Bye Kodak?

Soldato
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Ouch, although do have to say not suprised, nearly everytime i see a camera on someone, it either says Nikon or Canon, same for posts on various forums, and with digital seeming to be on the constant rise.....
 
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Kodak do make the sensors in the Leica M9 and Pentax 645D though. I really hope they manage to scale back their operations or something, their film/motion picture division were making profits that were being dumped into their cheap digital stuff. Losing Ektar, Portra and Tri-X would be terrible, so I hope that their restructuring either allows them to operate with smaller overheads or allows the film division to splinter off. They haven't stopped production of film though, so I'll be spending a portion of my pay packet on rolls of their film so I can stock up for a bit.
 
Soldato
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TBH they have no-one but themselves to blame. The vast majority of their business was the mainstream film market and they just failed to adapt and diversify when they saw which way the wind was blowing.

Somewhat ironic that they gave us the short-lived APS film system, the frame sizes of which live on in today's DSLRs :)
 
Soldato
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TBH they have no-one but themselves to blame. The vast majority of their business was the mainstream film market and they just failed to adapt and diversify when they saw which way the wind was blowing.

Somewhat ironic that they gave us the short-lived APS film system, the frame sizes of which live on in today's DSLRs :)

Making some of the best digital sensors of the size going, while still advancing their film offerings into probably some of the best quality mainstream photographic options going is failing to adapt and diversify? Add to that their ability to offer great quality film for next to nothing (poundland), a large incentive for many beginners.

If anyone's to blame it's much of the photographic community for jumping ship to digital like it's the second coming or something. Yes, it has it's place, but you'd be a fool to think that it's the be all and end all.

Much of their film stock probably goes to movies anyway i guess...
 
Soldato
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problem is though digital IS the second coming in many ways. Cheap and it is so much easier to see photo's appear on your monitor and deciding which to keep etc. Then emailing, posting on fb/twitter whatever...
Kodak's problem is not just digital, but a failure to make decent cameras that make a decent profit. If they had got into a decent camera system and/or dslr system they'd have kept up their profits. The film side would chug along on it's own. However, Minolta struggled with this, so maybe it wouldn't have worked out great...
 
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Yes, i said it has it's place. But it's hardly cheap by comparison, still far lower equivalent 'resolution' (not that it matter much). It's good for taking pictures. But for making them... meh.

Kodak have never really made high end cameras anyway, that's not what they do.
 
Caporegime
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The problem is digital trumps film in almost every situation*, especially in the last two or three years.

Yes there are a number of sentimental and alternative reasons to use film (i have a MF camera) but for professionals the only format remaining that hasn't really been superceded by digital is LF. The writing will be on the wall in a few years if they only produce film in the near future, even the film industry is unlikely to use film in most releases for much longer.

* I can't really think of anything at the moment that film actually trumps digital at other than large format that I mentioned. Maybe when shooting long exposures (hours at night) and in areas with no charge points for power (but then most professional film dslrs are powered as well).
 
Soldato
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I know...but can you see my point? People like Samsung can make everything in a cheap camera and make a profit, Kodak have to buy loads in...
Resolution matters little to the masses who prefer pictures that look ok!
 
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Yes, i said it has it's place. But it's hardly cheap by comparison, still far lower equivalent 'resolution' (not that it matter much). It's good for taking pictures. But for making them... meh.

Kodak have never really made high end cameras anyway, that's not what they do.

Any info on this equivalent resolution? Most MF slides are only scanned in up to 10 ish MP because any higher doesn't make a huge difference (bearing in mind most commercial film processors print film photos in the same way they do digital rather than using lenses and photo paper.

Even then a 35mm frame at 50asa will not out resolve the higher end of the digital cameras, equivalent or not. MF wise we now have 60-100 MP sensors, expensive but available. There is even an ~100MP LF digital back being releases AFAIK.
 
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It's not really about film being supreceded though, as while sales were much lower their film division was still profitable. Kodak just simply failed to adapt to the digital market quickly enough, they were the first to come out with digital in the 90's and the first to come out with full frame. They failed to capitalise on that, whether due to it being a bad product overall or being priced too highly. Not to mention that they bought and sold a pharmaceutical company. Their management has been making bad decisions since the late 90's, they could have been fine running a film operation (look at Harman and Ilford) while doing niche sensors for Leica and others.

As for film vs digital, they have their places and applications, film is a far more gratifying medium to work with, the bodies are better ergonomically (great tactile feedback), better dynamic range and highlight retention, and better b/w tones (colour tones too). You probably all know what digital has to offer.
 
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Caporegime
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The problem is, other than dynamic range (which can be sorted by HDR and where digital is making inroads) the rest can be sorted easily with a nit of post processing or even changing settings in camera.

Film will always have a place for a different experience but for mainstream use it has been trumped almost entirely (and mainstream means consumer and most professional), the film leftovers go to second/ third cameras for a few prosumers and some professionals that need/like using it.
 
Soldato
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Any info on this equivalent resolution? Most MF slides are only scanned in up to 10 ish MP because any higher doesn't make a huge difference (bearing in mind most commercial film processors print film photos in the same way they do digital rather than using lenses and photo paper.

Even then a 35mm frame at 50asa will not out resolve the higher end of the digital cameras, equivalent or not. MF wise we now have 60-100 MP sensors, expensive but available. There is even an ~100MP LF digital back being releases AFAIK.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm

And that's assuming that each individual silver halide crystal can have only one value, which just isn't true. There's just infinitely more information on any piece of film than there ever can be from a digital scan.

If we end up in a situation where film is near impossible to get hold of, and the only manufacturers are small, back yard businesses that roll out passable B&W stock, and the cameras we have fall increasingly into disrepair with nothing to replace them with then we will have made a huge mistake.
 
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The problem is, other than dynamic range (which can be sorted by HDR and where digital is making inroads) the rest can be sorted easily with a nit of post processing or even changing settings in camera.

Getting digital to look like film is near impossible, and I'm speaking from the view of someone who has spent hours trying to replicate the tones you get from Tri-X and Portra with various plugins and adjustments in Photoshop. It's probably one of the most compelling reasons I shoot film, it just has a look that's different which I love. In that sense film is actually more convenient as I now spend a lot less time worrying about my processing. It breathed life into my enthusiasm for photography again. I agree, digital is way more convenient and shareable (one of the reasons photography was so successful actually), but it isn't the main reason why Kodak are circling the drain right now. They should have scaled back years ago, their marketing and management was just all wrong.
 
Soldato
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The problem is digital trumps film in almost every situation*, especially in the last two or three years.

Yes there are a number of sentimental and alternative reasons to use film (i have a MF camera) but for professionals the only format remaining that hasn't really been superceded by digital is LF. The writing will be on the wall in a few years if they only produce film in the near future, even the film industry is unlikely to use film in most releases for much longer.

* I can't really think of anything at the moment that film actually trumps digital at other than large format that I mentioned. Maybe when shooting long exposures (hours at night) and in areas with no charge points for power (but then most professional film dslrs are powered as well).


Film still has the fact that it has much higher dynamic range going for it over digital.

In terms of the film industry, the other thing film offers is grain, which is obviously something that's deeply routed in how films look and gives it a certain feel. Digital films can look far too clean.

Obviously there has been a lot of flirting with Digital Cameras and some big films have been shot with them. There are however a lot of the people pushing RED and similar digital cameras who like to harp on about 4K and higher, but ultimately a lot of this benefits smaller productions.

The majority of Directors, DOPs and Colourists would have something shot on film over digital any day of the week.


Back to Kodak though, I think as others have pointed out, there failure has always been that their digital products are pretty weak. I've never seen a Kodak product that I've wanted, infact maybe it's just me, but I feel they have a stigma of not being great products. I seem to remember early digital photo frames which weren't much good, so it puts you off their products.
 
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