Kodak's financial woes

[tomalophicon]

Like I said, go digging on the CIPA site. I did.

I don't think things went better for other makers than it did for Nikon:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/technology/12nikon.html

Oops, didn't see that you edited.
I couldn't find anything worth anything on the CIPA site.

[lxdude]

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I can see that when it comes to typing, you are now stumped!

[KarnyDoc]

While sales dropped off, it didn't justify camera makers dropping out of the film market altogether.Try to find a F6 or FM10 in stock.
Kodunk says oh lets stop making Kodachrome 64.

Between bone head manuevers of camera makers qutting the film camera biz and the great yellow father stopping production of film speeds and types they drove the industry to where it is now, THEY gave up on it.
How many people would still be shooting film if the could buy a new 35mm slr,get their favorite film,get conveinent processing etc.
The general public thinks film is dead now. They threw the market away.

My girlfriend used to work at Unique Photo (yes...that Unique Photo) when they were located in Florham Park, NJ. Seldom a day went by when she'd get a call from someone, such as a customer or camera store, for a particular film, paper or chemical, only to be told that, "Sorry, the manufacturer has discontinued that product." (Or in the case of Agfa, "discontinuing" the entire company.) The disappointment was palpable.

You're right about the manufacturers' throwing the market away, if my GF's experience is any indication. The demand for these things is very much still there, despite what the marketing hype will say otherwise; witness The Impossible Project's resurrection of Polaroid instant film. In light of the "digital juggernaut," companies such as Kodak, Ilford, Fuji and Agfa hit the panic button when they saw "alarming" declines in the film market. It was a knee-jerk reaction, too.

Dieter Zakas

[railwayman3]

But, the truth is the truth. Kodak did not kill Kodachrome. Lack of sales to you customers killed it! That is the absolute truth.

PE

And crappy processing in the 70's to 90's. Sorry, but that's also a truth.

[lxdude]

And crappy processing in the 70's to 90's. Sorry, but that's also a truth.

Yes it is.

[Rudeofus]

Re: facts. Publicly traded companies have stockholders and government organizations regulate their disclosure practices. What you're saying might be best applied to privately-held companies. Ever hear of an SEC 10-K?

As PE already pointed out, it's quite easy to shift profits between departments. Seriously, if accounting were so strict and simple and wouldn't allow for creative trickery, most corporations wouldn't bother with tax heavens.

Film camera sales slid along with film. Who still makes film cameras on a scale comparable to ten years ago? Nikon makes 2 now. Ever bother to look at trend lines of film sales since 2000?

Film camera sales must have sled a lot more since you can shoot film only once whereas cameras last for a long time. The used camera market is swamped with professional analog gear in top condition. And apart from sensor technology there hasn't been much progress in camera technology: sensor vs film aside, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II is a piece of junk compared to my 12 year old EOS 3.

And despite all that, there are still makers and buyers of new analog cameras. Think about it.


There's considerable difference between "Chicken Little" alarmism and realism. It's hard to be sanguine about the next several years and film production/availability/variety as we currently know it.
Some films will go away, others will come. I weep for Fuji Astia and would really weep if Kodak E100VS ever went away. At the same time I cheered for Fuji Provia 400X and the new Kodak Portra films.

I am quite sanguine because I have access to a large freezer and to quality film stock that our ancestors couldn't have dreamed of.

[CGW]

Oops, didn't see that you edited.
I couldn't find anything worth anything on the CIPA site.

LOTS there if you bother to open the PDF annual/monthly reports.

[Aristophanes]

Like I said, go digging on the CIPA site. I did.

I don't think things went better for other makers than it did for Nikon:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/technology/12nikon.html

It sounds like Kodak dumped film cameras before Nikon.

If Kodak goes into bankruptcy, the future of it's film production is entirely at risk because the # of cameras under manufacture to serve as a vehicle for the film product is too small now to even warrant data collection.

Film sales are now entirely dependent on legacy cameras which are subject to physical depreciation and exit from the market. Therefore the film supply must dwindle correspondingly. Even if current film sales are OK, the medium and long-term prospects are a problem for any entity purchasing the film manufacturing segment. This is reflected in the stock price. Even Ilford is subject this problem. Kodak's financial freefall, and Fuji's huge pullback both signal an inability to properly capitalize the market.

For roll film to survive what is required is:

Camera manufacture in a variety of known design types.

Labs that offer traditional services plus scanning, all affordably. Rationalization through mail order may actually improve the quality/cost ratio. Tie-ins to social media and improved "retronomics" marketing are required. The original Kodak slogan of "You push the button, we'll do the rest" is prescient and ironic. That's where film is today.

The manufacture of scanners and lab equipment. For the tiny % of people who home develop, the continued manufacture of enlargers, parts, etc. There is probably not enough home darkroom demand to sustain any roll film industry, so lab services are essential to broaden the market.

Papers, chemicals, and so on should not be a problem. Nor should distribution. The film industry would be so small that storefronts can be Internet based. Think ham radio, audiophile, telescopes.......

This is all sunk cost stuff.

[DREW WILEY]

Sometimes bankrupty is the best thing that can happen in a scenario like this, because there are always
investment groups looking for a bargain and willing to rethink what went wrong in the first place. Best of
all, it is sometimes the only way of purging out the old mgt. But it's always a roll of the dice. The new
mgt might be worse. Publicly traded corps are highly subject to the willy-nilly winds of media hype, which in the case of film becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, not because the foreseen demand for film
is no longer actually profitable, but because investors are basically speculators looking for a quick buck,
and frequently don't even understand the nature of the business they're putting their money into (or that some mindless computer is automatically doing for them). A more tightly-held rearrangement could
in theory buffer out some of this nonsense and still hold toghether Kodak's viable divisions, while ridding
them of the hopeless ones. Unfortunatley, the last people they'd ever sell their film patents to would be
Fuji, and Fuji is the only competitor at this point in a position to make high-quality color films and papers.

[DREW WILEY]

PE - for once I've got to slightly disagree with you. As once a heavy 35mm film user, prior to converting
to large format, I personally stopped using Kodachrome once they spun off the development to Kodalux
and the processing got horrible. I heard the same story from other photographers, over and over. Then
when the silver bullet of 120 Kodachrome came along, the processing disappeared almost as fast. It's a
matter of reliablilty. Kodak repeatedly burned their own reputation among pros. They wiggle their little toe into the water and then pull it out if the temperature isn't just right. Typical of corporations that are
just too big to manage properly and treat their minor divisions like unwanted stepchildren. I had friends
who were put out of businesses a lab owners because they signed onto extremely expensive service
contracts for scanners etc, then found out that just when they needed the service, Kodak had pulled
out and left them high and dry. But even for a small fry like me back then, spending a week in the wilderness and then seeing a big scratch all across your roll of Kodachrome didn't inspire confidence.

[CGW]

PE - for once I've got to slightly disagree with you. As once a heavy 35mm film user, prior to converting
to large format, I personally stopped using Kodachrome once they spun off the development to Kodalux
and the processing got horrible. I heard the same story from other photographers, over and over. Then
when the silver bullet of 120 Kodachrome came along, the processing disappeared almost as fast. It's a
matter of reliablilty. Kodak repeatedly burned their own reputation among pros. They wiggle their little toe into the water and then pull it out if the temperature isn't just right. Typical of corporations that are
just too big to manage properly and treat their minor divisions like unwanted stepchildren. I had friends
who were put out of businesses a lab owners because they signed onto extremely expensive service
contracts for scanners etc, then found out that just when they needed the service, Kodak had pulled
out and left them high and dry. But even for a small fry like me back then, spending a week in the wilderness and then seeing a big scratch all across your roll of Kodachrome didn't inspire confidence.

Pros stopped using Kodachrome in droves by the mid 90s when Velvia knocked it off photo editors' light tables. Processing quality was beside the point. Kodak bought some time with the revised Ektachromes but by 7-9 years ago the same pros dropped E6 materials for digital. There were lots of lab options besides Kodak. The accelerating collapse of film sales after about 2001 was unstoppable and had little to do with Kodak's management.

[Photo Engineer]

Ummm, Drew, did you forget the Consent Decree by the US government?

With that decree, Kodak could no longer sell Kodachrome with processing included, and they were forced to sell processing chemicals to others. So, what happened? Customers went for the cheaper processing and got the associated quality. It took a few years, but that is what happened. Same thing for E6 and C41 processing, but there the results were resoundingly better due to the simplicity of the processes.

So, again, you have outside parties and the government which caused the decline in Kodachrome processing quality.

PE

[railwayman3]

Ummm, Drew, did you forget the Consent Decree by the US government?

With that decree, Kodak could no longer sell Kodachrome with processing included, and they were forced to sell processing chemicals to others. So, what happened? Customers went for the cheaper processing and got the associated quality. It took a few years, but that is what happened. Same thing for E6 and C41 processing, but there the results were resoundingly better due to the simplicity of the processes.

So, again, you have outside parties and the government which caused the decline in Kodachrome processing quality.

PE

Here in the UK Kodachrome was always sold "Processing Paid by Kodak"...and was always processed by Kodak themselves at "P.O. Box 14, Hemel Hempstead, Herts".

In the 70's -90's, the processing went to pieces, scratches, random blue spots,
frames burnt by the heat-sealing of the card mounts, and dozens of amateur photographers deserted Kodachrome in despair, myself included.

I went on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday to the Far East and Australia in 1994, using what I thought was the flagship films from the top manufacturer...K25 and K64...about 25% of the frames were unusable through Kodak's own crappy processing. Believe me, a free replacement film and a pro-forma apology letter doesn't put that right! Sorry, I admire your understandable loyalty, but you can't blame that on anyone other than the Almighty Kodak!

I finally went back to Kodachrome in the last year...and found a tiny firm called Dwaynes who knocked spots off Kodak for Quality Control.

[Photo Engineer]

Hmmm, that would be the plant at Harrow.

I know what prevailed here in the US. I cannot explain what happened in the UK.

I do know that the evening news on NBS today is going to run a segment on Kodak according to local news. I look forward to what they say. And, based on a lot of factors, I have little loyalty left. I feel more betrayed than anything else, by the BOD of Kodak along with top management. I share the opinion of many Kodakers and ex Kodakers in this. I merely try to report what I know here and I was aware of US process problems and the reasons behind some of it. I did not know of the UK problem.

Sorry.

PE

[railwayman3]

I do see and understand that what you say about the Consent Decree and the independent labs in the US....independent (non-Kodachrome) processing here in the UK also certainly left a lot to be desired at times!

It's all ancient history now, but I do remember. from my Father, and also personally, the frustration which resulted in many amateurs "trying out" other makes, even though, arguably, Kodachrome had the final edge on quality over the other films available at that time. Something slipped somewhere, which should not have happened with the flagship product....I also recall actually feeling quite sad that the obvious quality of research and manufacture of the film was being let down by nothing more than careless processing.

Anyway, I've just had back my E6 (Kodak films) from a holiday last month, and they're great (well, technically at least! They're not great art, just mostly family memories!). But, they make digital shots taken at the same time look totally shabby. :D

[DREW WILEY]

Thanks for that tidbit of relevant information. But merely not allowing Kodak not to sell preprocessing with Kodachrome film would not seem to be a reason for not processing it at all, and spinning it off to someone else. As far as Velvia knocking them off the block or off the lightbox, that was well after the
Kodalux fiasco. E6-films at the time were hardly up to par, though the processing simplification was of
course desirable for independent labs. Velvia was difficult to print and difficult to scan from (still is in
some ways), so that explanation falls a bit short. Kinda like all the theories of why the mammoths and
mastodons started dying off around the end of the ice age - might have been the cumulative effect of
several different factors. I'd still be using Kodachrome if it was around. Looked at some 5x7 Kodachromes
last year and must say, even back then it had a look that would make E6 films today envious. Now I'm
banking on Ektar (and my freezer, just in case).

[Marvin]

Kodak on NBC news tonight.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44888892

[CGW]

Thanks for that tidbit of relevant information. But merely not allowing Kodak not to sell preprocessing with Kodachrome film would not seem to be a reason for not processing it at all, and spinning it off to someone else. As far as Velvia knocking them off the block or off the lightbox, that was well after the
Kodalux fiasco. E6-films at the time were hardly up to par, though the processing simplification was of
course desirable for independent labs. Velvia was difficult to print and difficult to scan from (still is in
some ways), so that explanation falls a bit short. Kinda like all the theories of why the mammoths and
mastodons started dying off around the end of the ice age - might have been the cumulative effect of
several different factors. I'd still be using Kodachrome if it was around. Looked at some 5x7 Kodachromes
last year and must say, even back then it had a look that would make E6 films today envious. Now I'm
banking on Ektar (and my freezer, just in case).

Kodachrome was already circling the drain by the mid-90s. Commercial photographers liked Velvia because photo editors bought work shot on it. What's not to get? The publishing industry quickly adapted to these new materials and new hybrid/digital workflow and never looked back. FYI, Kodachrome wasn't exactly scanner-friendly compared to the vastly better E6 materials that started hitting the market in the 90s.

[Aristophanes]

Kodak on NBC news tonight.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44888892

The ink supply termination is a sign that someone is not getting paid. The means some sort of restructuring, likely overseen by the court, is imminent.

[Photo Engineer]

There were many reasons for the death of Kodachrome and for the lack of health at EK. One could not list them all here even if they knew them all. You would wear out your keyboard.

Fisher is quoted as saying something to the effect that he could not cure Kodak's ills in a dozen lifetimes.

PE