According to Merced in “Eastman Kodak Files for Bankruptcy”, Kodak, the first manufacture of photographic films and paper, has faced the financial problem so severely that it has declared the bankruptcy for a few weeks ago. The company has claimed its state of being bankrupt has resulted from the changing trend of technology, especially the onset of the digital photo. Consequently, since 2004, the company has reported only one year of profit and has been running into the shortage of cash. Kodak has tired to resolve the crisis by using several strategies: asking financial support from Citygroup, which helps operate the company during bankruptcy; downsizing its organization, which reduces spending; seeking to sell its digital image patents. Unfortunately, these efforts shave not yet borne fruits; therefore, on Tuesday two weeks ago, Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection.
Nothing can exist everlasting. No matter how popular it is, one day in the future, that trend must turn old-fashioned. If someone has predicted that Kodak would be in debt crisis fifteen years ago, he would have been viewed as a crazy man. In my hometown at that time, most families liked to possess at least one film camera to talk beautiful photos in ceremonies, such a marriage ceremony, a graduation ceremony, or even a cremation ceremony. Undoubtedly, each event required dozens of films. And taking a family portrait was a fad among my mother’s gang. They would bring their family member, wearing dresses as formal as possible, to a photography parlor and hire a skillful photographer to talk a family image. After waiting for a week, a very big film photo would be filled in an expensive frame and brought back to hang on a wall of their houses at which guests most easily look. My mother’s gang liked to show how warm and successful their families are, so a roll of film was considered a necessary thing in their live. As I have said, no one at that time thought the demand of films would reduce so quickly that the manufacture now becomes broke.
Of course, in the future, digital pictures will be replaced. What will be a newcomer in the photography society? Is it possible that people will talk a picture by their eyes and collect it in their brain instead of a photo album or facebook?
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References
De La Merced, M. (2012, January 19). Eastman Kodak Files for Bankruptcy. The New York Times. Retrieved February 3,2012 from http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/eastman-kodak-files-for-bankruptcy/?scp=2&sq=Kodak&st=cse
Aah ... film. I remember that. We used it once upon a time in cameras, and then it suddenly went.
ReplyDeleteLike Plan, I was amazed at how quickly the change occurred. Film was the only real option until perhaps 1999 - 2000 (I'm trying to remember when I bought my first digital camera, which was really crappy), but over about a 10 year period, or even less, really, perhaps just a five year period, film suddenly disappeared.
I've since scanned my thousand or so roles of film into digital versions. I'm kind of hoping either that Plan's prediction for the similar demise of film doesn't happen, or at least that I'll be able to move everything to the new format with a single mouse click. Or whatever replaces mouse clicks next week.
My younger nephews and nieces have probably never seen a role of film. They don't know what video tapes were either. Remember those? They were all the rage an age ago, back in the last century.
Plan,
ReplyDeleteYour blog reminds me of my youth. I loved taking photos, so I bought Kodak films numerously. There were two options, kodak and fuji. I always used kodak products. When digital cameras started to sweep the world, I didn't buy it. However, oneday when I asked the film d&p, suddenly the stores didn't carry films anymore.
I felt sorry, coming out of the stores and today I feel same sorry for kodak.
Still, I like printed photos better than those in the screens.
Peter, you asked us "Remember those?"
Of course, I do. My best treasure is the manual camera.
Sunny,
ReplyDeleteI print very few of the photos I take these days, but those few are the ones I really like, and look at. Actually, I didn't print large copies of most of the film photos I used to take, but it was a higher percentage than today.
I never look at most of the photos on my computer. They're just there, and generally pretty awful. But because it costs nothing, I take a lot more photographs than I used to, and probably a lot less carefully. Film cost money to buy and process, and I'm sure that made me a lot more careful than I am today when it costs nothing to take a hundred photos.
I keep thinking I should ruthlessly delete the garbage, but I never get around to it. And it's no problem - electronic storage is getting easier and cheaper every day.
Am I acquiring bad habits?
Or just indulging an underlying tendency?