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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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
What does being an American company have to do with it?? 🤨 I know of no for profit company in the world that doesn't try and maximize profits and that is immune from arrogance and thinking they know what is best for the consumer and their company.
Digital imaging is based on a semiconductor technology platform that has nothing to do with film manufacturing. Semiconductor technology was well outside of Kodak’s core know-how and organizational capabilities. Even though the company invested lots of money in the basic research and manufacturing of solid-state semiconductor image sensors and developed some notable inventions (including the color filter array that is used on virtually every color image sensor), it had little hope of being a competitive volume supplier of image sensor components, and it was difficult for Kodak to offer something distinctive. Contrast this with Sony Corp., which entered the sensor business to support its electronic video recording business. As an electronics company, its organizational capabilities were far more aligned with what was needed to succeed.
Stupid, short-sighted managers and executives. I sometimes wonder if GM, Ford and Chrysler executives went to the same business schools as those at Kodak.
So you're far less short sighted and you even have the benefit of hindsight... so what was Kodak's path? Before you tell me "go all in on digital" ok... but how much money does Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, Olympus, and Panasonic make on cameras each year? How does that compare to the adjusted for inflation income Kodak made on film? Even if Kodak had a monopoly on the digital camera market, they'd have gone bankrupt.
Wow, we are impressed with your skills at major corporation strategy. Go ahead, tell us what Kodak's path to survival in their 2nd century should have been.
Engineers at Kodak knew the way people captured, viewed and shared pics would inevitably be digital. Managers and executives had their heads where the sun don’t shine. IPhone, instagram, Snapchat? Coulda been Kodak moments.
I did a short business course in the 90s, and even here in "sh**hole" Africa they lectured us all about the product life cycle and the Boston Matrix. As I understand it, the Kodak management failure is now a text book case study in how to get it all wrong. At that time we were learning about how one of the tyre companies had originally been farriers, how McDonalds was actually a property company, and about how Nokia changed their business focus from low growth forestry implements (or something like that) into the successful cellphone manufacturer that they were at the time. Sure, we have the benefit of hindsight now, but I suspect that Mk7 is quite correct that strong leadership was needed at Kodak to redirect the company appropriately as their cash cow products rapidly became redundant. I suspect that this gets harder to do when you are a listed entity and everyone thinks the ride only goes in one direction.
Kodak never made a single good user interface. Kodak picture kiosks, digital camera menus. They had amazing scientists but they never had designers. If they went to make an iPhone they would have made the Motorola Rokr. If they went to make instagram or snapchat it would look like it was a Windows 3.1 program.
The problem is hardware doesn't make money. Film and paper were products but they were different, they were consumables. The only thing Kodak may have been able to pull off would be to run an ISP or cell phone service. But even there those markets have huge competition.
Business schools like to give you the simple easy story, but one thing they don't tell you is many companies make it huge because of one thing, but when if that market changes and they've grown so big, it is very difficult to shrink a company gracefully. Sometimes there isn't a path to remain successful.
What they could have done is get it into the defense contracting game the same time they were providing imaging equipment for NASA. Still would have had to shrink the company, but better than the eventual outcome.
Kodak was a Film, Print Paper and Chemical Company, not a camera company, they made their money on the consumables, not the cameras that they sold close to their cost just so more people would have a camera to use. Just like Polaroid with their SX70 print film and the giveaway price of $19.99 US for One Step Cameras, they made their money on that SX70 Film.
Yes and IBM was producing typewriters back in the day, now they are into computers because nobody needs typewriters anymore. If your horse is dead, use another one, otherwise you will be left behind. Companies must change if their busines model does not work anymore.
Kodak and others believed that people would still make prints of the photos they shot, that's why they tried selling printers and ink and why dealers tried to get people to order prints, all failed. There was nowhere for Kodak to go, but to shut down.
while i previously believed the current popular theory that a comet or asteroid struck the yucatan peninsula, i will keep an open mind concerning greedy dinosaur bosses causing the mass extinction 65 million yrs ago
Apparently an asteroid hit slowed the rotation of the planet, so increasing gravity and therefore the weight of the dinosaurs, basically they suddenly became too heavy. Nothing to do with Kodak.
Surprised DPReview linked this. This story has been told by more legit sources than this kid with a really annoying voice. This is a homemade production. I believe Netflix has a real documentary on this, not just a voice over with some pics.
I'd like to give credit where credit is due. Not having seen those other documentaries yet, I have to say I quite liked the video and the presentation. Very unpretentious and well structured. Made me curious to learn more about Kodak's company history. On a different note, I would never base my opinion on the age of an author. There are many people half my age that already know more than I could ever forget.
I didn't mean to sound flip. I was just disappointed that the movie wasn't at all about film or photography and thought to warn you. I actually don't have TV but I'll check my friend's Netflix for the documentary you are referencing, I'd be very interested. Doyou know the title?
Ah, you can talk about bad business decisions all you want, but Kodak gave us trancendent art... Kodak gave humanity the gift of Kodachrome... :) And then took it away :(
Oysso, it depends on what you mean by better. I shoot film and digital, and I find them incomparable. It's like comparing sculpture in marble or granite. Marble is finer, but what if your subject calls for granite? Of course there is a whole industry built on faking film looks from digital, but I think that kind of thing is foolish gimmicky kitch (not in the good sense) on a par with fake-aging a painting.
To those who think that Fujifilm survived because they managed the transition to digital: No, that was not the reason. They survived because they found another area where their technology could be used: Cosmetics.
Um, no. The cosmetics business's contribution to Fujifilm's overall success as a company is very small. Fujifilm's real turnaround success story is in health care imaging equipment, where their background in photography did turn out to be very useful. In addition, Fujifilm has always had a large business in office document solutions, e.g. the Fuji Xerox joint venture that has been in the news frequently lately.
Operating income, Fujifilm Holdings, fiscal year ending 31 March 2018: Imaging solutions: 56,025 million yen Healthcare & Material solutions: 92,796 million yen Document solutions: 13,980 million yen
Cosmetics are a part of the healthcare division, and I haven't seen a breakdown of the total from that division. However, Fujifilm management have stated repeatedly that cosmetics and healthcare products are what "saved" the company. It's a well known fact that the profit margins from cosmetics and healthcare products are very high, which may explain the statements from Fujifilm. See also the "Inside the storm" video.
What is very interesting is that the imaging division is currently the fastest growing division of Fujifilm, probably because of their very strong market position throughout the rapidly growing Asian market.
It wasn't cosmetics. It was "highly functional materials" — i.e. coatings for LCD displays. Fuji's CEO makes this quite clear in his book.
The company has indeed also moved into many other business sectors with varying degrees of success. All of that is to its credit. But it was the LCD coatings that saved them in the early 2000s, and it remains one of their largest, most profitable businesses. (It's a big chunk of the "healthcare and material solutions" unit.)
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What's the best camera for a parent? The best cameras for shooting kids and family must have fast autofocus, good low-light image quality and great video. In this buying guide we've rounded-up several great cameras for parents, and recommended the best.
What's the best camera for shooting landscapes? High resolution, weather-sealed bodies and wide dynamic range are all important. In this buying guide we've rounded-up several great cameras for shooting landscapes, 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.
Video features have become an important factor to many photographers when choosing a new camera. Read on to find out which cameras we think are best for the videophile.
Kodak has restarted production of one of its most famous film emulsions - Ektachrome. Popular Science editor Stan Horaczek recently go to take a look inside.
The Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 Di III RXD is an affordable F2.8 standard zoom for full frame Sony E-mount cameras. What's it like, what are the trade-offs, and what are the alternatives? Chris and Jordan take a closer look...
We've updated our Best Drones buying guide and there's a new winner. Find out which drone was our favorite and learn more about all current models in our updated guide.
A teardown of a Nikon D850 has provided proof that the camera's sensor is made by Sony Semiconductor. The chip's design and performance already strongly supported this, but the confirmation also gives a hint about how the industry works.
Leica Camera has announced a new compact camera that features a 24-360mm F3.3-6.4 zoom lens and a 20MP 1” MOS sensor. Essentially a re-badged Panasonic Lumix ZS/TZ200, the Leica C-Lux will save Raw and JPEG files, will offer 4K video and has a viewfinder with a 2.33 million-dot resolution.
Leica has launched a limited edition M10 with a contoured handgrip designed by luxury car manufacturer Zagato. And, to celebrate the opening of a new part of the company's Wetzlar factory, a pair of Leica-made watches are due this autumn.
YouTuber George Tomlin explains the concept of sub-framing and details how you can use it to take not only make the composition more interesting, but also provide context for the scene you're shooting.
YouTube channel Company Man has shared a 12-minute video explaining the history of Kodak and the factors that led to it going from industry leader to bankrupt business.
Neewer, a photo gear brand out of China, has launched a new budget APS-C lens for Fuji X and Sony E mounts. The Fuji X mount lens offering has appeared on Amazon as a new release with a $119.99 price tag, but is currently listed as unavailable.
Nikon has announced the development of the AF-S NIKKOR 500mm F5.6E PF ED VR lens. Thanks to its use of 'phase fresnel' optics, Nikon claims that the lens will be small and light enough to be used handheld.
MIOPS has opened up a Kickstarter campaign for its latest product, the Capture360. This pocket-sized device is a versatile motion control box designed to be as simple or robust as your needs desire.
The Domke F-6, also known as the 'Little Bit Smaller' bag shares a lot of characteristics with the venerable (and a Little Bit Bigger) F-2. Senior Editor Barnaby Britton has been using one for several years.
Currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, the Instant Magny 35 supports Fujifilm Instax Square film and doesn't require any camera modifications. The instant film back is described as ideal for rangefinders and SLRs from Pentax, Leica, Olympus, Canon, and Nikon.
Someone finally made a 1"-sensor compact with a fixed prime lens that can take great photos, but it's aimed at Scuba enthusiasts more so than land-based photographers and has a few operational quirks.
Leica has released details of the twelve finalists for this year’s Leica Oskar Barnack Award, one of who will take the €35,000 (approx. $41K) top prize. Organizers say that 2500 photographers submitted work to the competition this year.
One week after it was first seen in leaked images, Samyang—also known as Rokinon in the US—has unveiled a ‘tiny but wide’ 24mm F2.8 lens for full-frame Sony cameras.
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 seven current models and chosen our favorites.
Every photographer knows about APS-C sensors, but what about APS film? This week, Chris and Jordan take a stroll down memory lane and try out the original APS format, a technology that promised to streamline the film workflow, but which ultimately lost out to digital technology.
It's not every day you have the opportunity to shoot with a lens like the Hasselblad XCD 21mm F4. It's currently the widest lens in the company's medium-format lineup and as we discovered, incredibly sharp.
Although it wasn’t a stand-out detail during the keynote, Apple is bringing new features and improved performance when working with Raw photos on iOS 12. We break down a few of the updates we’ve come across in the iOS 12 Beta 1.
Manfrotto has updated its travel tripod range with three new tripod models: the Befree Advanced Carbon Fiber, Befree GT, and Befree Live Carbon Fiber. The first two models feature Manfrotto's M-lock twist lock, and the Befree Live Carbon Fiber is designed for recording video.
Parrot has launched its latest consumer drone, the Anafi. This folding drone will retail for just shy of $700 and features a 21-megapixel camera capable of 4K HDR capture at 30 fps.
DPReview's Technical Editor Richard Butler was in New York for the launch of the new Sony Cyber-shot RX100 VI. Find out his first impressions of Sony's powerful new pocket zoom.
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