Kodak Kills Off Kodachrome; Entertainment Industry Take Note
from the changing-with-the-times dept
Back in 1997, while I was in business school, I was working with a professor who was doing some consulting work for Kodak, and I ended up writing up an analysis and a report about what Kodak needed to do, facing the obvious coming onslaught of digital when its business had been based on analog photography for ages. We basically made the case for how Kodak could shift its focus to digital, and that it needed to get started right away. We actually got significant pushback on the analysis (not surprisingly), and it took a few years before Kodak woke up. But, around 2003, the company really started to bet everything on digital, and recognize that, as much of a cash cow as analog film represented, everything about the future was digital. So it's quite a milestone to hear that the company is finally killing off Kodachrome, the company's iconic color stock film.The reports about it note how Kodak's business is now 70% digital and the company has very much embraced the digital age. It certainly hasn't been all smooth sailing, and some still question whether or not Kodak can really survive in this new world. Yet, the company has made the switch much more effectively than many imagined was possible, and folks there seem to live and breathe digital these days (though, there was heavy turnover associated with that change).
Still, as one reader sent in, it's rather interesting to compare the experience of Kodak with, say, the recording industry, which is still fighting the move to "digital" to some extent. The big record labels fought every new efficiency at every turn, while Kodak quickly learned to embrace digital efficiencies and look to see where its own core skills could be applied to make them better. The record labels? Not so much. After fighting the entire concept for ages, they just handed the business over to Steve Jobs and still have done very little to see what they can do to make the digital experience better, based on their own skills and knowledge. Just as the Kodak transition hasn't been perfect, if the labels had embraced digital and things like file sharing early on, they wouldn't have been perfect or easy either. But the labels would be in a lot better position than they are today.
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Filed Under: analog, busienss models, digital, kodachrome, markets
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r h
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I just want to say...
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Re: I just want to say...
Hey RD, don't sweat it. There are a few people with way too much free time on their hands who show up here and troll. It's just what they do. Some of them are threatened because their own businesses are in trouble and they don't know what to do. Some of them are just ignorant. Some of them like to troll to get a rise out of folks. It happens. It's a really small number of people honestly (a lot of repeat stuff from the same small group of people).
There will always be some haters, but let them be. No need to curse at them.
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Re: Re: I just want to say...
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Re: Re: I just want to say...
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Re: Re: I just want to say...
FUCK YOU MIKE. Don't tell me who to curse at. I'm sorry I defended your always-wrong ass.
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Re: Re: I just want to say...
Indeed. At least we can appreciate the fact that they troll here -- otherwise, they would turn to disrupting something more important.
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Will
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Re:
A well ripped album sounds much better than a CD
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Re: why scrap albums
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Re: Re:
Well, if you like increased distortion, reduced dynamic range, increased noise, reduced frequency response, etc., then yeah, I guess so. High fidelity isn't for everyone.
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Re:
the media may have been digital but the distribution has always been analog. the industry's problem is that the world stopped buying plastic discs. the same is true for the movie industry: digital delivery killing the sale of plastic discs.
A digital film, esp. bluray, is hard to share because its ginormous. Pretty soon that will be as hard to control as music proliferation.
bluray films in full quality are out there on the scene. you can download them easily enough via the same technology you use to download anything else, bluray just takes longer.
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true about the bluray, but a trend I have noticed is that one of the legitimate publisher's weapons is to stay one step beyond the pirate's ability to cheaply acquire and record material - that was true for computer games on CD until the very late 90's when CD-ROM media and burners became cheap -- it ain't easy or cheap to acquire and record a bluray yet, okay there's server storage, but that's temporary
W
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No, you're confusing "analog" with "physical". They're not the same. Neither is "electronic" the same as "digital".
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Kodak and commodity silver
I wonder what effect that a drop in usage of a million ounces per month by one company has on the price of silver, and on the overall economy.
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Kodak and commodity silver
I wonder what effect that a drop in usage of a million ounces per month by one company has on the price of silver, and on the overall economy.
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Re: Kodak and commodity silver
As far as Kodak's growth in the digital age? does anyone feel their software needs to 'grow'? every pc I've seen that runs their software runs about as fast as a drunk turtle.
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If we were going to equate Kodak to the Entertainment Industry, we'd have to talk about phasing out analog tape and outboard gear in a majority of studios. See? They're both items used in PRODUCTION.
Is it just me? Am I the only one who minds the gap in the logic? Either way I think it's a valid point, but the error was just driving me nuts!
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No, the delivery method can be physical or nonphysical (e.g. electronic). Both methods can deliver both analog and digital information.
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Sensitive nerve
The debate can be useful. For one thing, you have to make your writing better when you know there are a lot of critics reading the blogs. The comments *can* be helpful if they can manage to come up with better comments than "you are a jerk." I applaud everyone who makes constructive comments on either side of the issue.
The irony is that the negative comments lead to a better and more interesting blog. In theory that means more people read it and are exposed to the positions advocated in the article and comments.
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Re: Sensitive nerve
I'm not in the industry. I just don't agree with Mike's world view.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm an old school shutterbug, but all Chrome films are for producing slides. KodaColor, is the stuff that people load up to take birthday shots. Not too many people still shooting slides out there.
Hey, it's the end of an era, no doubt. But it's more like hearing that that Memorex has quit producing the source material for 8-track tapes.
Now when Kodak give up the ghost on KodaColor, then we'll know that the last of the instamatics have gone the way of the T-Rex. Or at least, if less melodramatically, has given up the market share to Fuji.
And just to sound like those guys that tell us to rip our vinyl to CD; Please try this experiment. Shoot the kids birthday on your digital, also shoot the birthday on your old 35mm or even the Instamatic loaded up with Kodacolor. Make sure it's KodaColor, not the store brand. Develop film, print digi's and compare.
Kodacolor made it's mark rendering skin tones in a warm and pleasant way. It a way that digital, unless you shoop it well, just doesn't do. I'm not saying it's better, or easier, clearly it isn't faster or cheaper, but it will "look" better, perhaps in that same odd analog way that vinyl sounds warmer, or whatever.
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Two loose thoughts
I just dug my old 35mm out of the basement and have been bringing it back up to speed. Been buying film (negative, black-and-white and slide film) and getting re-acquainted with my camera. I've also started to look critically at the digital pics I've been taken the last nine years. Digital looks fine on the screen, and often looks like crap when put on paper.
I have pictures of family, going back 80 years now, and I'm wondering how many of my digital snap shots will survive even one generation.
There's still a lot of room for improvement, that's for sure.
--GJ--
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Kodak SLIDE film
Kodak is still the popular brand name for most of the DIY store kiosks. Even if it's a no name machine in a drug store, bet it's still using Kodak paper.
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Kodak Super-8mm films.
Super-8mm film stocks include Ektachrome 100D, Vision 3 negative film stocks, and BW PLUS-X and TRI-X film stocks.
Learn more at http://www.super-8mm.com and http://www.super-8mm.net
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Kodachrome
Wonder why no. 19 comment (GJ) can't get decent paper prints from digital. I bought an "end-of-line" really tiny Olympus camera to slip in the pocket for a mere 80-odd pounds here in the UK. Stuck a large memory card in and left it in it's so-called "super-high-quality" mode and even critical ole' me is amazed at the 10 x 8 prints produced on a decent printer.
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Kodak's transition
As for me, I didn't use Kodachrome. It was too slow. I used Ektachrome, which was fast enough for use in darker landscapes (forested gorges at dusk, etc).
Note that Kodak is a far smaller company now.
While the current generation of digital cameras produces quite good images, they do not have the dynamic range of good slide film, which had a dynamic range of > 4000:1.
When I scan my old film images on my Nikon scanner, I get images of ~ 4000 x 6000 pixels, 14 bits deep (which allows me to deal with the integram masking in color negative film). This is still rather more resolution and image depth than my digital cameras.
A real advantage of digital cameras is I can let my kids shoot lots of pictures without worrying about the cost.
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Record industry strengths?
I would really like to hear Mike's (and other readers) thoughts on what core skills the record industry could/should leverage. If you created a record label, what would it be like?
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