Fuji Photo Q2 profit down, eyes more restructuring

[bmattock]

For what it's worth, a Kodak rep spoke at the LHSA annual meeting in San Francisco last weekend. He expressed frustration that a lot of people were constantly trumpeting that "film is dead" (e.g. on the Internet). He said it distorts the picture, adding that it is very difficult for Kodak to get any alternate message out there.

He emphasized that Kodak plans to stay in the film business. Film will still be a significant part of the imaging business, and Kodak would be foolish *not* to be a part of it. They are indeed restructuring and reducing capacity to match what the they believe the market will eventually be. This means closing some facilities, reducing the number of films available, and the number of package variations (such as eliminating different names for the same film in different countries). All this may make it look like there is a headlong rush to eliminate film entirely, but he insisted that this is not what's actually happening.

A gentleman I was sitting with kept muttering an eight-letter word referencing bovine end-product. *He* predicted that Kodak would be out of the film business in two years.

We were also treated to some unconvincing reading of corporate boilerplate accompanying that bane of modern existence, the Powerpoint presentation (Link: Powerpoint is Evil! ). And he showed us Kodak's new marketing campaign, called, I believe "Gallery." Basically it has lots of cute kids marching through a virtual art gallery where all manner of images can be seen--everything from art and journalistic photos to your family snapshots. It says, in a warm-fuzzy way, that Kodak has meant images for the last century, and it will mean images in the next. Interestingly, most of the images shown were film images.

It's hard to know what to make of the talk. On one hand, some of the figures presented and corporate organization displayed were convincing. On the other hand, some of the later boilerplate and the video made me feel we were being "handled."

Where's the truth? Beats me. All I know is that if they take away my Tri-X, I'm going to be *very* pissed. I shot Neopan 400 this weekend, figuring I ought to know it better just in case. I guess the next step is to learn how to order film in Polish and Ukrainian. 🙂

--Peter

Peter,

Like you, I am left not knowing what is BS and what is not. As you said, it seemed you were being 'handled'. I hate to be so negative, really I do. But when Kodak (or anyone) says that WE are the ones (or ME) causing the problem by insisting that film is dead when it is not, that's just silly. Kodak is a bit bigger than a couple hundred guys on the 'net saying that film is dead. It almost sounds like a 'buying time' or 'stalling' tactic. But heck, he could be telling the truth, who knows.

With confusion as the result, it makes one wonder if that is not what was intended.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[bmattock]

Hi Bill,

As everyone knows, it's much more than the pure MP count that make a good enlargement. I've found that some 2MP cameras are crap, and some give surprising results. I'm sorry to hear that your 6.2MP camera is just "OK". My Olympus E-10 (4.1MP I believe) produces great 8x10s. I know you know this, but the photo printer has a lot to do with the results the larger you go. For 4x6, just about anything will do. I'm not getting caught up in high MP count just yet. It's like a medium size car. Can company "A" give you good performance with 175 horesepower? Yes. Do you get that much better results with 275HP? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But at 65-75 MPH, will we even see a difference?

George,

Perhaps I didn't speak clearly, so let me try again. I love my DSLR, and the 8x10's it makes are quite acceptable. My point was that it is NOT a 1-for-1 replacement for a single scanned frame of 35mm film. I can crop quite deeply into a typical well-exposed, well-scanned negative and still make a decent 8x10 - with my DSLR, I don't have that luxury - I have to frame my shots more accurately, because I don't have as much room to play with and still hope to get a decent 8x10 enlargement.

I don't have a printer and don't intend to buy one. I send my photos (scanned negs and digital from my DSLR) to Walmart or Kodak or such and have them printed at whatever size I want. So it's the typical photo paper found in such places, and the comparison would be 1-to-1 - I send 'em both to the same place and treat them both the same.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[George S.]

As to the speech the Kodak rep gave... It's for certain that even he doesn't know what the future path of Kodak will be, so I'd take what he said with A BIG grain of salt. Heck, the CEO of Kodak probably doesn't even know down what path he should take Kodak more than 6 months from now. Things are changing that fast.
(I'm speaking from what I've seen in the U.S. only)

And to blame word of mouth for the rapidly diminishing film demand is absurd. If any of you have stepped into a camera store in say- the past two years- and listened to a newbie asking for info at the counter, you would have heard him given ONLY digital choices by the salesmen. There have been no film options for "the masses" in about 2 years. I know a filmless option sounds strange to us, and you may doubt me, but as I keep reminding everyone, we here on RFF are not representative of the camera buying public at large, IMO we are film connoisseurs, not everyday photo amateurs. (And probably on average, a great deal older than the youngins that have grown up not ever handling a film camera.)

 

[peter_n]

Actually Czech & Croatian Peter 😉. Neopan 400 is a wonderful film and if you're prepared to bulk load, you can get it for $1.60/roll if you buy the 100 ft. rolls from Megaperls in Japan. Neopan 400 is labeled Presto in Japan. No connection, etc... 🙂

 

[bmattock]

Actually Czech & Croatian Peter 😉. Neopan 400 is a wonderful film and if you're prepared to bulk load, you can get it for $1.60/roll if you buy the 100 ft. rolls from Megaperls in Japan. Neopan 400 is labeled Presto in Japan. No connection, etc... 🙂

Agfa - Germany (soon RIP)
Foma - Czech Republic
Efke/Adox - Croatia
Forte - Hungary
Macophot - Germany ?
Tura - Germany
Lucky - China
Era - China
Svema - Ukraine
Ilford - England
Mitsubishi - Japan
Konica Minolta - Japan
Ferrania - Italy & USA
Kodak - USA
Tasma - Russia
Fujifilm - Japan
Polaroid - USA
Bergger - France (maybe)

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[peter_n]

Actually I was thinking just of Efke & Fomapan (the only 2 I've tried) but that's a great list Bill. Should stop all the doomsdayers doomsdaying! 😉 Looking at it maybe Konica Minolta should come off?

 

[Pherdinand]

The problem is not if digital in average is better than film in average; this would never be a reason for film to go away. Or not soon, anyway.
The problem is, in a place like a small town in Romania e.g. [i speak from recent experience] the results you get from the film developed and printed commercially is expensive and bad quality. Much worse than the stuff you might see on your monitor having a digital camera. Many people who even think about photographing something have a personal or work computer, that is not really a problem anymore; and the exclusion of the lab is a great motivation for them, no additional expenses, no worry about what you get back. I suppose the exact same thing is happening on a much larger scale in mainland China, India, SE Asia, where in fact the real future market lies IMO.

In the same time, when a friend of mine living in that small town wanted to print some of his digital images about his 1 y old daughter, there was no satisfactory and consistent quality not even when he sent it to Bucharest. Either the cropping was completely random, or the colours were totally off, or other tricks. So he gave it up already, and told his mother in law to buy a computer if she wants to see images of her granddaughter growing up. Or visit more often, LOL.