reorganization goes.
A small documentary from 1958 about manufacturing film (medium format) at Kodak.
View on Youtube: Part 1 and Part 2
via Lomography
Kodachrome is dead, long live to Kodachrome.
Yesterday, December 30th 2010, was the last day to have Kodachrome processed at the last lab operating in the world, Dwayne’s Photo, in Parsons Kansas. Rolls had to reach them by noon that day to be processed, after 75 years.
Steve McCurry, the legendary photographer from the National Geographic got given by Kodak the last roll they produced in 2009. You can see shots from his last roll.
It is sad to see this happening, but ever falling sales of film made the enterprise even less viable. I just wish there was a company that was able to manufacture and process a Kodachrome-like film in the future, as it was the best color slide film, with unbelievable archival quality, unrivaled by the E-6 chemistry based slide films.
I just regret to not have shot enough of it, none of them in America.