Can Kodak save itself?

The news for Kodak is not looking good. They managed to sell part of their business to raise cash, but I wonder how long they can keep things going. They are making a loss, and it seems they’re printer business is the only area with real growth.

Kodak however could do one thing to turn things around. Stop focusing your business on compact cameras and get into the system camera business, and they don;t even need to create a CSC, or mirrorless or whatever they’re calling them these days (My personal favourite is Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens – that’s a good acronym.) All Kodak have to do is retro fit a manual focus camera with Pentax K mount. (I’d go with something like the ME-Super). Slap a good APS-C sized sensor in it, and you have a manual focus digital SLR with access to cheap and plentiful PK mount lenses. Now that would be fantastic. Price it the same as an entry level Digital SLR and it would fly off the shelves.

Next you fit one with a full frame sensor and charge more and with all the hype, Kodak become relevant as an imaging company once more. Fuji have kind of caught the vision for this with the X100 and the X10. The X100 was a gamble, but it is one that seems to have gone down well with photographers. Their next gamble will be the new mirrorless system and it will be interesting to see if Fuji can pull it off.

Only time will tell if Kodak pull a rabbit out of the fiscal hat in the next year or two, but one thing is for sure, I don’t see them creating the killer camera.

Long Live Film. Long Live Digital

Thinking about film got me thinking about the old film vs digital debates that have gone on over the last few years. I’ve never seen it as a vs situation.
There are things I like about both formats. With film, I hit a comfort zone. I was good at black and white. I could see in monochrome and that worked for me. I experimented with a few films and found my favourites; the ones that gave me the kind of results I liked. I found a groove and stuck with it. I also liked the fact that I knew my camera would last. I had Nikon F100 with an F80 as backup and they were great cameras. I also had an F301 manual focus camera which I still have. It’s about 25 years old now and still working fine. Can’t imagine saying that about my D90 25 years from now.
Digital feels like starting over for me. Gone is the safety net of knowing how the image will look on a certain type of film. Gone is the skill of using a certain type of film to get a certain type of result. Now I have to deal with colour and white balance and stuff. Yet, with it comes a certain freedom that I’m really enjoying. I can afford to be creative, to experiment, to play and not have to worry about wasting film. I can see instantly if the composition worked, or if I missed something, or something might inspire me to do it differently while looking at the LCD. I may have lost some of the discipline I gained as a film photographer, but that freedom to play has brought a new sense of enjoyment to my photography. (The images used for my blog banner are a great example of this. Just messing around and looking at the patterns on the LCD. Could never have done that with film.)
Plus, with digital photography comes a new set of skills. The skills of the darkroom are now replaced with the skills of the lightroom, and best of all, I don’t have to worry about dust like I used to. (Anyone remember having a perfect print ruined by a spec of dust on the negative?)
I still have a soft spot for film; always will and I hope I can keep dipping into film photography for many more years. But digital has given me a new photographic lease of life and a renewed enthusiasm for the craft. So long live film and long live digital.

The Second Death of Film

Part whatever…

I read this week that Kodak are struggling to make ends meet. In some ways, this isn’t even news. Kodak’s star has been growing dim for a long time, even before digital. (It’s ironic since Kodak were one of the major players in the very dawn of digital imaging.)

The real shame for me is the fact that my favourite films are Kodak emulsions. Tmax 100, 400 and especially 3200 are superb films and though personal preferences play a part in a photographers choice of film, for me, there isn’t another film that matches the punch you get with Tmax. There certainly isn’t another film like the 3200 speed Tmax, a nice mixture of punchy contrast, nice tones and a lovely grain that the closest rivals can only dream of.

tmax 3200 portrait — low light protrait with Tmax 3200. It looks soft on the monitor thanks to the lovely grain.

Should these emulsions be lost to the annuls of history, it will be a loss to future generations of photographers who will have to rely on software such as DXO labs film pack (which I have to say, does a pretty nice job of recreating the Tmax 3200 look) or look to Ilford Delta 3200, which, for me, lacks the punch of the Kodak film.

portrait processed with DXO film pack — Digital file processed with DXO film pack to recreate the Tmax 3200 feel. Not a bad recreation.

That said, it may be the Ilford model which saves the Kodak emulsions. It wasn’t so long ago that Ilford were in dire straights themselves. The solution, split the business in two. The film business remains as Ilford and keeps their film emulsions alive for future generations. Agfa went through the same pain.

Will the death of Kodak mean the death of film, yet again? Not likely. Film, though no longer the mainstream choice for photographers, still has a following and there are some mighty fine monochrome emulsions coming Eastern Europe from the likes of Foma and Rollei, and we still have Kodak and Fuji (for the moment), but the old guard cannot keep going with the same model and there is a risk that we may lose some of our favourite film emulsions along the way. Let’s face it, we’ve already lost a few.

It really would be a shame to lose Kodak. So take the challenge. If you have a film camera, buy a roll of film and relive the challenge of shooting with film. If you have never shot film, go buy a cheap camera, there are loads about, and experience the thrill of not knowing if you bagged the shot until the prints come back. Most of all, enjoy the challenge of spreading your photographic wings.

Film aint dead. Long live film.

PS: if you’re in the UK, a great place to start is Silverprint. They have a big range of films, unusual cameras and all sorts of good stuff. they’re friendly too.