Contact the Kodak Alaris CEO

[wattsy]

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disappointed to see it degenerate into the almost inevitable bickering - maybe something to which I contribute, with my terrible grasp of the English language...

 

There's no maybe about it, Mani. Your English is always first rate (as you know) but I don't understand why you feel the need to belittle and goad those who, for whatever reason, don't share your views.

[AlanG]

I think you are providing the "heat." The rest of us are simply giving information and being objective. When you refer to Kodak you do know that there are two different organizations now... Eastman Kodak and Kodak Alaris. Eastman makes the film and Alaris markets it.

 

You are assuming that if good "affordable" scanners are available, then more film will be sold to justify either Kodak subsidizing their cost. What evidence do you have for this since I know plenty of people who have abandoned their scanners when moving to digital capture. Some maybe still use their scanners for old photos but don't shoot film anymore. One friend of mine has an Imacon and does not shoot film. I have three scanners and a digital slide copier and I do not shoot film.

Edited April 18, 2014 by AlanG

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[pico]

Kodak doesn't have to team up with anyone to produce a scanner. Kodak was a pioneer of consumer and commercial film to digital technology including the sensors. [...]

 

True. Do you think Kodak's corporate behavior - that of looking to the past to protect the current, thereby protecting their lucrative film market - kept them from promoting their pioneering digital technology? I only ask in order to find some insight into corporate personalities.

 

A particular film gets discontinued once demand falls below a given threshold that is required for production. Kodak has no way to scale back production.

 

A mysterious thing, scale plus distribution. How do other film manufacturer scale back production?

[Berth]

True. Do you think Kodak's corporate behavior - that of looking to the past to protect the current, thereby protecting their lucrative film market - kept them from promoting their pioneering digital technology? I only ask in order to find some insight into corporate personalities.

 

 

 

A mysterious thing, scale plus distribution. How do other film manufacturer scale back production?

 

When was the last time you saw an ad for Kodak film in anything other than a photo magazine? If they had a vision and wanted to grow their film business that would be a good place to start. But they don't.

 

They're in pure 'harvest' mode.

[Jaybob]

Plasticman I will give you a one time pass as English is probably not your first language but you seem to repeatedly post on this forum in an argumentative, obnoxious and frankly down right rude fashion. I gave you my opinion if you don't like it tough but I ain't wasting my time conversing with you in the future.

 

I'm not sure what you're reading, but I'm not reading "argumentative" or "rude" in those posts at all.

 

As seen in the photo that Alan posted, I actually use the tan colored Kodak RFS 2035 Plus scanner. The PLUS versions have 12 bits of color, 12 bits that end up getting treated like 16 bits. I scan RAW in Vuescan and then use ColorPerfect in Photoshop. It gives me a pretty decent sized 35mm scan, semi quickly, resulting in a respectable 33 megabyte workable TIF file. I think I paid just over 50 dollars for mine, shipped. They were work horses at the newspapers I worked at in the 90s. There's no ICE, but why are you scanning in that dusty negative without blowing it off? There's no multi exposure HDR. There's no auto film transport. This is just my opinion, the Kodak scanners pictured above, (except for that one with the slide tray on it...that is a BEAST and they are pricy), represent a much less expensive alternative (even if you have to jerry rig a SCSI signal in...) than anything that any Nikon Coolscan unloader will sell you on that auction site. They certainly were state of the art digital technology when they were released. I'm not saying run out and buy something that's broken, because you'll have a pretty hard time fixing it, but you'll have the same problem with an in-need-of-service Nikon scanner as well.

 

I also use a Coolscan 4000ED, but honestly, in terms of not spending all day waiting around on a usable scan, I prefer the Kodak.

 

Or you can buy a Plustek for $300 from B&H and get it as soon as Passover ends.

 

I received a email response from the Kodak Alaris CEO. It was hardly a handwritten note on stationary, I'm sure it was pretty boilerplate stuff, "Thank you for reaching out to me..." blah blah blah, but, hey, it's a beginning. It's not "We have ceased all production of 120 size film.." or "It is with great dismay that we announce that due to lack of demand, Tri-X has been discontinued..."

 

They have a lot of shit to figure out up there in Rochester.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Jaybob

[AlanG]

When was the last time you saw an ad for Kodak film in anything other than a photo magazine? If they had a vision and wanted to grow their film business that would be a good place to start. But they don't.

 

They're in pure 'harvest' mode.

 

Grow their film business?

 

I am not sure what your are getting at. Kodak went through a huge decline and eventual bankruptcy. A lot of analysts will say this is because they remained too focused on film for too long...not coming up with a profitable digital strategy and selling off profitable divisions to keep the film business afloat and provide the investment money to go into the digital printing business. During this entire time film sales declined way faster than Kodak ever imagined and undercut all of their plans. They turned over the film business to their UK pensioners as part of the bankruptcy settlement and now just manufacture film for Kodak Alaris.

 

It is now up to Kodak Alaris (UK not Rochester) to market film. They may be of the opinion that general advertising to promote film use will not be cost effective. And they do not have the wide range of Kodak branded products to justify promoting the Kodak brand as Eastman Kodak used to do. Keep in mind that this brand name has been sub-licensed or sold to a camera maker and perhaps to others. Consider that Leica has to license the name from Danaher Corp. as a similar situation.

 

So Kodak in Rochester is mostly interested in promoting the printing gear they make. Kodak Alaris may be more interested in promoting their business to business products and kiosks rather than in promoting film to consumers. (Many consumer film users know why they shoot film and others probably are a tough sell.) Finally JK Imaging is promoting their Kodak branded digital cameras and certainly has no interest in steering anyone towards film.

 

I can't see any upside trying to convince people to put down their smartphones and buy Kodak disposable cameras instead. Convincing pros and commercial users to use film again in any substantial quantity will be impossible. So who is left to convince and what will it take to convince them to use more film?

Edited April 18, 2014 by AlanG

[KM-25]

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When was the last time you saw an ad for Kodak film in anything other than a photo magazine? If they had a vision and wanted to grow their film business that would be a good place to start. But they don't.

 

They're in pure 'harvest' mode.

 

When is the last time you have seen Ilford or Fuji do that either? Kodak uses the same lines of marketing that Ilford does, Facebook, forums, underwriting workshops like ones by John Sexton, etc. Fuji does not really market film at all but have a loyal following on forums and Flickr, again, free marketing, that "Web-Social" stuff.

 

What I am wondering is why anyone here wastes precious time speculating about something they have limited current info from and at best, "PR' level historical data? I mean, come on, color film is going to go away within this decade likely unless a small start up manages to monetize it in a scale that is robust.

 

But black and white film and the darkroom?....that is going to outlive anyone here, that is the only thing I can comment on with 100% certainty. I think a lot of great feedback went to the new CEO, I also know they take it seriously. But as far as the whole building 38 scale thing, again, lots of arm chair expert speculation without any real "current" data to back it up.

 

For example, Kodak Park started it's transformation awhile ago, long before the C-11 and Perez calamity:

 

The park and resurrection | News | Rochester City Newspaper

 

So here we are some time later and we have no idea how the future of Kodak still films will play out. We all know the demand for motion stock is in a free fall but still films, from what B&H and Freestyle have told me, are pretty steady and on par with Ilford's sales meaning that if the right balance of scale and sales is struck, it is still worth millions in profit if a more dynamic use of the coating facility can be realized.

 

Can that balance be struck? Anything is possible and not a single person here is qualified to say with ANY degree of certainty that it can or can not be done. Unless "Uncle Ali-G" has been signing NDA's and sitting in the board room, this all amounts to self indulgent wind bagging.

 

By the way "Ali-G", do you even shoot film?

[Jaybob]

It does seem like a remarkably uphill road to hike...

I don't even know who Kodak Alaris would even start to market to...(they're preaching to the choir with me)

 

Professionals? Let's take, for example, a wedding photographer who's been in business for say maybe six years (since 2008), and has been shooting digitally with a D300 or D3 (or Canon equivalent) as their camera, like always. That's what they cut their teeth on. Instant feedback, great hi noise performance, excellent TTL flash, zoom lenses, 15 dollar 8 GB cards, every modern convenience. I can't say with much certainty the percentage of shooters in that situation who would even remotely consider changing the 3000 exposure, "spray and pray" approach to doing their "job", not to mention their back end workflow. For many shooters, the back end involves shipping everything off to be edited, corrected, and uploaded, or chaining themselves to a desk to do it themselves. This is pure guesswork, but I just got back from WPPI in Las Vegas, and I'm sure the % of photogs looking into a full time film solution to their problems (especially from Kodak) is VERY low. I'm not even talking about the fact that the stuff costs X amount of dollars per roll PLUS developing. Digital? It's already paid for. It's all free.

 

I shoot alot of weddings. A LOT. I cannot remember the last point and shoot film camera that I saw in the hands of any guest. I rarely see point and shoot digitals now. Everything's done with the phone.

 

I shoot a small amount of Kodak film supplementing the digi because I want to, and I like the way it looks. It's a 5 times harder to use in practice and and at least fifty times slower to get the end result. However,shooting with film makes me think, and as I work in a team situation, I have the freedom to do it. As a side benefit, guests don't even recognize me as the "real" photographer...think of the photographic opportunities that opens up for me. In reality, it is another thing that sets me apart from the 50 other people who have started up wedding photography businesses in my general vicinity in the past 6 years (like my example from above, I've been in the game much longer...).

 

I suppose you could substitute the word Leica for Kodak in much of what I've said here, but Leica seems to have their act together somewhat more than Kodak.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Jaybob

[KM-25]

Jaybob,

 

I think that if even Kodak put forth some innovative way of marketing film, they would see perhaps only a *bit* of an improvement in the sales of film, but not a landslide like the 80’s-90’s. On nearly a daily basis I hear from people I encounter the phrase “I thought film was not made anymore?” and that is not so much due to Kodak or other film maker’s lack of advertising but just how loud and obnoxious the hype of digital is, not only do they advertise, they are using something that no maker of film had at their disposal in the 80’s and 90’s and that is the internet and forums like this one. Most of those people who say these things will not be going back to using film, they are not that potential customer like more seriously minded photo enthusiasts and actual photographers are, the latter being largely self informed knowing full well that they can fill their "cart" to the brim at B&H with fresh film.

 

So you have not only the loudness of the digital industry, but a bunch of talentless HDR and Wacom tablet hugging hacks who love to call film dead, say things like “Film, what is that?” or “Film? No one uses that anymore, hah!” putting out the wrong message about what is really going on. Thankfully, there are photographers who are pulling more and more film into use like you have mentioned above, many of them young too because they are more relaxed in their thinking and approach to the final product. They are not only not convinced that the digital hype machine is all that they should listen too but compared to their older and often more jaded counterparts, are more open minded and open to seeing what film is all about.

 

Weddings…I stopped doing them around 1990 when I was in my early 20’s, I did not like what the industry looked like then, it is downright horrid for most now, so my hat's off to you for doing “A Lot” of weddings, I could not do it. But what I am doing is one hand picked wedding a year for a nice 5 digit figure in that I hire a really great digital shooter to cover the basics while I shoot TMY2 in my Hasselblads and then hand print the best of the best in my darkroom. I am treating it like a limited edition in that it is all word of mouth in my high end town, I only have one slot open per year and after I have done 15 weddings, I will not do anymore so the price keeps going up as the “edition” sells out. My only frustration is that my album maker of choice, Queensberry, can not utilize my silver gel prints for client albums, I am trying to source out something more along the lines of what I am doing with my images, hand made...

 

I am busting my rear, hanging my arse out into the wind fiscally speaking to make shooting nothing but film & creating fine art prints, teaching workshops, opening a public darkroom space and even printing other’s vintage negs in order to permanently rid my self of digital for good….because I can not stand what it has done to photography and what it has done to the nobility of genuine talent in the profession. And if it does not work, I am out of photography as a pro and a hobby for good, my life will move on.

 

So I avoid predictions about the state of film manufacture that I have no factual basis to make and do all I can to promote it’s use.

Edited April 18, 2014 by KM-25

[AlanG]

...I am busting my rear, hanging my arse out into the wind fiscally speaking to make shooting nothing but film & creating fine art prints, teaching workshops, opening a public darkroom space and even printing other’s vintage negs in order to permanently rid my self of digital for good….because I can not stand what it has done to photography and what it has done to the nobility of genuine talent in the profession. And if it does not work, I am out of photography as a pro and a hobby for good, my life will move on...

 

 

I think you might be mixing the growth of digital with other factors at play (economic, technological, and cultural) affecting the profession. E.g. Life magazine's heyday ended by the 60s and the market value of a photo story declined with it. This long preceded digital and many other photo fields faced all kinds of pressure long before digital came about.

 

I just see digital photography as another in the long line of technological changes in photography from Daguerreotypes, to tin types, to wet plates, to dry plates, to large film, to medium format, to 35mm film. From b/w orthochromatic to panchromatic, from slow speed to faster, to Kodachrome and E3 then E4 and E6 film, from carbro and dye transfer to, Cibachrome and other color print processes to digital printing.

 

My background with film started in 1963 when at age 11 I began contact printing old family negatives I found in a box. By age 13 I had an enlarger and a Minolta SR-1. I got a formal education in the field and I have worked with a wide range of processes from traditional b/w, Kodalith paper and other non traditional processes, photo silk screens, liquid emulsions, and almost every color process from dye transfer, early Cibachrome, R22, R41, C22, and E3 up to the latest.

 

I had a photo professor back in 1972 who felt that using any format smaller than 4x5 was unprofessional and unsuitable for quality. I bet others drew the line at 8x10 and contact prints.

 

So now I like using digital capture, digital manipulation and digital printing. Does that make me some kind of sellout for choosing a method I prefer? It only has enhanced my commercial business as far as I can tell. After 40 years of shooting film I felt I had learned all I could about the material and process and was sometimes frustrated by what I could not do with it.

 

But I can certainly see why someone new at photography (or not so new) might get a kick out of processing and printing his/her own images in a traditional way. I think once you throw scanning into the picture, digital capture is the way to go since a hybrid approach has no tradition or purity... if that is what the goal is.

Edited April 18, 2014 by AlanG

[AlanG]

True. Do you think Kodak's corporate behavior - that of looking to the past to protect the current, thereby protecting their lucrative film market - kept them from promoting their pioneering digital technology? I only ask in order to find some insight into corporate personalities.

 

Many think that. I am not a business expert and this will be studied in business schools for some time. But it is not just the promoting of the digital technology, it is really getting into an innovative mindset that they were not capable of doing even though they had great r&d and engineering. They also lacked the camera manufacturing base to build from... although even if they had bought a company such as Pentax, Sigma, or Olympus I doubt if they could have been nimble enough to continually make competitive products.

 

In any case, that would have been small potatoes compared to their film business and their only mindset was how to keep Kodak a large company. Ironically they ended up having to sell off pretty much everything to become a smaller company that concentrates on digital printing. See how well the spinoff Eastman Chemicals - EMN- has done the past few years.

 

Keep in mind that Rochester is a long way from Silicon Valley (attitude not location) where new ideas like Instagram come from. Kodak had the programmers and could technically have produced Instagram pretty easily but they could never have conceptualized that kind of thinking.

[pico]

I think you might be confusing the growth of digital with other factors at play (economic, technological, and cultural) affecting the profession. E.g. Life magazine's heyday ended by the 60s and the market value of a photo story declined with it. This long preceded digital and many other photo fields faced all kinds of pressure long before digital came about.

 

 

May we consider another social phenomenon? When Life Magazine was at its prime, our media culture was one-way, non-participatory.

 

The so-called 'web' introduced profound, fast, world-wide (or nearly) participation. Immediacy became more popular than previous notions of presumed professional veracity or quality.

 

And we (or they) were suddenly alive in the world. Feedback across the world, independent of the gatekeepers of publication - for better or worse.

 

Digital communication including photography was inevitably bound to dominate.

 

 

 

 

Sent from my Etcha-sketch.

[KM-25]

I think you might be mixing the growth of digital with other factors at play (economic, technological, and cultural) affecting the profession. E.g. Life magazine's heyday ended by the 60s and the market value of a photo story declined with it. This long preceded digital and many other photo fields faced all kinds of pressure long before digital came about.

 

In looking at what you quoted, I see that you might be misunderstanding where I am coming from in what I am looking to do and why, specific to what I wrote. I have mentioned before on this forum that I have a fair history with digital, 21 years in total, 19 with DSLRs. So I fully understand all the aspects of the changes, but in naming the larger forces that have changed the profession in past 15 years, the internet and the digital medium, I have really grown to dislike it and so have other people. Some have just said to heck with it and moved onto something else but I am going to give my ideas a shot and see how it goes. And this not liking digital is not because I am not successful, if anything thinking I even have a chance at my new business plan is based on 23 years of success. But you can't continue to succeed at something you grow to dislike, no amount of money in that pit can be called success...

 

It's kind of like prospecting and panning for gold at this point, you have been given the signs are there to do right by your efforts but there is always the chance it will not materialize. I have realistic expectations of this now, a great income would be about 1/2 of my all time top 5 years. My wife is really excited to see me succeed and often does not understand my anxiety about the real figures, she thinks I am being negative but we all know that one needs to be *very* conservative with expectations in any new business plan.

 

I can only hang around these topics for a short time, I get extremely frustrated at the whole digital thing because the life I live in shooting film is infinitely more personal to me...so I make my best imagery that way.

Edited April 18, 2014 by KM-25

[Jaybob]

 

...talentless HDR and Wacom tablet hugging hacks...

 

...I can not stand what it has done to photography and what it has done to the nobility of genuine talent in the profession.

 

...I get extremely frustrated at the whole digital thing because the life I live in shooting film is infinitely more personal to me

 

 

 

I understand and respect your positions.

 

I thought I was the only one who recognized those two distinct groups that make up most young (and not so young) WPPI types.

 

As for purity, I don't know, but I'm going hybrid for now, M3 for the 50 and 90, and M6 for the 35. In my hands, those cameras feel pretty effing pure. If I need the 70-200 or 17-35, I have an F5 and F100 and bulletproof TTL fill and normal flash. I like color negative material at 160 or 400 (with a gentle push even) ISO, but I've never wet color printed, and scanning makes sense to me, but so does sending 4 to 7 rolls of properly exposed c-41 (not that hard...) out to be developed and scanned by a lab, instead of me spending 3 days doing it. I'll still edit it in Lightroom.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Jaybob

[KM-25]

As for purity, I don't know, but I'm going hybrid for now, M3 for the 50 and 90, and M6 for the 35. In my hands, those cameras feel pretty effing pure.

 

LOL, based on what you quoted me on and the nugget above, who can argue with that ?( See Photo)....

 

I think I should reel it in a bit, I don't hate what I have done in digital so I should not be so vigorous about my opinions, it does not really move my cause forward....and forward is where I want to be....

 

Ciao for nao...

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[steveclem]

Plasticman I will give you a one time pass as English is probably not your first language but you seem to repeatedly post on this forum in an argumentative, obnoxious and frankly down right rude fashion. I gave you my opinion if you don't like it tough but I ain't wasting my time conversing with you in the future.

 

That's just plain rude. You've joined the minority club of cantankerous old gits on here. Congratulations.

[Jaybob]

Since we've drifted a tad off course here (no thanks to ME), I want to re-state, along with the OP, that sending this man a brief email with your thoughts about how you envision the future of Kodak is an excellent idea.

 

Jay