Kodak Q4 Earnings

[J J Kapsberger]

Quarter after quarter, year after year, Kodak film sales drop like a rock. But every quarter, the "defenders of film's future" come out and proclaim that film is doing just fine and will be around forever. The king is dead, long live the king. 🙂

There's hardly enough information in the article to know what's going on really with Kodak's film sales. The three million dollar loss: does that include non-cash charges? If so Kodak might still have positive cash flows from film, etc. Cash flows is what it all boils down to.

And with a bit of proper rationalizing, Kodak's film division might prove viable in the long term. (But who can tell what the gang running Kodak might or might not do.)

Furthermore, just because Kodak does a balls-up job of marketing film doesn't mean the film industry is doomed.

 

[Mablo]

Kodak is a turnaround story. See:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/95c9c8aa-0c6d-11df-a941-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1CDXA133W

My personal view is that there's one too many major players in the analog film industry right now. I also think that Fujifilm will chicken out sooner or later. There's writing on the wall if you care to read it.

That move will give Kodak enough breathing space I think. They might sell out the film division one day but that would not mean a catastrophe for us users.

There's still Ilford, Foma, Efke, Adox etc. for us b&w shooters. I'm not worried at all.

 

[surfer dude]

And are just about to release a camera that looks like a film camera but records it's images digitally ... there's a messaage in that action IMO and the message is not good for film users!

Keith would you mind explaining your rationale here? It doesn't make any sense to me. If someone releases a digital camera that looks like a film camera, how is that a not good message for film users?

 

[Keith]

They have also left the pro digital SLR market with no further design work on the next Sx Pro Variant. So I think you must really know much more about all this than I do.. got any Stock Tips?

Maybe they think the market's not in unwieldy DSLR's but high quality high tech compacts like the X100 so why develop a new model in the Pro range?

You seem to have a sarcastic come back for any theory I put forward so how will you go with this one? 😀

 

[Keith]

Keith would you mind explaining your rationale here? It doesn't make any sense to me. If someone releases a digital camera that looks like a film camera, how is that a not good message for film users?

Make a die hard film shooter feel a little more comfortable about actually moving to the dark side by giving him/her a camera they can realate to physically? Then you take their film away when you think they won't notice ... while they're playing with the new toy you've just given them!

Ok ... so I pulled that theory out of my hat ... but it sounded good at the time! 😛

 

[surfer dude]

... as do most good theories!

The X100 is interesting because, until now, it is just a pretty face and a bunch of specs. Theories of it taking the photography world by storm may be a little premature...

Besides which, Leica also makes a digi camera or two that look a little like film cameras, but they still make film cameras (OK, I know - please don't quote sales numbers back at me!)

 

[Keith]

... as do most good theories!

The X100 is interesting because, until now, it is just a pretty face and a bunch of specs. Theories of it taking the photography world by storm may be a little premature...

Besides which, Leica also makes a digi camera or two that look a little like film cameras, but they still make film cameras (OK, I know - please don't quote sales numbers back at me!)

We're really getting off track here but what the hell! LOL

I think Leica believe that film is on the way out ... of course they're still offering us a film camera but they're also trying very hard to convince us that the future is digital IMO.

My hat is full of such theories I warn you! 😀

 

[surfer dude]

... and, going by your avatar picture, it's a big hat!

Sorry, now what were we discussing....?

 

[Keith]

... and, going by your avatar picture, it's a big hat!

Sorry, now what were we discussing....?

That's right .. Kodak!

How could we forget the people who took our kodachrome away!

:angel:

 

[bigeye]

They have also left the pro digital SLR market with no further design work on the next Sx Pro Variant. So I think you must really know much more about all this than I do.. got any Stock Tips?

Hasselblads are now mostly Fuji designed and manufactured (Fujiblad?) and are sold as Fuji in asia.
.

 

[mani]

Whoah just about to add my second ignore - just on the basis of this thread alone! Amazing what a lot of totally ignorant bullsh*t digital fanatics can 'pull out of their hat'.

Film is still a billion-dollar business, as someone else pointed-out earlier. If you google 'Kodak and bankruptcy' or 'death of film' you'll get thousands of hits dating back ten or more years.

So - sorry guys - I know many of you are LONGING for film to die. I realize it's annoying that people are out there taking better pictures with their forty-year-old equipment than you can manage with your brand-new $10k digital kit. But you're just gonna have to wait a bit longer.

And btw - what's REALLY dying is the semi-pro DSLR market. Soon all those sweet cameras you've been buying every year or so are gonna be history. Hope you enjoy using your phonecam in 3 or 4 year's time - it's gonna be the only new digicamera you can buy. 😀

 

[Roger Hicks]

Whoah just about to add my second ignore - just on the basis of this thread alone! Amazing what a lot of totally ignorant bullsh*t digital fanatics can 'pull out of their hat'.

Film is still a billion-dollar business, as someone else pointed-out earlier. If you google 'Kodak and bankruptcy' or 'death of film' you'll get thousands of hits dating back ten or more years.

So - sorry guys - I know many of you are LONGING for film to die. I realize it's annoying that people are out there taking better pictures with their forty-year-old equipment than you can manage with your brand-new $10k digital kit. But you're just gonna have to wait a bit longer.

And btw - what's REALLY dying is the semi-pro DSLR market. Soon all those sweet cameras you've been buying every year or so are gonna be history. Hope you enjoy using your phonecam in 3 or 4 year's time - it's gonna be the only new digicamera you can buy. 😀

Why? I'm not arguing: it's just not an argument I'd heard before, and it intrigues me.

Cheers,

R.

 

[rbiemer]

I miss Bill Mattocks.
Rob

 

[Luddite Frank]

Film still seems to be alive in the motion-picture industry...

We just went to see "True Grit" the other week, at a local 20-screen modern cineplex that prides itself on its digital screening rooms ( one of which regularly screens the Metropolitan Opera's digital simul-casts ), but the print of "True Grit" that we enjoyed, was on good-old 35mm film.

Perhaps not completely releveant to this thread, but if major film studios are still using the stuff...

 

[GSNfan]

So - sorry guys - I know many of you are LONGING for film to die. I realize it's annoying that people are out there taking better pictures with their forty-year-old equipment than you can manage with your brand-new $10k digital kit. But you're just gonna have to wait a bit longer.

I don't think that is case, the resentment towards film comes from the fact that film is hard work, something that people don't like. Its human nature to want everything the easy way.

Not to say that there are no lazy film photographers, I mean shooting a 24 roll in a month is no hard work either.

 

[chris00nj]

Back to the OP,

The CEO on the earnings call blames the cost of silver for the unprofitability of the film segment. A question was asked "My first one is on the Film business. Can you talk a bit about how we should think about that business trending from a margin standpoint?"But the CEO didn't really answer that part of the question and just said "We managed this business for cash."

 

[zumbido]

Kodak is certainly going to die unless something changes. This is divorced from any idiotic film vs. digital debates. They simply fail to compete, like GM over the last thirty years, and like that company they will die. Anyone ten years ago predicting it would happen in a year or five years was not thinking straight. It was simply too big a company for that. Again like GM, it's a long death spiral.

But it beggars belief to blithely have faith that a company can sustain operational losses quarter after quarter forever.

 

[antiquark]

So - sorry guys - I know many of you are LONGING for film to die.

You'd think the death of Kodachrome would have satisfied their bloodlust a little tiny bit. But no, they want MOOOORRREEE!!!! 😛

 

[Gumby]

I miss Bill Mattocks.
Rob

I'd agree with this statement... 😀

But seriously, Bill is quite the scholar in this area and I always appreciated his persective.

 

[zumbido]

Hey Anti; There is surely a pathology here that I only guessed at in the past. But, it's clearly visible. Why would anyone waste their time scrutinizing how another takes pictures, with other than digital capture. Beyond the profit incentive, if you're in the digital or film biz. Why anti-film folks (sorry for the "anti" bit) care about this stuff is beyond me. If I were to lean on my old Psych. 1A class of years gone by, I would guess that it's a comfort level that is missing. It's like being a non drinker in a bar. Any topic relating to film brings them out.. I use digital gear at work and film gear for my personal snaps.. when people see me with a film camera they want to know why I'm using a film camera. I reply - I like it. That's usually not enough. I think some of them think they are doing something wrong.. I don't get it.. who cares?

Like most of these dumb technology arguments, both sides stoke it and then play like they're getting attacked. On this particular forum, the target audience being what it is, there is at least a 20-1 ratio of "digital sucks! it's worthless and it's for lazy idiots blah snort snorgle!" to "film is for old people! get with the times burp blorp sneeze!"

The usual sequence on RFF is someone points out an incontrovertible fact about, say, how Kodak is being run into the ground and film options are dwindling, and then a bunch of silly, silly people take it personally and start bloviating about the foolishness of digital. This thread is a prime example.

On other forums it's the reverse.