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I lived in Rochester, NY and got a 20 hr/week job interning at Kodak in the slide film research department during HS in 1999-2000. I remember on one occasion m
by themgt 10y ago
I lived in Rochester, NY and got a 20 hr/week job interning at Kodak in the slide film research department during HS in 1999-2000.
I remember on one occasion my boss, a mid-level executive (head of new slide film research? something like that) asked me what I thought about digital cameras, I think both because I was young and seen as "the computer guy". I didn't own one but I'd read about them a decent amount. I told him I understood they were expensive/low-quality at the moment but the advantage of ditching film and using ever-improving digital tech still seemed huge. I don't remember his exact words, but he couldn't really see the appeal or promise.
The 7-story building I worked in is just a mound of grass last I looked. I have thought from time to time just about the institutional inertia that fights against seeing what's going on and adapting. There were just tens of thousands of people with very highly specialized skills around film and chemicals and processing and dark rooms and paper and so many things most of which simply aren't relevant to a digital photography world.
Now, granted, other film/pre-digital camera companies did a far better job making the jump. I'd argue maybe in part again that Kodak seeing itself as emotionally wed to film while other companies saw themselves moreso as camera/photo companies. That Fuji has been able to survive is more surprising to me than Canon/Nikon/Olympus/etc.
- rrrx3 10y agoI had never really put much thought into it, but you're totally right- the expectation was that a chemical company (essentially) would transform itself into a Hardware & software manufacturer. That's a might, mighty leap. That Fuji was actually able to do it is even more impressive. I worked for a company that did some work for Kodak - both directly and indirectly - around some of their software initiatives & partnerships with mobile manufacturers. They were not pretty or well-run projects, to be sure.
- ghaff 10y agoCertainly Kodak did a lot of things wrong but there's a common meme straight out of Marketing Myopia [1] that, had they only thought of themselves as a photography company rather than a film company, all would have been well. This is basically nonsense. Even had Kodak been more aggressive about cannibalizing its film sales with digital, it's unclear how much of its expertise and competitive advantage would have carried over. In any case, it wouldn't have nearly replaced the film consumables business in terms of revenue and profit. Fujifilm did do better--mostly, current camera line notwithstanding--by branching out into other areas of chemistry. Good read from The Economist here [2] but Fujifilm had tough times too and I believe that they were also significantly smaller. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_myopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_myopia [2] http://www.economist.com/node/21542796?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/thelastkodakmoment http://www.economist.com/node/21542796?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/the... [Second link fixed.]
- Typhon 10y agoYou failed to paste your second link correctly.
- phreanix 10y agoI wish I had saved the article but I remember reading somewhere (and just paraphrasing here) that the team that works on the iPhone make it good enough so you'll use your iPad (tablet) less, then the iPad team makes it so good you'll use your MacBook less, and so on. I think it's great forward thinking to be always trying to put one of your largest product lines out of business as a way to constantly innovate. In so doing, you hopefully have less chances of having to lay off tens of thousands of people because you tried hard to stay ahead of the curve.
- mark-r 10y agoUnlike Apple, Kodak was caught in a very hard place. With film they would collect revenue for every picture taken, through the film itself, developing, and printing. With digital you could make money on the cameras themselves, but your per-picture revenue opportunities were limited - this was the great attraction of digital. It's not the same as Apple replacing devices one-for-one.
- mavhc 10y agoApple seems to have copied that model somewhat, make 30% on everything that's sold for iOS. I guess they knew that eventually everyone would have a good enough iOS device and they'd have to reduce the cost of the device to compete.
- kqr 10y ago> With digital you could make money on the cameras themselves You could, but you rarely do. The profit margin on the consumer-level DSLRs is really low. They make money from the stuff around it.
- ecpottinger 10y agoTell that to the people who make the inks for my Epson inkjet printer. Inkjets can do great prints of photos, but only if you pay for the paper and ink.
- VLM 10y agoMore than half a decade before OPs internship began, Kodak had already spun off a chemical company thats fairly successful to this day. I think a good analogy would be HP. Legendary lab test equipment up till 1980 or something. Spin off the legendary lab test equipment division into a new company thats successful to this day AFAIK although they rename / rebrand every five years. The remainder tries to coast by selling imported Chinese stuff with its famous name rebranding the cheap import, but the writings on the wall as it crashes. So for both examples, if your core competency is XYZ and you spin off your healthy XYZ division and don't really have a post spinoff plan, the empty dehydrated husk that remains will wither away pretty quickly. Essentially you've got what banks call the good bank / bad bank strategy where you split and one fails and the productive part remains. For whatever reason companies like HP and Kodak throw the historical branding into the "bad company" side. But the "good company" sides are healthy and in business to this day.
- WalterBright 10y agoSometimes I think nostalgically about my DOS 16 bit programming skills - all quite useless today. It's hard to give that up.
- bitJericho 10y agoRetro indie games are making a comeback.
- WalterBright 10y agoWell, the Digital Mars C/C++ compiler still supports DOS programming (I just can't seem to let that go!)
- krylon 10y agoGood to know! I thought that OpenWatcom was the only one remaining to support DOS (and it appears to have been stagnant for a couple of years)... (Not that I've done much with DOS - I did write a ~10-20 line program in C to set the serial port to specific settings, but that was all I've done on DOS.)
- monocasa 10y agoCan I write DOS code in D?
- WalterBright 10y agoSorry, no. D has a bit much overhead for the 16 bit world. C++ does, too, which is why to C++ for 16 bits has exception handling and RTTI removed.
- jacquesm 10y agoFuji made some excellent early digital cameras. So well built and using very little power. I took one into my workshop and it even survived there during several projects (and that's a pretty bad environment for a camera). I'm not surprised they survived, they caught on early and made good gear. As opposed to Canon cameras that give cryptic errors about lenses 3 days after the warranty expires, HP cameras that used a set of batteries every 60 shots or so and so on. It's a pity that Asahi/Pentax didn't survive as an independent.
- Magi604 10y agoPentax lives on today under Ricoh, and Ricoh is taking good care of it by making new camera bodies and lenses under the Pentax name.
- ekianjo 10y agoPentax is also the only brand to make affordable medium format digital cameras.
- whyenot 10y agoTheir new full frame 35mm camera (the K-1) is also surprisingly affordable ($1,800). Full frame camera form Nikon/Canon with similar features start at around $3,000.
- brudgers 10y agoI have a K50. It's weather sealed and with two weather sealed kit lenses. It was less than $500. It works with any old K-mount lens from the last 40+ years and adds image stabilization because Pentax moves the sensor to stabilize the image.
- whyenot 10y agoSo far Ricoh seems to be doing a great job with Pentax -- the newest cameras, the K-1 and K-70 are both fantastic.