Saying Goodbye To Kodak

Saying goodbye to an old friend is never easy, saying goodbye to one that was apart of life for every photographer growing up is both sad and sobering for what it says about the future of photography.

But Why?

There have been many theories put forward about why Kodak now stands on the brink of filing bankruptcy. One of the more common explanations is that Kodak was slow to respond to the digital revolution, but that's not entirely accurate.

A Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson actually perfected a digital camera in 1975, decades ahead of the revolution. In 1991 Kodak partnered with Nikon to produce the first professional grade digital camera with a massive 1.3-megapixel resolution and just four years later Kodak introduced the DC40, their first point-and-shoot digital camera.

Even today the biggest and best digital imaging chips available are made under license from Kodak.

Instant Sharing

The real trend Kodak missed wasn't digital imaging, it was digital display. They got stuck in the mentality that people would use digital cameras to produce print photos, with digital merely replacing film as a more convenient mechanism of getting pictures to the photo lab.

Kodak should have gotten a clue when CVS customers were not actually returning their one-time-use digital cameras. Even though they had a tiny 1.4 in LCD screen, customers figured out how to hack the cameras to download images to their computers and were at other times oddly content simply to view the pictures on their tiny little LCD screens.

The convenience customers saw in digital wasn't merely a transitional type of film, it was a revolution in photo sharing and that's what Kodak missed.

Of Two Minds

Kodak sometimes seems like the Harvey Dent character in Batman movies, always of two minds about everything. The film mind and the digital mind, with the film side of the business apparently being the dominant half. Up to just a couple years ago Kodak was putting on seminars about shooting movies on film even as camera manufacturers quit making new film cameras and rental houses quit stocking them.

Between missing the boat on photo sharing and the internal split personality, Kodak was never able to fully adapt to the nimble digital marketplace.

This was another instance where bigger was not necessarily better. Had Kodak split up the company and spun off digital imaging as a separate company, the story might have a different ending. But, just like the heart attack victim who wished they would have quit smoking sooner or the diabetic wishes they would have changed their diet, it's too late now. The fat lady is warming up and the economic priests are here to give Kodak their last rites.

Before long photography will be saying goodbye to an old friend and that's very sad.