The story isn't new to anyone in the world of photography. Kodak, once the undeniable leader of the industry, has since been turned into a sad shell of its former self.
What isn't so clear is how exactly Kodak went from photo giant to a name that can be licensed and slapped on seemingly anything and everything if enough money is thrown its way.
As part of its Company Declines series, YouTube channel Company Man has shared a biography of sorts detailing the demise of Kodak. Throughout the 12-minute video, the narrator provides a brief history lesson of Kodak and its beginnings before diving into what we now know as the decline that ultimately led to bankruptcy in January 2012.
As the video notes, Kodak's downfall can't simply be attributed to its efforts to eschew digital photography, as seems to be the consensus in most circles. Instead it was a matter of Kodak not putting enough emphasis on digital camera technology when the time came around, the narrator argues.
Ultimately, there are more factors than we'll even know behind the demise of Kodak. But this biopic of sorts does a great job summarizing the problem and looking at it from a different perspective.
In 2000 I was a newspaper photographer using a Kodak NC2000 digital camera. It weighed about 5 pounds and with about a half frame .5Mb sensor. It was run by a battery the size of a cassette tape and could only last about 75 frames. If I was photographing sports I had to keep my finger on the shutter button half way to photograph action. That ran the battery down very fast. The image recorder was actually a disk that recorded the image sort of like a metal floppy disk. All this for a camera that only cost $17,000 dollars!
They thought that they were a photography company but they were really just a film company. That would be like the world heading towards fast food hot dogs and McDonald's saying that they are a fast food company, "We got this." But they are a hamburger company that sells fast food. They would have the same demise as Kodak.
that is why MceeDees also offer wings, nuggets, salads and in China even chicken patty rice :D im not a fan of them but I believe they are smarter than Kodak
When scanning old film, I found I preferred the slide output versus the negatives. Knowing that , I'd have never used Kodacolor for anything but family events. Unfortunately, the slide films were slower than the Kodacolor variations.
Companies like Kodak, Sony, Pioneer, Adobe, Canon, Snapchat, Nintendo, and to a certain extent Apple (and probably others) all produced gold-standard products in the past, and fell short on their users expectations to keep these up at some point. It's very common, and infuriating.
Sometimes it's "the company has too much on its hands". Sometimes it's aging executives who lose touch with what people want and follow their obtuse ideas. Sometimes it's lack of innovation and exciting products. Sometimes it's just crappy design ruining a good idea. Sometimes it's products being ahead / behind of their time, or badly marketed. For Kodak, all of these seem to have happened.
This makes you wonder why more companies do not collect worldwide user feedback 24/7 - and listen to what stands out. Well, obviously if they did a lot of execs would be in the hotspot for not following demand and trends, that's why. But there are tools today that streamline this.
This reminds me of the poet who needs to improve his poem but when several experts suggest that he remove a particular line that doesn't work, he says, "No way! That's my favorite line!" Kodak perhaps allowed some sentimentality to interfere with decisions. I wrote about Kodak in a 2016 blog: http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2016/11/technology.html
I've learn it in college: when we have a product there's always a threat that a replacement product appears on the market. Film by sensors hair pins by hair spray and modelling foam 5 1/4" Floppy Disks by 3 1/2" Floppy Disks by Flash memory pen drives HDD by SSD (on-going) VHS by DVD by Blue Ray Film by Video Tape by Digital Video Tape by SSD LP by CD by Streaming (on-going) Phones by Smartphones Diesel powered cars by electric powered cars (not yet) Point and shoot cameras by Smartphone cameras Many, many more
The video is not bad at all, but it would be more complete if a few other items were mentioned. For example, APS film was a big mis-step. It was intended to ease the transition to digital, but processors hated it (they were forced to be expensive new equipment), photographers were unimpressed by the image quality, and the delays in bringing APS to market put it into direct conflict with the digital technology it had been meant to pave the way toward.
Kodak management weren't completely blind. They knew digital cameras were going to take over, but they completely misjudged when and how quickly it would happen.
And when Kodak did get into digital… It wasn't merely that they didn't "focus enough" on digital cameras. They also made the wrong category of cameras. They made pocket cameras, which had always been a Kodak mainstay, and they missed out on DSLR mass-mania. It's hard to blame Kodak management for that, because it's a phenomenon that seems inexplicable even in hindsight.
Kodak Professional division had lines of DSLRs. Marketed them poorly and in the early to mid 2000's dropped the digital backs and DSLRs to concentrate on the pro film market. They had the lead with the 14n and SLR/n and its where the pro photography market went.
The partnership with the Olympus Evolt was only as an OEM sensor supplier. The same place they stayed with suppling sensors to the medium format industry and Leica M and S series. No advertising that those cameras hada "Kodak" sensor.
I spent nearly 30 years in the professional equipment business with very close ties to that division of Kodak. As such I had front row seats to the demise. Yes, the arrogance was off the charts, at virtually every level. It was their way or else. Either you drank the Kodak Kool Aid or you were wrong and ostrasized. We all could see they did not play the game of Monopoly well at all. One of my favorite moves towards the end was the converting of a paper coating plant to an ink jet paper plant. The thinking was (and this was rampant for decades) that consumers would pay more for a product with Kodak's name on it. Didn't happen. Another great story was an exec telling me in 2004 that digital was a fad, that the price per gigabyte of data in film was so cheap compared to digital storage that it would all come back. Right. In the end they were an analog company swept over by a technology tsunami. And technology goes where it wants to go.
I agree with the video, I used & processed some of their products , even had one of their cameras. they failed to see the potential of changing technology which caused them to be the dinosaur watching the meteor coming down.
Interesting video. Also, one has to remember that while they were leaders over 100 years ago. The people that provided that leadership and saw the opportunities at that time were of course all long gone. Perhaps if those people were "transported" from the past to current times, they would have chosen a different path for the current Kodak....same name, but not the same original minds behind the innovation and vision that led to success.
i think the reason for their demise is because they didn't invest enough in digital _sensor_ technology. they had it going for a while, with the DCS backs/bodies they created for Nikon/Canon and the initial 4/3rds and Leica M8/M9..FFS they created the first mono-only pro digital camera! they should have continued then try to corner the small-sensor market (aka smartphone camera) and then eventually cine market (digital movies). then probably have them purchasing Pentax instead of Ricoh.
this is what Sony did (replace Pentax with Konica-Minolta) and they are reaping the rewards.
Another take that matches my memory of working there in the late 80s, early 90s doing digital imaging while the executive management was actively trying to fight the digital transformation.
Just sharing some historical info here. The site has some fantastic info on the Kodak DCS/Nikon/Canon/Sigma relationships. There a great read on the 17 years of DCS models, a Nikonos and a monochrome model.
Very interesting video. There is a portion of Kodak strategy that you (and many others) missed. I worked for a business that was acquired by Kodak in the late 80's. There interest was in the prescription and over the counter business of Sterling Drug. Here was their logic. Digital will replace film over time, so what does Kodak do. They concluded that they were very good at fine chemicals and process control. They felt they could use these technical capabilities effectively in the drug industry. What happened? A change in top management and the drug businesses were sold off (at a profit) and they tried focusing on photography. As your video shows, that wasn't such a good plan. Would the drug plan have worked? MIght have, but we will never know.
I worked for Sterling at the time of the transition. The problem was that their core business was far too large for the pharmaceutical portion to be a solution, i.e. an extra billion per year from pharmaceuticals (Sterling was not going to grow even that fast) would not come close to making up for the billions they were losing in the photography industry. They just didn't focus enough on their core business quickly enough and missed the boat.
Image analysis conference 1995-ish, Kodak top engineer/suit gives keynote, NASA folks in the mix, law enforcement forensics still mostly using film but had a presence along with Dr John Russ, Apple's first QuickTake150 digital camera was built by Kodak 1994, and K/12, paying less attention then consumers but present. Energy palpable, gonna be a great ride; Kodak promises... Another victim of momentum, another accident of history. I'm using a Sony mirrorless today.
There is a revival of film. What is left of Kodak is probably in a good position to take advantage of it, if they were smart... it's not like oil paint became irrelevant when acrylics - or photography for that matter - were invented. There is room for more than one photographic medium.
Couldn't believe I saw a friend whip out an oldish film camera the other day when taking her to a local temple. I was like holy hell, what is that. But admittedly this is the first I've seen one used in longer than I can remember.
It's just a hipster fad, mostly from those that never had experience with film. Unless you shoot large format film, film image quality is grossly inferior to digital.
Phildunn, us "hipsters" are just as much real Americans as the rest of you, and getting a little tired of being everybody's whipping boy. The "fad" has been growing for at least a decade, which makes it more than a fad. Check the astronomical prices of good film cameras on Ebay for an indication (some have multiplied their value ten times in the past five years). If you measure quality in ISO and pixel peeping, then we have no basis even for a conversation, but there are good reasons many fine art photographers prefer to use film today.
"Phildunn, us "hipsters" are just as much real Americans as the rest of you, and getting a little tired of being everybody's whipping boy."
Where did I mention anything about being American or "real Americans"???
"The "fad" has been growing for at least a decade,"
No, it's mostly more recent. Some fads also last longer than others. I believe most of the hipsters will eventually realize how crap film is.
"If you measure quality in ISO and pixel peeping, then we have no basis even for a conversation,"
The measure of the technical quality of film always involved reducing noise (grain), increasing sensitivity and looking at the results under high magnification, a grain focuser in the darkroom, for example.
"but there are good reasons many fine art photographers prefer to use film today"
Only to try and differentiate themselves as doing something unique. I bet you none of them keep it quiet, that they are shooting film. It's just for marketing purposes, to help sell their images.
Oh, Phil, here is this crap word ,"hipster," that so many of you Dpreview types like to throw out whenever you disapprove of something creative or unusual that does not fit into the conventional pattern that YOU consider mainstream. OK, tell us, what is a hipster? Is he (she) inferior? What is wrong with the way hipsters take photos? Are you more creative than hipsters? Are your photos superior? Why shouldn't hipsters use film and carry their cameras in canvas bags? Why do you spend even one kilocalorie worrying about how these mythological hipsters do their photography? Did a hipster treat you badly? Go ahead, tell us.
No, most people use the word hipster to describe people that are posers. It has nothing to do with them being creative or unusual. On the contrary. A poser simply does something to impress others.
Of course there are some young people who have tried film out of curiosity and then moved on once they realize how crap it is. I think eventually most of the hipsters of today will also move on, since young people today tend to be quite lazy and have short attention spans.
Why does it bother you anyway when someone pokes fun at hipsters? Do you consider yourself a hipster just because you shoot film? It's not like I said all film shooters are hipsters. For example, there are old timers out there still shooting film. In their case though, unless they are shooting large format they are likely being driven by nostalgia, ignorance and stubbornness since digital has far superior quality, and when shot at higher ISOs can effectively mimic the look of film, if that is what someone wants.
If Kodak followed Fuji's game plan, they wouldn't be bankrupt. Fuji was once a dying company who's target audience was only a niche market with their digital cameras who's camera bodies heavily relied on Nikon glass. Now, they are the chocolate factory and everyone wants their Wonka bars.
A little too simplistic. The analysis needs to consider the consumer and professional markets separately (e.g. DCS-14n, a full frame 14MP DSLR introduced in 2002). One cannot compare innovation in the 19th century at the company's in inception to highly cannibalistic innovation in the 21st century that would have obsoleted its core competence and its business model.
Kodak dropped all its Professional Digital products from 2003-2005. but bought other equipment manufacture such as Leaf never releasing products under the Kodak brand. Kodak put most of its effort into the consumer point & shot market that evaporated with the launch of smart phones. The sustaining market ended up being the professional and enthusiast market. Most camera companies sell pro or enthusiast models. When Olympus dropped Kodak sensors in favor of Panasonic, that ended their volume OEM sensor business; Leica and medium format being left, besides their own P&S cameras.
There's been a lot of mentions of the Fuji counter-example on this thread. As it happens, Fuji's CEO/Chairman, Shigetaka Komori, wrote a book about how Fuji managed its transition. It's not a breezy read—more than a little stiff and didactic—but it's full of good information about what Fuji did. See here:
Fuji did many things, but the biggest key was that Komori found a business that a) leveraged Fuji's pre-existing chemical and coating expertise b) had scale (i.e. was big enough to plausibly replace a significant portion of the revenue from film and c) provided high profit margins immediately. That business was coatings for LCD displays—what the company now calls "highly functional materials". Critically, Komori didn't dither; he drove the company relentlessly to remake itself once he found a good first step for its transformation. Highly functional materials remains a critical business for Fuji—their primary profit engine, I believe.
Kodak did try to do the same—they weren't blind. They had a few different targets—at one point, they thought that digital printing (consumer and commercial) was a large-scale, high-profit business that they might be able to pivot to. But they never found as good an option as Fuji had found, and they were not decisive. As it turns out, they might have been able to make it work with imaging sensors, which is now a huge and profitable business, if they had had the foresight in the mid-1990s to push hard in that direction. Hindsight.
One more point: most photochemical-centric companies failed during the digital transition. There are dozens that are either no longer around or shadows of their former selves. Fuji's excellence is really an exception. To use a very loose analogy, how fair is it to criticize soccer players for not being as good as Lionel Messi?
@peripheralfocus: "As it turns out, they might have been able to make it work with imaging sensors, which is now a huge and profitable business, if they had had the foresight in the mid-1990s to push hard in that direction." I know a couple of guys who were Kodak engineers during the 1990s. Engineers had the foresight. Management and execs had their heads where the sun don't shine. Sure other companies by the wayside, but none were as ubiquitous as Kodak.
From the last two minutes of the video: "What they (Kodak) did best (film) was no longer needed". Could that be true of the conventional camera companies someday? What they did best (standalone digital cameras) were no longer needed (because of computational imaging technologies they never adopted, and always cloud-connected smartphones).
Yes & no, imho. For snapshooters, a phone is fine. For those who value high quality or highly creative photography, the camera is king. There will always be photographers who want to step up above & beyond snapshots. A smaller market than the pre-phone years for sure, but a dedicated one.
This is absolutely a huge potential threat to traditional camera companies. It seems extremely likely to me that computational imaging will render most of their expertise moot, and commoditize image capture devices up to the highest segment of the market. They will be left with only a tiny sliver of die-hard photo-enthusiasts to sell standalone cameras to.
The rise of Chinese competitors is the other big threat to the current leading camera brands.
To my eye, it looks like they see it coming. I see Canon, especially, shifting its corporate focus decisively away from standalone cameras. (They seem enthralled with robotics these days, which will obviously be a huge business for many decades to come.) Medical technology is the default "future growth" go-to for several of the other camera brands, going by what they say in their annual reports.
My own bet would be on machine vision (as a subset of robotics).
Also, re connectivity, wi fi & NFC are pretty much standard on newer cameras now. When I want to share a picture of some spectacular subject, I think,"Why use my crummy phone camera (and it is crummy! ) when I can take a top notch picture with my full frame camera, have fun doing it, send the pic to my phone for sharing, and wow my friends & family with an awesome display?" Sometimes phone snaps don't cut it.
It's already taken over the consumer market. Just a matter of time before enthusiasts are taken over as well if camera companies don't smarten the heck up with modern software tech and functionality. Pros, okay, maybe not in the forseeable future.
Kodak began losing market share when they never were able to come up with a successor to the Instamatic. Other camera manufacturers filled the void with better and more convenient cameras.
Do you really want to know who the new Kodak is? It is Apple. Apple's cameras dominate the market in the same way that Kodak once did. Kodak could have done that. They had the technology. They had all the pieces. They just never put them together.
I saw an interview with Brad Bird before he came in to direct The Incredibles at Pixar. He reasoned that in order to remain successful, you need to change and don't think because you had hits it is guaranteed to have hits in the future. So he changed the mindset of the people there.
He called it going into "pizza mode" (sitting back, relaxing, eating pizza and going: "yep, we had a hit. No one can touch us") and that a lot of companies did not survive because of that.
The question is not what happened to Kodak, but what happened to Fuji which had been gaining market share and survived the transition MUCH better than Kodak. The 2 companies did things very differently: Kodak became the leader in that segment but when it saw it was not as profitable as film it left the market and focused on photo printing. - There was a lot of internal resistance to the digital camera from traditional business at Kodak. - Kodak sold all non film businesses to concentrate on digital, Fuji was more diversified and kept those businesses. - Fuji realized that the change was much deeper and the CEO at the time said to the company that the challenge they faced was equivalent to saying to Toyota that they could no longer manufacture cars. - Fuji asked themselves "what is it that they knew' and came to the conclusion that their knowledge was in chemistry and they started exploring what they could do with that know-how and expanded their presence in cosmetics and medicine.
Resting on your lorals can be a problem for those that achieved success in the past and ignore the future. Also, bean counters (accountants) are often the death of companies or divisions of companies since they often imagine the future or want to risk the money to make that future happen.
Interesting about the name, especially since even today the word, Kodak, can still grab and hold ones attention. A bit sad when a household name you grew up on slowly rises off into the sunset
I still use the term, ‘kodak moment’ but mostly to myself since few people younger than me understand of appreciate it 😐
It was bad management pure and simple. Could have put the same guys in charge of Apple, Google or Microsoft and their businesses would also be in the toilet. The leadership were bureaucrats that could only survive in a corporation where the market was mature. The CEO was a particularly stubborn (expletive) who wanted Kodak in the ink business much like the company he had just left HP. He was regularly voted one of the worst CEO by multiple financial publications yet somehow they left him around to finish the job.
Well, I guess it's typical for someone to say that a company reflects its leadership through corporate culture. And its people, no matter what kind of persons they are/were, they reflected just this annoying attitude coming from "above". No surprise then...
Managers that didn’t belong in a management role and the idea that every product must have the same margin and volume as film is what killed Kodak.
Most managers were part of a good old boys network and they didn’t understand technology. It cost Kodak about $0.25 to manufacture and distribute a roll of film in the 80’s. After you add up the film sale, processing, printing and reprinting revenue, they had some sweet margins there.
Kodak continued making mistakes and didn't learned from them: In the 2000's they were convinced film was superior to digital, then CCD was superior to CMOS etc. The thing is, people just wanted what's good, convenient and cheep enough and not what some think it's the "best" (money wise for them). That was the problem.
I see some parallelism between Kodak decline and the current state of the camera industry: less sails due to the smartphone rise, constant camera and lens price increases - which led to less sales and again more price increases etc.
in the early 2000s, film WAS superior to digital... However, by then advances in film technology had plateaued, while advances in digital technology are still growing
CMOS probably isn't cheaper to make than CCD anymore, but that's only because CMOS, due to differences in how the chips get fabricated, makes it possible to put things that previously were off-sensor on another chip, such as the analog-to-digital conversion, on the sensor. So the increased sophistication of what's put on-chip has made CMOS more expensive to make than it used to be, but the upside is that sensor performance has improved. For instance, putting the A-to-D conversion on-chip cuts down on read noise. All that probably makes the "CMOS is cheaper but not better" and "CCD is superior to CMOS" arguments moot.
what killed kodak ... lots of things! their inventing any digital stills camera (1975) was eclipsed by parallel advances for consumer videotape recording (VCRs) and videocameras (+tape format wars: JVC's VHS vs SONY Betamax) also in the mid-1970's
even though VCRs and Vcams were more luxury items back then, it evolved quickly down to more affordable prices and compact sizes more consumers could afford, close to prices of high end film SLRs (using 135mm film) within 10 year time frame into the mid-1980's
by then, most folks were already used to vcam EVF/Swivel-LCD (Video Framing-LV) and by mid-1990's such Video-like Framing-LV (Swivel-Screen) was available with Casio digicam (1995)
while other early dcam mfrs (kodak) offered NO LV at all ...
soon after, "Live Exposure Preview" was available on Canon & Sony (1999/2000) dcams plus BOTH stills and video, too +using "memory cards" was better
later, kodak only ever had Framing-LV (like Casio) and NEVER offered live exposure preview!
It is an interesting, but very US focused piece. It glosses over all the high end digital stuff that Kodak did and rather ignores Alaris. It would have been interesting for them to show comparisons with Agfa, Konica and Fujifilm to show what trajectories those companies had (although Kodak we big elsewhere, these companies were significant competitors in Europe at least)
It's an article about an American company so why would you expect any differently? Kodak Alaris was created in 2013 so I don't know why you are mentioning it, along with Agfa, Konica and Fujifilm. Again, the article is about Kodak, an American company.
Kodak were very international - which is part of the reason why Alaris are there (as they represent the pensions fund that looks after UK Kodak ex-employees). Of their competitors, AGFA went west relatively early, while Konica got out of cameras and film in favour or copiers printers and MFDs.. Fujifilm have made the transition however - note that both Fujifilm and Kodak were putting digital backs on high end cameras at around the same time.
It's like all American companies. They start as consumer-oriented, and then they evolve to business-oriented, where the big money supposedly lay. Consumer-oriented side is gradually neglected, and out-sourced to third world countries where they manufacture cheap goods with American badges. It's all fine if transition succeeds, but when both business-oriented and consumer-oriented fail, they go under, and get broken up. American badges then get bought up by companies in third world countries that now have enough resources to purchase these fancy badges.
Kodak was essentially a chemical corporation. Everything else (cameras etc.) was outsourced. So there was really no chance to transform Kodak as a giant corporation into something profitable in the digital age, regardless of how hard would they try.
Not accurate. Yes Kodak manufactured chemicals. A lot of them. Maybe if you said their core competency was coating I would agree.
Cameras, projectors and commercial equipment were all designed and manufactured in Rochester. It’s the main reason Kodak once employed over 20,000 people in Rochester.
Yep, you have a lot of people chiming in that don't know Kodak's history and competencies. Kodak certainly had the resources to become, *again*, a major camera manufacturer. People also either forget or don't know that Kodak was at one time designing the best camera sensors in the market. They were in Leica and Hasselblad cameras.
The whole ecosystem that Kodak created with film and print paper, chemistry to support the film and paper, cameras, accessories, detailed documentation for all that, was HUGE. If you were heavily into photography during its peak (probably the 1970s and 80s) you know what I'm talking about. Earlier on they made not just consumer cameras, but pro cameras and lenses as well. The first Hasselblad cameras had Kodak Ektar lenses.
The Kodak sensor business lives on in another form. Before Kodak filed for bankruptcy they sold the sensor division to outside investors, and for a while it was called Trusense Imaging. That got absorbed into a multinational company called ON Semiconductor. The kinds of image sensors that Kodak made for mostly technical and scientific purposes, such as astrophotography, are still made, as Trusense and later ON got the Kodak intellectual property and probably many of the former Kodak designers and engineers.
So common in the corporate world that the management would dismiss upcoming disruptive technologies. With pressure on managers' financial results, it's not in their interest to support disruptive technologies to protect their short term KPIs, job and bonuses. It would really take a visionary CEO to lead companies through technological changes as it'll bring in short term risks and pain. Again, not in the interest of most shareholders.
I spent 7 of my 22 Air Force years involved with photographic intelligence produced by spy satellites that used film produced by Kodak. The film was about a foot wide, and used stereo cameras. The satellites had a life span of about 4 weeks, and there was no way to reload the film. When film was replaced by digital, i would guess Kodak lost a major sugar daddy. The extremely high priority program is largely declassified and you can learn a lot of details via www.nro.gov. Very exciting plus rapid promotion. The film was ejected in capsules near Hawaii, deployed parachutes and was snatched in mid-Air by special C-130 aircraft. All were recovered succcessfully. Best years of my life. I also served in Nam. So ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst; Where there ain’t no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst. Apologies to Kipling.
Kodak was one of the inventors of digital photography. But they didn't jump on the digital camera ship.... Which ultimately made them fail in the photography equipment business. Already in 1991 kodak made a digital back for a nikon camera. And in 1986 kodak made the first megapixel digital sensor. with 1.4 megapixels. They were early with digital. But never utilized it.
I'm about to watch the video, but here's a thought (maybe from a very naive POV of mine)
If Kodak had endured just a couple more years, they'd probably be a dominant force in today's market.
Think about that: if you wanna make a decent camera today, there're endless suppliers out there of high quality LCDs, RAM is cheap, powerful processors are cheap, you can shop sensors from third parties, and camera / sensor engineers are all carrying over trade secrets from Nikon to Canon to Sony, etc, just hire them for your company and you probably get access to some special sauce AF algorithm.
Simply put, it's WAAAAY easier to make a decent digital camera today than back in the day.
Back then, resources were so scarce that Kodak had to buy garbage Sigma bodies and/or adapt Nikon film bodies, etc.
It was extremely tough to make a competitive product.
Had they endured a few more years, they'd have plenty of resources to work with which would allow engineering a camera much easier.
Most people forget that Fuji was struggling super hard before they released their retro X100, which BTW used the 12 mp APS sensor shared by a million other cameras.
Fuji had just closed their DSLR line, and making a retro rangefinder-esque X100 is what saved them.
In other words, Fuji endured those "couple" more years that eventually allowed them to make competitive products and survive.
Had Kodak done the same (just a couple more years is all that was needed), they'd have done the same, and would be here today, competing for the market just like C, N and S.
That's not correct. Fujifilm survived because they diversified into other markets. They used their expertise in film to make anti-aging cosmetics, invested heavily in the pharmaceutical industry and continued to make lenses for the film and television industry. Their x-series cameras (though profitable now) are not a big earner for them. In fact, the biggest earner for their imaging division is instax film.
Sony makes the sensors used in most cameras othee than Canon. Kodak made the film used in most cameras. The item common to all is the winning move. Just like the winners of the gold rush where not the prospectors, it was the stores that sold shovels, blue jeans and sacks of beans to the orospectors. Also, the Saloons and Dance halls where the succesful prospectors came to spend their money. Its called th middle man and they always thrive, just like in any lawsuit, it is the lawyers that always cleanup 🤗
Kodak would absolutely not have survived with a couple of years more. A couple of years doing what? Fingering the nose? You can only survive if you take your destiny in your own hands not by depending on suppliers. Suppliers only exist by the grace of the demanding companies and not vice versa. At Kodak it was the same situation Nikon (and actually also Canon) is in today because of the lack of developpement-activities in the mirrorless department. Canon have some flanking activities that might support the rest of the company, more than Nikon. But both companies have the trouble of decreasing camera sales and a backlog in mirrorless. Too little and too late. And I doubt that they will survive.
The name Leica is used in the geosystems company, but this is a different entity than the camera-lenses- binoculars consumer product company. One does not help fund the other.
The link to geosystems is interesting particularly the history page ( https://leica-geosystems.com/en-gb/about-us/summary/history ) it seems that having bought Leitz Wetzlar (including the Leica Camera business) in 1986 it spun off the camera company (Leica Camera (Solms, Germany)) as an independent entity in 1996. The rest of the company was then split into Leica Microsystems and Leica Geosystems and the later was the subject of a management buyout in 1998. As kodachromeguy intimated there are now three quite separate companies using the Leica name Leica Camera Leica Geosystems - surveying equipment Leica Microsystems - microscopes
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The Edelkrone DollyONE is an app-controlled, motorized flat surface camera dolly. The FlexTILT Head 2 is a lightweight head that extends, tilts and pans. They aren't cheap, but when combined these two products provide easy camera mounting, re-positioning and movement either for video work or time lapse photography.
Are you searching for the best image quality in the smallest package? Well, the GR III has a modern 24MP APS-C sensor paired with an incredibly sharp lens and fits into a shirt pocket. But it's not without its caveats, so read our full review to get the low-down on Ricoh's powerful new compact.
Whether you're hitting the beach in the Northern Hemisphere or the ski slopes in the Southern, a rugged compact camera makes a great companion. In this buying guide we've taken a look at nine current models and chosen our favorites.
The fixed lens camera market may be a bit niche, but it's here that you'll find some of the best cameras you can buy. Sensors ranging from APS-C to full-frame are designed to match their lenses, which cover ranges from 28-75mm equivalent, so image quality is top-notch.
If you're looking for a high-quality camera, you don't need to spend a ton of cash, nor do you need to buy the latest and greatest new product on the market. In our latest buying guide we've selected some cameras that while they're a bit older, still offer a lot of bang for the buck.
What's the best camera for under $500? These entry level cameras should be easy to use, offer good image quality and easily connect with a smartphone for sharing. In this buying guide we've rounded up all the current interchangeable lens cameras costing less than $500 and recommended the best.
What’s the best camera costing over $2000? The best high-end camera costing more than $2000 should have plenty of resolution, exceptional build quality, good 4K video capture and top-notch autofocus for advanced and professional users. In this buying guide we’ve rounded up all the current interchangeable lens cameras costing over $2000 and recommended the best.
Whether you're headed to the beach or the ski slopes, a rugged, waterproof camera lets you focus on your adventure instead of worrying if the camera will survive. Find out which model is the best-in-class in our waterproof camera buying guide.
The FlexTILT Head 3D is the first product in Edelkrone's new ORTAK lineup, which is specifically designed to piggyback off the growing trend of 3D printing.
They may not offer latest generation technology, but the Canon T7 and Nikon D3500 boast a price point that's tough to argue with. We think that the D3500 has a slight edge in this head-to-head comparison.
Chris and Jordan go back to basics in this week's episode, spelling out the meanings of some common photographic terms that newer photographers may not understand.
Investor Daniel Loeb wants the business unit to become a completely independent public company with its own stock listed in the Japanese stock exchange.
Following a call from the Hong Kong Journalist Association, photojournalists and journalists showed up to a Hong Kong Police Force press conference to protest the treatment of journalists during city-wide protests of a controversial extradition bill.
Operators have a year to prepare for a new set of common drone rules that will transcend borders. Before, remote pilots had to abide by each country in the European Union's specific set of regulations.
While on assignment in Japan, Chris and Jordan had a couple days to shoot with the Fujifilm XF 200mm F2 telephoto lens, which Chris nicknamed 'The Big White Sharp'. To make things more interesting, Jordan filmed this entire episode using the new Fujifilm GFX 100 medium format camera.
Apollo Global Management has agreed to acquire Shutterfly for $2.7B and says it plans to merge it with Snapfish, which was also acquired for an undisclosed sum.
In an unusual move, Google has revealed its upcoming Pixel 4 phone well ahead of its expected launch in the fall. A larger camera bump featuring at least two rear-facing cameras is visible in the image tweeted by an official Google account.
Cinema5D has shared part one of a two-part documentary that dives into the process Fujifilm went through to bring its GFX 100MP medium format mirrorless camera to life.
Canon's EOS Rebel SL3 / EOS 250D is the latest in the company's line of diminutive DSLRs. Despite its compact dimensions and fairly modest price, it has a modern sensor and produces great photographs - find out if it's right for you in our full review.
We sat down recently with Yasuyuki Nagata, head of Sony's global interchangeable lens business, to discuss the company's two new telephoto lenses and Sony's approach to mirrorless product development.
Chris and Jordan, along with Senior Editor Barney Britton, traveled to New York for a hands-on look at Sony's newest super-telephoto lenses: the FE 200-600 F5.6-6.3 G OSS and the FE 600mm F4 GM OSS. Find out what they think so far, and vote to tell us who shot the best sample images.
Two new full-frame telephoto lenses for the alpha system, two very different target users (and price points). Take a closer look at Sony's newest FE glass.
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