Kodak ready to file for bankruptcy

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I don’t know what the camera cost - it’s a digital back for a 2 14" body that has a FireWire out. I installed remote FireWire and VGA interfaces in his dining room/shooting area. I installed the Mac Mini which probably cost $799 at the time, and configured it with a VGA amp and software so he could optimize for either the very high res monitor on his camera stand or the 55" client monitor.

The thing is, the 55" “client” monitor and the Mac Mini did double-duty as his home theater system. The clients (and when you’re shooting a couple million dollars worth of jewelry the client is always there, along with a guard) sit on the couch and see the image the camera is going to shoot. And he can edit and select from a huge number of shots right there with them, winnowing down before he has to do any tweaks. And when the client goes home, he can watch a movie or TV.

NONE of this was really possible with film. The image on a viewfinder may be higher resolution, but it is tiny. If the client wants to see the composition, he has to call them over, and depending on the camera it might be upside down. On the digital method, they could have the other pieces on the same screen at the same time, letting them have a good idea what the product layout will look like, as opposed to checking Polaroids and having a really good imagination.

This is a pro, who had a darkroom, had the enlarger, shot hundreds of miles of film. And he would never dream of going back. As I told you earlier, I know five of the top photographers in Kansas City, and none of them have shot film, other than the occasional “toy” camera, in years.

And I know this isn’t GD, but I’d like you to prove that. Your position reminds me of those 35mm motion picture film die-hards who insist, all evidence to the contrary, that 35mm film projection is superior. 4K digital projection is so much better than a release 35mm print, and from what I can tell, digital image capture like a RED is also vastly superior to 35mm camera negative.

Actually Kodak’s digital cameras were very decent. They were my default recommendation to neophytes. They had a much less technical interface than virtually every other digital camera on the market. But people don’t buy cameras like that any more. They tend to buy them sealed in a clamshell at CostCo and don’t see the interface until they’ve cut it open at home.

42

Digital capture can be equal to 35mm film, yes. (120 and larger film still slays any digital sensor.) But unless you have a full-frame model, you’re looking through a tiny midget-sized viewfinder, and I consider that an enormous handicap to composition. No, I do not feel that a live preview is a substitute for a real viewfinder. If you want that full-size viewfinder, you have to pay a high up-front cost on the order of several thousand dollars.

On the other hand, a $100 (or $50 or less) film body and a good lens will give you the same level of quality, if the negative/slide is scanned on a decent scanner.

Digital SLRs are also loaded down with unnecessary “features” and endless menus. They’re a pain in the ass to use, in my opinion, compared to film SLRs. I picked up a friend’s D5100 a few weeks ago and could barely figure out how to take a decent picture with manual mode. Turns out there’s no command dial in the front, and the only way to adjust aperture is to hold down a button and then rotate a thumb wheel. (No aperture rings on DX lenses.) That’s another thing, the lenses - you can have a bunch of great old Nikon lenses, but because of the DX sensor, they won’t provide the same focal length. You need to either buy DX wide-angle lenses, or buy a full-frame camera (both requiring you to spend more money still.)

The pro you’re talking about is also using a digital back, but still using a film body. Probably a Hasselblad or a Mamiya. Why isn’t he using a digital medium-format camera, if digital cameras are so great? The answer is because they’re prohibitively expensive because the jerks that produce them gouge the prices.

43

When I got into film photography, the bodies I went for (N90 and F5) cost about $1000 and $3000 respectively. What I can get these days for those prices in digital bodies is simply amazing, and I don’t have to worry about film costs. Digital cameras are, by almost any metric, a downright bargain and the best thing to happen to budding photographers, providing they think about their pictures and learn from their mistakes.

44

I’m not denying that - they’re definitely very effective tools. I just, 1. hope that film doesn’t go away, leaving only digital, and 2. that larger-format digital sensors would come down in price.

45

Hey, I just inherited an enlarger that does up to 4"x5"s and am setting up a darkroom, so I, too, would like film to hang around for a little longer. :slight_smile: It’s been about 10 years since I’ve been in a “wet” darkroom. I’m curious to see if I like it as much as I used to.

46

My concern about this is what about microfilm. Won’t anyone think about the future kids?

Kodak film is supposed to be good for 500 years. All of our machines are set up for Kodak.

Fuck the banks, back up the companies who deliver the products that we are required to use.

47

I have a Kodak point-and-shoot that my parents gave me. In some respects it leaves much to be desired. But in the right lighting, it does take beautiful shots comparable to any decent SLR.

48

As The Dude said, that’s like, you know, your opinion, man. The pros I know do not share it. And their clients are overjoyed to be able to see the composition in a size that matches the final output.

You’re comparing a used eBay camera to a pro system? The friend who I mentioned in the other thread who has the digital printing service has an Imacon scanner, generally considered the same quality as a drum scanner. And the dust cover rarely comes off that thing because nobody bothers to shoot film any more. If what you say was valid, wouldn’t people be shooting film and bringing it in to be scanned? Instead, the first friend shot wall sized murals with his digital camera, which the second friend printed in 65" wide strips.

Sorry, I’ll let them know to stay off your lawn.

Digital cameras have enabled entirely new styles of artistic photography. Check out a Lensbaby sometime - interactivly playing with the focal plane is inconceivable in a world where every experiment sucks up film.

At the time he bought it, there were no medium format digital cameras. I couldn’t say what he shoots ads with right at the moment, but I’m quite confident it is digital.

He shoots in a number of formats. A while back he got into digital Leicias, but he also uses his iPhone. But he never, ever shoots film. He sold his Nikon ED-8000 scanner years ago.

49

Sure I am. Among the used cameras on eBay are the ones that the pros of 20 and 30 years ago used. I wonder, how did National Geographic and LIFE put out issue after issue of amazing photographs with such primitive equipment? How did they do it without digital cameras?

I know what a Lensbaby is - it does the same thing that people have been doing with view cameras for a hundred years!

The only advantage digital has is the convenience. And I will concede that is extremely important. I also realize that a good photographer can make good photos with any camera and a bad one can make bad ones with any camera.

I’m not suggesting that people who use digital cameras should use film instead. No. I am only trying to explain why I, personally, prefer film.

50

“And on the pedestal these words appear…”

51

Getting back to the OP: can Kodak survive? They ought to raise the price of film and paper to exploit the market (of people that like film). Their (made in China) digital cameras are quite good (I have one), but they don’t advertise.
As for inkjet printers-that business will never be profitable-they should ditch it now.
It ought to make a good HBS case study.
If they could exploit some of their amazing patents (like the organic LEDs that will make TV monitors the thickness of a pane of glass), they could make tons of money-but I fear it is too late.
If Kodak joins Polaroid in the corporate cemetary, it would be a shame.

52

Sorry, but that is just not arguing in good faith, new versus used.

No everyone has Nat Geo’s budget and what I imagine is a huge shoot to use ratio.

Then you haven’t actually played with one. It allows one to interactively play with the focal plane with your fingers. And do it with a freaking pocketable camera, not with a tripod based view camera.

53

If Kodak goes under, where the hell am I going to find film for my Disc camera?

54

Maybe that crazy Dutch guy who makes polaroid film (the “Impossible Project”) could be pursuaded to make a batch for you.
BTW-does Kodak still make infrared film?

55

If you’re curious, the average National Geographic assignment is (or was) anywhere from 300 to a 500 rolls of film. Joe McNally himself states that for him, it was 500 - 1000 rolls of film.

56

I gave up on film when they took my Kodachrome away. No joke. It was the termination of the one particular film that stood out above the rest that pushed me into digital.

57

Here is an interesting survey of pro photographers who still use film and their reasons for doing so.

58

There are other reasons to use classical emulsion film – you can make holograms and Lippmann photos with fine-grain emulsion, and you can’t do that with digfital. And random silver nitrate grains are still the ultimate anti-aliasing filter.

59

I also feel that film (specifically slide film - Fuji Velvia 50 is the one I use most) looks better as soon as it’s processed, without the need for post-processing. In other words, it looks like a (somewhat more saturated version of) what I actually saw when I took the picture. Digital never seems to look “real”, and I always spend a long time tweaking the RAW files in an attempt to make it look so.

60

When I worked for the City of Rochester back in the 1980s I was involved in the first steps toward trying to turn the High Falls area - across the street from Kodak headquarters - into the hot new part of town. The less said about that idiocy the better.

However, that got me into places most outsiders didn’t. Kodak purchased a building in High Falls and proposed to turn it into something like the legendary Palo Alto lab that created most of the computer world we now take for granted. Given that there are whole books about the way Xerox punted that advantage, they should have had a clue.

Yet it never got even that far. One of the directives upper management gave said basically that if the new technology wasn’t developable into at least a billion dollar business it wasn’t worth their time.

The building closed I think in a year.

And yet… Rochester obviously was badly hurt by losing 50,000 good, lifetime Kodak jobs. It could have been far worse. Kodak was too big for anyone to manage. Kodak Park, that is, the main industrial complex, was three miles long. And that was one of many just in the area. No management could undo that. Kodak at least strung the layoffs out over a couple of decades, unlike the collapse of Buffalo, which was far faster and far more damaging. The slowness of the process gave many people a chance to plan for a new future and start up numerous small but interesting technical firms. They don’t make up for the demise of a Kodak but that did cushion the blow. The area maintains 2% growth in recent years, which is not only the best in the state right now but compares well nationally because of the recession.

I can’t praise Kodak in any way. But dozens of similar corporations did worse by their employees and communities. Small consolation, I know. Unless you go to Buffalo or Cleveland or Detroit or Bridgeport or Schenectady or Binghamton or …