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If I was on the Kodak board then right now I would use every single penny I have to buy Lytro's light field technology. I would then use all of the work that Ko

If I was on the Kodak board then right now I would use every single penny I have to buy Lytro's light field technology. I would then use all of the work that Kodak has ever done in optics and cameras to increase the resolution, decrease the size and make light field a part of the camera. That is one thing an iPhone can't and won't do for the foreseeable future. I would then leverage Kodak's knowledge of chemical printing to push lenticular printing forward and tie it in with a light field camera. I would push things out with aggressive marketing. I would make it fashionable to shoot your lover with that camera. ("Capture your Kodak moment like never before") After launch if the services idea picks off and Kodak's lenticular printing facilities start humming then I would lower the Lytro camera's profit margin and make it mainstream. The second thing I would get into is making book/poster publishing a commodity and create an on demand publishing system using Kodak's expertise. I would tie in with Amazon et al and make it better, cheaper than doing mass runs the way we do today. It will be challenging, but it is achievable. The third path I would pursue if I was serving on that board is to use old printing technology to improve 3D printing. I would ask the question, is there a way to focus a beam of light and locally catalyze a reaction so that a crystal can be created layer by layer? If not then is there a way to do something equivalent to this? The answers to these questions might very well be Kodak's long term future.

rdtsc 15y ago
Sadly I think those things will never happen at Kodak. It is an old, fossilized company and you want it to operate like a start-up. This kind of maneuvering for them is like trying to turn an oil tanker in a tight radius.
- todayiamme 15y ago
  >>>It is an old, fossilized company and you want it to operate like a start-up.<<< They better. The livelihood of 18,800 human beings is on the line. If they fail then the lives of nearly 18,800 families will be torn apart. Failure shouldn't be an option, let alone a strategy.
  - swombat 15y ago
    Hardly. Those 18,800 people will find jobs in other places and get on with their lives. Very few, if any, will be "torn apart".
    - pilom 15y ago
      Have you ever been to Rochester? Kodak has been doing layoffs for decades. Its not like there are 18,800 jobs waiting to be taken there. Especially for image scientists.
      - swombat 15y ago
        I guess they'll have to learn skills that are useful outside of Kodak. If they never did so in their whole life, they never had a career in the first place, just a dependence.
jacquesm 15y ago
I sure hope someone forwards this to the kodak board of directors.
9999 15y ago
Lytro's light field is a bullshit product that very few photographers and even fewer consumers will actually give a shit about. Nikon, Canon, etc. have made far more significant advances in the last five years than Lytro. Here is a short list of reasons why Lytro's product is just a big ball of hype: 1) Horrible low light performance from the sensor, which they have deflected by talking up the relatively large aperture of their lens, which is not really even that impressive (f/0.95 would be impressive, maybe even an f/1.4, but f/2? go buy a Panasonic LX5, it blows the Lytro out of the water). 2) No one cares about adjusting focus after the fact, get it right the first time, or don't bother. Even when you can adjust the focus, 99.9% of the time, that feature is only useful for macro photography, which is generally tightly controlled and reproducible at the time of exposure 3) The resolution sucks. 4) The form factor is way too big for a supposedly revolutionary product 5) There is no convenient way to share your photos directly from the device 6) Slow frame rate (again, even the lowly and well aged LX5, which you can buy for around $270 on Amazon right now, blows it out of the water) 7) The UI sucks. They're going for Apple level quality there, but they're a bunch of third rate amateurs. 8) Only hobbyists and pros want to fiddle with an image after it's taken, your average Joe just wants it to look great the second they take it. What's better, red eye reduction in some software on your computer or red eye reduction in the camera? You know who gives a shit about Lytro? Gadget bloggers do, because it's something new. That's it. The technology is hardly revolutionary. Due to the small sensor size in what they're offering, it's pretty hard to even tell you've shifted focus in anything other than a macro shot. Go look at this example: http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/144 http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/144 This is one of the very few honest examples in their gallery. You can barely detect the focus shift because the depth of field is pretty high already, which is commonly the case with the cameras average users have embraced (wide angle lenses and a small aperture mean that almost any cell phone will guarantee that everything is in focus in a daylight pic). Furthermore, for the vast majority of photography there are not multiple points that should be in focus. 99% of the time, you either want everything in focus or only one thing in focus. Look at this example: http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/138 http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/138 Why would I want only one in focus?? So my gadget blogging buddies can fiddle fuck around with it using some proprietary widget on some website? Jesus. Lightfield's everything in focus tech comes at a cost that is far, far too high. None of Kodak's expertise can correct for that, because it is basically a question of processing power and what the sensor is optimized for. What do you want? High resolution? Great low light sensitivity? Super high frame rates? Selective focus in editing? Super long battery life? You can't have them all. Consumers won't care about it, pros don't care about it, and there will be a terrible, terrible bunch of reviews as soon as they get to market. I wish they were public so I could short them. Lenticular printing?? Seriously? Hollywood and every TV manufacturer are slowly realizing (again, because they like to do this every 40 years or so) that almost no one cares about 3D TVs or programming. You want Kodak to go down that path in a format where it's not even as beneficial? Printing 3D objects is something Kodak could go after, but do they have any expertise whatsoever in that field? Creating a truly revolutionary digital camera (e.g. something that captures things people actually care about, like crazy fast action at a kid's soccer game from 30 yards away like the new Nikon V1 can, and can be shared instantly) is another thing they should go after. Lightfield. Ha.

rdtsc 15y ago

Sadly I think those things will never happen at Kodak. It is an old, fossilized company and you want it to operate like a start-up. This kind of maneuvering for them is like trying to turn an oil tanker in a tight radius.

todayiamme 15y ago
>>>It is an old, fossilized company and you want it to operate like a start-up.<<< They better. The livelihood of 18,800 human beings is on the line. If they fail then the lives of nearly 18,800 families will be torn apart. Failure shouldn't be an option, let alone a strategy.
- swombat 15y ago
  Hardly. Those 18,800 people will find jobs in other places and get on with their lives. Very few, if any, will be "torn apart".
  - pilom 15y ago
    Have you ever been to Rochester? Kodak has been doing layoffs for decades. Its not like there are 18,800 jobs waiting to be taken there. Especially for image scientists.
    - swombat 15y ago
      I guess they'll have to learn skills that are useful outside of Kodak. If they never did so in their whole life, they never had a career in the first place, just a dependence.

jacquesm 15y ago

I sure hope someone forwards this to the kodak board of directors.

9999 15y ago

Lytro's light field is a bullshit product that very few photographers and even fewer consumers will actually give a shit about. Nikon, Canon, etc. have made far more significant advances in the last five years than Lytro. Here is a short list of reasons why Lytro's product is just a big ball of hype: 1) Horrible low light performance from the sensor, which they have deflected by talking up the relatively large aperture of their lens, which is not really even that impressive (f/0.95 would be impressive, maybe even an f/1.4, but f/2? go buy a Panasonic LX5, it blows the Lytro out of the water). 2) No one cares about adjusting focus after the fact, get it right the first time, or don't bother. Even when you can adjust the focus, 99.9% of the time, that feature is only useful for macro photography, which is generally tightly controlled and reproducible at the time of exposure 3) The resolution sucks. 4) The form factor is way too big for a supposedly revolutionary product 5) There is no convenient way to share your photos directly from the device 6) Slow frame rate (again, even the lowly and well aged LX5, which you can buy for around $270 on Amazon right now, blows it out of the water) 7) The UI sucks. They're going for Apple level quality there, but they're a bunch of third rate amateurs. 8) Only hobbyists and pros want to fiddle with an image after it's taken, your average Joe just wants it to look great the second they take it. What's better, red eye reduction in some software on your computer or red eye reduction in the camera? You know who gives a shit about Lytro? Gadget bloggers do, because it's something new. That's it. The technology is hardly revolutionary. Due to the small sensor size in what they're offering, it's pretty hard to even tell you've shifted focus in anything other than a macro shot. Go look at this example: http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/144 http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/144 This is one of the very few honest examples in their gallery. You can barely detect the focus shift because the depth of field is pretty high already, which is commonly the case with the cameras average users have embraced (wide angle lenses and a small aperture mean that almost any cell phone will guarantee that everything is in focus in a daylight pic). Furthermore, for the vast majority of photography there are not multiple points that should be in focus. 99% of the time, you either want everything in focus or only one thing in focus. Look at this example: http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/138 http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/138 Why would I want only one in focus?? So my gadget blogging buddies can fiddle fuck around with it using some proprietary widget on some website? Jesus. Lightfield's everything in focus tech comes at a cost that is far, far too high. None of Kodak's expertise can correct for that, because it is basically a question of processing power and what the sensor is optimized for. What do you want? High resolution? Great low light sensitivity? Super high frame rates? Selective focus in editing? Super long battery life? You can't have them all. Consumers won't care about it, pros don't care about it, and there will be a terrible, terrible bunch of reviews as soon as they get to market. I wish they were public so I could short them. Lenticular printing?? Seriously? Hollywood and every TV manufacturer are slowly realizing (again, because they like to do this every 40 years or so) that almost no one cares about 3D TVs or programming. You want Kodak to go down that path in a format where it's not even as beneficial? Printing 3D objects is something Kodak could go after, but do they have any expertise whatsoever in that field? Creating a truly revolutionary digital camera (e.g. something that captures things people actually care about, like crazy fast action at a kid's soccer game from 30 yards away like the new Nikon V1 can, and can be shared instantly) is another thing they should go after. Lightfield. Ha.