The end for Kodak?

[Bertil]

Just a real shame. I've always been a Kodak fan and supporter. One would be hard pressed to find better products of such consistent quality. Just a shame.

Nothing wrong with consistent quality with Ilford and Fuiji – sorry Kodak friends !(though one among them! Bought 25 rolls 120 TMY (( and 25 rolls 120 Acros 100 this afternonen)))

If just ONE company could produce, say, a set of (50)-100-400 ISO reasonable B/W film emusions, and say one reasonable set of 100-200 (400) ISO neg colour film (slide filme is history, I suppose) to a, in same sense, reasonable price (*) , that wouuld be enough – the rest WE CAN DO OURSELVES!
/Bertil
(*) In Europa we pay roughly 3x US price for fuel, and we can live with that, and we also drive cars.

[zsas]

A few weeks ago Fuji sues Kodak re digi patents, today Kodak sues Fuji re digi:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Kodak-...06584.html?x=0

[keithwms]

It seems to me such a contract might help save Kodak, but will it stimulate the market toward Kodak printers? I doubt it. Without the buying public creating demand for Kodak products, government contracts aren't going to help them. And besides, what if HP or some other brand competes for the contract, and they come in lower/better? Now where does that leave Kodak?

It's not a long term solution, I am just saying that govt work might help them pick up some of the pieces, spin them off, and remain solvent. As for HP and the other printer companies, Kodak claims to have a much lower cost solution. If that's true then this'd be the thing.

Anyway that was just one example of the kind of approach that I think is needed to help Kodak... but not necessarily film. Film is not going to save Kodak, but they can save their film brands for a few more years and throw their longtime customers a little bone, if they so choose.

[Neanderman]

Just a small reminder that, sadly, this has been going on for a while:

Changing focus : Kodak and the battle to save a great American company. Swasy, Alecia. Times Business, c1997.

Ed

[Ian Grant]

There is no better way to archive a motion picture then to digitize it. A motion picture has an exceedingly better chance of surviving the coming ages in digital form. Archiving of motion pictures is not going to be a boon for film.

It matters little how keen an interest the coating division has in film. What matters more is what the buying public and potential market for film think. The film industry needs to find a way to provoke desire for film in the public.

Actually they are talking about archiving Digital movies on film

Ian

[bdial]

Maintaining a digital archive through changing technologies can become a massive and massively expensive undertaking when the scale is large.
Making copies of every digital film to new kinds of media every 5 - 10, maybe 15 years will cost owners of those archives 10's of thousands, and more likely 100's of thousands of $'s, Pounds or Euros.
Certainly, maintaining a film based archive isn't cheap either, but it's not subject to quite the same technology churn that digital technology is.

[keithwms]

Meanwhile, Fuji cleverly introduced a new line of film-based archiving devices...

http://www.fujifilmusa.com/press/new...?newsID=879745

[pollux]

I think we are pretty fucked for film photography in general if they can't find an investor willing to take the brand and move the plants and machinery for 35mm and 120. all those psyop TV adverts saying if you buy the D4 etc your photos will be great, and look like the stock photos in the ad.

[keithwms]

Does anyone want to hazard a (realistic) guess to a worst case and best case scenario for Kodak?

Best: chapter 11 to stave off immediate debt, spin off divisions that outside investors perceive to be viable, sell patents, and maintain a core business.

Worst: chapter 11 and then liquidate everything to the highest bidder under the supervision of a court.

...and for film shooters as a group:

Best: Kodak goes and their film market share goes to companies that can extract more profit per unit sold. Prices remain fairly stable.

Worst: Kodak goes and takes out all the remaining local processing with it, raising the effective cost of using film beyond the reach of newcomers. At that point, only those with film projects underway and good stocks of film and chems will be financially viable.

[Photo Engineer]

Re: Archiving - Digital is the worst possible medium for archiving anything due to the fugitive nature of the digital copy either on DVD or magnetic disk. Also, digital archiving easily costs 10x that of film archiving. This has been proven and discussed here on APUG many times.

Look it up!

PE