As we say Down Under, good on ya! mate for having contributed to this most excellent collection.
So many happy memories of past photographic times here.
Much of what I saw in the Kodak presentation reflected my time in photography in Australia from 1974. It was a sad day for me (and many others) when Kodak Australasia closed down, even if we had seen it coming as the analogue era at its best had passed and digital taken over. Sadly, Kodak could not compete in the digi-everything market altho' it did market a few quite good small P&S cameras - I have one somewhere at home and really should use it more as a snap-shooter on my bush walks, it fits nicely into a coat pocket and its Schneider lens produces good results.
In Melbourne from the mid-'80s, I shot 200+ rolls of Kodak slide films every year for stock image sales until I moved to digital in the mid-2000s. I often relied on Kodak Australasia's information services for help on technical issues with Kodachrome (my all-time favorite for slides) and later Ektachrome 64 and 100, all three very fine films in their day.
I often talked to Andrew Brown at Kodak in Coburg. Andrew left Kodak in the, if my memory serves me right, late '90s, a great loss. He was a gentleman, a gold mine of technical data and ever reliable with information or customer queries. A few years later I met him when he was briefly at Michael's in the Melbourne CBD and I wished him the best in his post-Kodak life. I hope he did well in his (early) retirement from Kodak.
The Kodak era was a wonderful time in photography, while it lasted. Now vanished in the mists of past photographic history.
As I see it digital is adequate for the 21st century, but it isn't the same as analog. For me Kodachrome and Ektachrome have never had their digital counterparts - the unique Kodak 'look' is not there, Fujichrome and (also in its time) Agfachrome were good films but for me, nothing has surpassed the brilliance of my old Kodakchrome slides.
