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Hurt by Weak Film Sales, Kodak Trims Work Force


Tim Tyler

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It sucks that the little guys get laid off...(including my childhood best friend's dad always in fear for his job), but I think corporations have Karma too, or that the golden rule still applies to non-human entities like corporations. So I am ambivalent towards Kodak as a whole...

 

If there truly is such a thing as karma.. why do good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people everyday?

 

 

(a rhetorical question not meant to start and thread explosion)

 

 

 

Place a Film order today!

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At least Canada is not borrowing money from China to pretty much run 2 wars and much of the national internal domestic spending. :blink:

 

A few years ago, The Onion had a story called "Bankrupt US sold to China." Well, it's turning out to be "Bankrupt US owned by China."

 

Japan owns nearly as much in US Treasury Securities as China. And the UK is behind them, but with half as much 'ownership' of our debt. So it's not always China as the media likes to make it.

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If there truly is such a thing as karma.. why do good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people everyday?

 

 

lol...

 

I'll simply quote Colonel Kurtz...

 

"You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me"

 

"without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

 

:)

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Actually I was speaking to a Kodak rep a few months ago and he was telling me that their biggest slow down from the recession has been in digital cinema products - no body is installing expensive digital projectors at this time of uncertainty.

 

Also remember they also make parts as well, CMOS chips for example.

 

And as I said in another thread, it's a misnomer that Kodak's main stay is film. It is not. 2/3rds of the companies profits are in digital and non film areas.

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The problem is that these economic "slowdowns" are not generally caused by the slow sales of our favorite products, but they generally end up causing the discontinuation of our favorite products as "fat trimming" measures. Remember Polaroid Type 55? Certainly not the cause of Polaroid's lost fortunes, but definitely a sad sad sad casualty. Type 55 may not in the current age be the "best" way to capture a large format image, but it's a favorite of many of ours for reasons other than all-out scientific image quality. Likewise, who knows how long motion picture film will remain king of scientific quality, let's just hope it doesn't get trimmed out of our list of options by cost-cutting measures. Digital will keep getting more attractive from a budgetary standpoint, but it's ALWAYS nice to have a palette of options that we can choose from aesthetically. Some scripts just don't ask for sterile digitally sharp images. The Wrestler for example.

 

I don't know what we have to do as a community to keep these options alive. Anyone?

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The only thing one can do to keep film alive is to continuously order/shoot on film. I can still buy still camera film.. and that is dominated by digital now. Granted, there have been some discontinuations, but I can even get still film developed and printer optically and economically here in Philadelphia.

I think, despite the "budget consciences," many producers/directors/etc realize the aesthetic nature of our medium, and as such, while sometimes you're forced to compromise over budget, other times you can stand up for the format which the project deserves. This is of course very case by case, mind you, and often you'll wind up marginalizing other aspects of the film. But, like so many things, it's a balancing act which becomes almost second nature.

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What is Kodak doing right now to stay relevant in digital cinema? They better get on it.

 

Statements like this infuriate me.

 

If John were still alive, he would have a clever, polite way of saying this, but I am more blunt.

 

Tom, you clearly know NOTHING about Kodak. Film is only 1/3 of their operation these days. And they continue to be innovators with CMOS sensors. Don't forget they had out a 14.1 MP DSLR before anyone else did, back in 2005. What is the resolution of a RED again? As for digital cinema, I know practically nothing about it, because it is poop, and I will stay home when movie theatres devolve into giant video projectors that look worse than my HDTV, but didn't they come up with the DCS STANDARDS, like, 6 years ago? What were you saying again?

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Remember Polaroid Type 55? Certainly not the cause of Polaroid's lost fortunes, but definitely a sad sad sad casualty. Type 55 may not in the current age be the "best" way to capture a large format image, but it's a favorite of many of ours for reasons other than all-out scientific image quality.

 

 

The thing I love so much about Polaroid bases is that they're so relatively poor technically. Taking a Polaroid 600 is a bit like stepping back 50 years, and so much the better for it. We don't all want polished souless zero's and one's for our images from here on. No matter what we may worry about, the soul of our art will live on. Chef's don't heat up microwave ready meals, they use a sophisticated palette of ingredients, and perfectly hone it over decades. I don't think we will allow our selves to lose our most exotic ingredients.

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And they continue to be innovators with CMOS sensors.

 

Example please ?

 

50 MP CCD for Hasselblad etc, they're playing well in the very high end - I guess doing OK in th low end, industrial maybe.

 

Meanwhile it seems to me Nikon Canon Sony are running with the ball

 

-Sam

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If I may butt in, anybody developing CMOS sensors should also dedicate time to improving rolling shutter technology. The two do seem to go hand in hand.

 

Also, I think Kodak were the CMOS giants a while back, but you're right in that Sony, Canon, and Nikon's sensors really are something. Nikon has a Sony-derived CMOS in it's D3x. Considering that Sony is only one place behind Nikon in the DSLR sales race that sensor must be (and is) a real silicon gem! Nikon would probably have rather gone anywhere for a sensor except their competitor, including Kodak.

 

Good day, Sam!

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Nikon would probably have rather gone anywhere for a sensor except their competitor, including Kodak.

 

Good day, Sam!

 

I dunno, except for the D3 / D700 all have been Sony recently. Sony is only starting to be a competitor, - maybe - and I'm not sure Sony's chip division cares too much anyway. Remember Japanese companies will compete on one hand a cooperate on the other. Also Nikon makes photolithographic gear the others use in chip fabrication so some borders are almost ambiguous.... look at how 2 layer microlens technology has gone from Nikon D3 to Canon DSLR to Canon Vixia in a year....

 

-Sam

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Well they are, because it's all about generating revenues. It's not as though a company will give away their product. Instead, they'll license the technology, as a way of maximizing revenue streams. They hit the market with it first and get the consumers, and then once the consumers are "got," they sell it to other companies who don't have it, and voila, more money in the coffers. At least that's my theory.

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And as I said in another thread, it's a misnomer that Kodak's main stay is film. It is not. 2/3rds of the companies profits are in digital and non film areas.

 

Not so. The only part of Kodak that showed a profit last quarter was film and entertainment. That means mostly celluloid. Sales are down everywhere, but the rest of their business lost money.

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Not so. The only part of Kodak that showed a profit last quarter was film and entertainment. That means mostly celluloid. Sales are down everywhere, but the rest of their business lost money.

 

Hi. Kodak hasn't made "celluloid," in 59 years.

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Statements like this infuriate me.

 

As for digital cinema, I know practically nothing about it, because it is poop

 

 

 

So my vision is poop as you so eloquently put it, because I'd rather work creatively without the compromise that comes with getting funding for working on film. Both production and post-production?

:)

 

I understand your love of the feel of film, but try not to slap other's that are less fortunate than you in the face with your opinions...it makes us all look bad...

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So my vision is poop as you so eloquently put it, because I'd rather work creatively without the compromise that comes with getting funding for working on film. Both production and post-production?

:)

 

I understand your love of the feel of film, but try not to slap other's that are less fortunate than you in the face with your opinions...it makes us all look bad...

 

I am not talking about the cameras per se (though I particularly loath RED and its razzle-dazzle marketing campaign).

 

I was referring to digital projection. Sorry for the confusion.

 

As for me being fortunate. My only suit has a hole in the ass. I can't afford to get a new one. My car has 1,000,000 mi. on it. I have to beg/borrow money to buy the film I need to shoot my jobs sometimes. I starve just the same as others in this industry. I don't race around in a Corvette and shoot 35mm home movies of my family.

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thank you for clarifying...

 

I agree with you about DLP cinemas, I used to live in Orlando, and would go to the movies at Universal Studios. They had one there and it wasn't that amazing...I'm glad they didn't charge extra for it...

 

I'm not a big fan of the Red's hype either, but I'll sure be happy to have one of their cameras...

 

:)

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Tom, you clearly know NOTHING about Kodak. Film is only 1/3 of their operation these days. And they continue to be innovators with CMOS sensors. Don't forget they had out a 14.1 MP DSLR before anyone else did, back in 2005.

Kodak released the DCS-14n in March of 2004. Canon responded with the EOS-1Ds Mark II with a 16.7 MP sensor in September of 2004. The Kodak sensor was very noisy and the product was a disappointment. Worst of all, Kodak was never able to solve the noise problems and permanently left the DSLR market to other manufacturers which continued to develop sensors with increasing resolution and sensitivity.

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Kodak released the DCS-14n in March of 2004. Canon responded with the EOS-1Ds Mark II with a 16.7 MP sensor in September of 2004. The Kodak sensor was very noisy and the product was a disappointment. Worst of all, Kodak was never able to solve the noise problems and permanently left the DSLR market to other manufacturers which continued to develop sensors with increasing resolution and sensitivity.

 

I believe Kodak's CMOS sensors are going into CCTV cameras, webcams, and mobile phones these days, as well as their farly modest range of digital compacts and bridges, not exactly the illustrious future they would have been hoping for, an omen, I feel, for them to stick with film and never EVER deviate! :P

Edited by Matthew Buick
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Not so. The only part of Kodak that showed a profit last quarter was film and entertainment. That means mostly celluloid. Sales are down everywhere, but the rest of their business lost money.

 

That's not the relevant way to look at it:

 

I'm making up numbers here, but let's say their film sales were a billion and made money, but the other stuff was 25 billion and lost money.

 

Doesn't matter that film made money--the future of the business is in the other stuff, the products that will keep them alive and viable..

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I'm pretty worried about film now. Gordon Brown is now referring to things as a depression now, and not a recession, and he really is onw for glossing over things.

 

Hey, you bring up an uplifting point:

 

They only shot film during the Depression, right? So maybe this economic free-fall repeat is a GOOD thing for the medium.

 

I know--bad joke--but you never know.

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