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George Eastman House via Reuters
George Eastman, left, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, is shown with fellow inventor Thomas Edison. The 130-year-old photographic film pioneer, which had tried to restructure to become a seller of consumer products like cameras, has filed for bankruptcy.
The news that Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday saddened many, including (and maybe especially) the photographers who relied on the company's products for more than a century to record images both mundane and historic.
Almost anyone who shot a photo prior to the advent of digital photography has used Kodak film.
Gary Cameron / Reuters
Eastman Kodak black and white film, negatives, film development reels and black and white photographic prints.
Professional photographers relied on the brand from the early 1900s until the 1980s, when the company that invented the hand-held camera and rollup film began to lose market share to foreign producers. Cameras, lenses, film, photographic paper and other artifacts -- cherished by photographers and collectors -- remain as reminders of the company's contribution to the art of taking pictures.
Mick Cochran
An old Kodak film canister, photographed on Jan. 19.
Mick Cochran, former director of photography for USA Today, spoke with msnbc.com about stumbling across his own Kodak keepsakes.
Rummaging through a canvas bag inside his Rhode Island home, Cochran found an old film canister from the 1950s.
“Oh wow," he said admiring the well-worn item. "Look at that, you see the texture? The Kodak just pops. It’s the coolest thing.”
Photographers admittedly get a bit wistful when looking back at shooting and processing film, even though they enjoy the ease of digital photography, which Kodak invented but ironically never exploited.
"Anytime you could find someone to process your film, you would do it. Nobody wanted to be in the darkroom with all those chemicals. It was a rite of passage, it was messy," Cochran said.
"It was such an arduous thing we did. Digital came around and it was so much better and faster," he said.
Gary Cameron / Reuters
A collection of Eastman Kodak products.
Gary Cameron / Reuters
An Eastman Kodak Carousel slide projector, with 35mm color slide and film cannisters.
Cochran said that even though many people criticize Kodak for failing to keep up with the explosion in digital photography, he recalled that the Rochester, N.Y.-based company sent a team to Florida to interview photographers for what was the first digital photography workshop.
“It was fascinating,” he said, adding it was clear Kodak was trying to figure out what it was going to do with the new technology and how it was going to grow the business.
"That big yellow K has always been a good thing, a quality product. You can’t deny their support of the photo business," Cochran said.
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I look forward to visiting the museum one day that should house every stage of the photographic era. What a remarkable man Mr. Eastman was for our nation. We owe everything to Thomas Alva Edison in helping to spread information globally.
Two icons in American history.
No more Kodak moments, but plenty of Kodak memories.
Your refference to Thomas Alva Edison, is off base, a bit. Edison got the credit, but, Nikola Tesla was the brains behind the whole thing. Don't get me wrong, Edison had some ideas, but didn't know how to present them. Edison had the name recognition with the right money people and Tesla had the wrong kind of name from the wrong part of the world.
I have rediscovered photography in the past two years. I have bought an expensive Canon camera, lots of accessories, and lots of SD cards. I take my camera all over the world and when i get back I open up my MacBook Pro and organize my photos into Photo books using Apple's Aperture which I then print out and give as gifts to the people that came with me. In the past two years I have made 14 books, each costing over $100 to print. Add to that the thousands of photos from earlier in my life that I have scanned and now digitally stored. I have probably spent over $6,000 on my hobby in the past two years. None of that money went to Kodak. That's incompetence on Kodak's part.
or yours
They can't even use their own film to document their final days
I bought a Kodak Model 5000 scanner some three years ago and was impressed at the printing quality and even more so at the low price of the ink cartridges. That purchase was shortly followed by another for a Model 5200, which has built-in wireless linkup. Not too terribly long afterward, however when my first ink cartridge went "dry"....that is to say, not really dry-dry, but the "enabling usage-timer chip" said to the printer it was "dry"...I suddently could not print one more copy until I put in a new cartridge. There was no way to over-ride, no way to accept that maybe the print quality would suffer but at least I would have MY print using MY printer and MY ink cartridges. Little did I know at time of purchase, that I was not PURCHASING my printer, but basically LEASING it. You see, the chip not only keeps count of the amount of copies made, but also keeps a time-since-opened count, and somehow adds the two in a linear sum to tell the printer when to shut down. In fact, I swapped chips between a new cartridge and an old one, and the new cartridge was locked but the old cartridge worked again...JUST FINE, too, I might add. Now I don't know whether what Kodak is doing...actively denying me FAIR USE of MY printer and MY ink ...is legal or not, but even if it weren't, it would take the filing of a class-action suit to force Kodak to allow an over-ride of the shutdown-chip. Kodak was counting on it being the case that nobody would take the trouble to do that, and, now that they are in bankruptcy, they have "won" that bet since now it is all but impossible, based on the old principle of it being difficult to extract hemoglobin from turnips.
Kodak being the lying, cheating SWINDLERS that they are, I'm glad to see them in the dumper now and may all their exectutives, engineers, and stockholders rot in hell.
I bought 2 rolls of Tri-X today... Kodak took my Kodachrome away not long ago, but I hope Kodak doesn't go away, they still make some of the best film and paper to this day.
Yay Tri-X !!!
Here's a company that played a huge role in the security of our country during the Cold War and U2 missions. It really is a shame to have come to this.
Government to the rescue-no matter what. We need Kodak !
We need Kodak like we need a hole in the head. What has Kodak done for me lately, except to SWINDLE me on my printer with its software that DELIBERATELY does not allow ME to use MY printer and MY ink cartridge...MY PROPERTY!!!...as I see fit. Piss on Kodak's shareholders and all of its employees down to the janitor, and may those liars, cheaters and swindlers rot in hell!
Mr Angry Rabid Toad ought to get over himself, gee all that venom over an ink cartridge, I have news for you most inkjet printers do the same thing. I love Kodak film Tri X and especially the now defunct Kodachrome, its a sad day to see Kodak in so much trouble, hopefully other businesses will take this as a case study on how not to run a business, so much middle management protecting their own interests and to hell with the rest of the company. When there are the inevitable cuts its the workers to go first, and the management who make all the wrong decisions remain. Its the fat complacent middle management that slow the vital decision making process who eventually run companies into the ground.
Noted, Tim, and you are entirely correct in your observation of how self-serving management, at the expense of the shareholders (not to mention the public and the lower-ranking employees) will often send a once fine and grand company into a death-spiral. I saw the same thing happen at Motorola. There were no unions at Motorola, and all of its problems were entirely of management's making. You know, throw enough martinis in with the free lunch, and just about anyone will make you an unsecured multibillion dollar loan of the stockholders' money for cellular infrastructure equipment in some foreign $hithole.
Kodak has failed to illustrate how great their products were compared to this digital stuff.
I'm not saying digital looks bad, but there's nothing that compared to kodacrhome and there's nothing that touches bw film stock.
Don't think much of film? Go out and buy a roll of 3200 speed black and white and take some low light photos. You'll wise up.
Yep, they failed to do it because they were too busy SWINDLING me on my printer.
Kodak... thanks for being there when we really needed you. Our whole way of life might be different today if you hadn't been.
"Anytime you could find someone to process your film, you would do it. Nobody wanted to be in the darkroom with all those chemicals. It was a right of passage, it was messy," Cochran said.
I couldn't disagree more. This same "photographer" probably also thought that working in a darkroom was "messy". Most photographers (including me ) would never process their own color film, mainly because it was too expensive & generally was always done by machine, even many years ago so he is probably talking about black & white film. If you cared about what your work looked like, you would always develop your own black & white film, because you could control the density, highlights, contrast, etc. The same for working in your own darkroom which I did for 30+ years. Think of the Zone System by Ansel Adams. Do you think Ansel sent his film to a lab to be processed?
This has always been the difference between studio photographers, like myself. Generally we are methodical, patient & quality comes first. Photojournalists put speed & deadlines above any other criteria.
For decades Kodak put on a FREE Hawaiian Hula show on the beach at Waikiki that thousands, if not millions of tourist and locals enjoyed. Mahalo
Sorry Toad but Kodak is a late bloomer when it comes to ripping off the consumer with ink cartridge purchases. They all do it and Kodak isn't even the worst, I believe that distinction goes to Epson. HP is the only one I know of that will allow you to print until the cartridge runs dry. Of course allowing the cartridge to actually attempt to print while out of ink destroys the print head but HP replaces the print head each time you buy a new cartridge so no problem as long as you are not purchasing recycled cartridges. Kodak, like other manufacturers, has a permanent print head so as to keep the cost of their cartridges lower but must be proactive about ink levels due to that. Of course keeping at least a 36% volume of ink is still waste in my opinion. But ink jet printers have never been the source of profits to any of these companies, it is the sale of cartridges they depend on. That said I add that I am really sorry to see the death of the film industry indicated by Kodak's problems. We are not mourning for the death of Kodak, we mourn the death of an art form. I spent many an hour developing and printing my own (B&W) film as a very enjoyable hobby. I haven't done it in years and now the opportunity appears to have passed by.
I don't really care whether or not Kodak is not the only one to do a hard shut-down of the printer when the cartridge tells it to. All Kodak (or others) need to do, all they ought to do, in that regard, is pause and give a strong warning. But IT IS WRONG that they do not leave the control of the owner's equipment, in the hands of the owner. The only juastification for an absolute software-imposed lockout would be a safety issue (fire, shock, explosion, release of hazardous chemical) and there is none. So they're all wrong, all who do this.
Thank you Kodak and the people of Rochester.