Anyway, here's the first draft of my intended letter. I'm going to give it a while and look at it again later today - don't think it would be appropriate to send them multiple mails with "oh just one more thing I thought of..."
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Thank you for opening up a dialogue with your (very loyal) customers.
I'm a relatively recent convert to Kodak color film from a background working with digital imaging, and a hobby user of digital cameras. Discovering Portra about five years ago has transformed my photography, given me immense pleasure in both the process of capturing the original image (using a variety of medium-format and 35mm cameras) and in the incomparable superiority in tones and color of the final scanned digital file. I'm extremely grateful that your company continues to produce such an amazing film, and I try at all times to show my continued support by doing the only effective thing that a customer can actually do to help maintain manufacture of a much-loved product: buy and use it as much as I can.
Having said that, I'm hoping that steps are being taken to ensure the long-term life of Kodak color film which can make its survival independent of the relatively short-term moving picture contracts, and which can produce at a scale that's appropriate for a prosumer still film market, even if the inevitable downscaling is temporarily painful.
On the constructive side, I think that Kodak needs to be more proactive in promoting film: I first began working in digital imaging about 15 years ago, and for the next decade there was very little discussion about film online which didn't center around the 'certainty' that film production would imminently cease over the next few months or (at most) one or two years. I was only moderately interested in trying film at the time, but if I had any doubts then the constant reiteration that film was dead convinced me not to even give it a try.
I'm dreadfully sorry about those ten+ years of lost film use, but I'm even more concerned that the armchair experts and doomsayers are even more prevalent now, and the constant predictions of film's death continue to erode your market and discourage newcomers.
You therefore have to stop the hemorrhaging, and promote and support film use online and in magazines in ways that are appropriate for your new target market of prosumers and dedicated enthusiasts: showcases of aspirational fine-art photographers; Magnum photographers still using Kodak film; radical and especially young users of film. These all exist and promoting them will help to grow your market.
From my own point-of-view, one more item is essential to the continued health of film use in the 'digital age', and that's the availability of quality prosumer scanners. An incredible number of film users (myself included) couldn't consider the format without the ability to transfer a high-quality copy of a film negative into a digital file for post-processing and printing (and sharing). I have a Nikon Coolscan9000 to do this, but the lifetime of the product is naturally limited, and the alternatives today are limited to one single Plustek machine. If Kodak seriously wants to maintain their place in the mixed analog/digital workflow that may already form the majority of today's color-film use, then either partnering with a high-quality scanner manufacturer (such as Imacon) or producing your own prosumer scanners will be necessary (in my view) sometime in the not so distant future.
Thanks again for producing the very best imaging products the world has ever seen. I sincerely hope I can write to you again in twenty years and say the same!
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