Kodak might be cooked

Cmaier

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$500M debt coming due, and Kodak warning it can’t pay it. Crazy how bad this company screwed up. Growing up, my dad taught me how to use his film SLRs and rangefinders and we always used kodak film. We even went to Rochester for vacation and toured the plant. Crazy that they invented the digital camera but did nothing with it. And they’ve recently begun to have some success with low cost digital cameras in a bunch of markets, but I guess it’s too little too late.

First Zenith, now Kodak. Wild.

 
$500M debt coming due, and Kodak warning it can’t pay it. Crazy how bad this company screwed up. Growing up, my dad taught me how to use his film SLRs and rangefinders and we always used kodak film. We even went to Rochester for vacation and toured the plant. Crazy that they invented the digital camera but did nothing with it. And they’ve recently begun to have some success with low cost digital cameras in a bunch of markets, but I guess it’s too little too late.

First Zenith, now Kodak. Wild.

It would definitely the end of an era in a market that they let others get ahead of them in. Paul Simon won't be happy about this.
 
Growing up, my dad taught me how to use his film SLRs and rangefinders and we always used kodak film.

We were typically contrarians, I think. Kodak was the meh of film, even with Paul Simon's "endorsement". We used Ilford (which we could develop ourselves) or Fujifilm. My dad was a slides fan, though I am not sure what brand of film he used.
 
It is sad. Kodak was involved in and pioneered so many aspects of consumer and commercial film-based photography/cinematography, developed early CCD imaging sensors, played a roll in space research (ex: cameras and film used in lunar exploration decades ago), and was involved in defense/aerospace related remote imaging projects.

When I worked in the defense field years ago, one of the most interesting and creative engineers we recruited was from Kodak back east.
 
We were typically contrarians, I think. Kodak was the meh of film, even with Paul Simon's "endorsement". We used Ilford (which we could develop ourselves) or Fujifilm. My dad was a slides fan, though I am not sure what brand of film he used.

fujifilm wasn’t a thing until i was older. Hell, when I first learned to use my dad’s cameras, pretty much the only way to get color film developed was to mail it back to kodak. Photomat was a big deal when they opened one a half hour from us.
 
Photomat was a big deal when they opened one a half hour from us.

The big deal for me was when Costco offered very inexpensive color (and B&W) printing at their in-store photo centers. Especially large 20"x30" color prints, from a professional Epson printer for $9.98, that came out perfect every time. B&W prints also came out spot-on. Easy to use, too. Download my image files to Costco from home, and then pick up my prints the next day.

Sadly, Costco closed their photo centers back in 2021.
 
We were typically contrarians, I think. Kodak was the meh of film, even with Paul Simon's "endorsement". We used Ilford (which we could develop ourselves) or Fujifilm. My dad was a slides fan, though I am not sure what brand of film he used.
Me too. I shot thousands of slides on Kodachrome and Ektachrome, which produced highly saturated shots. Later, I used Fujichrome as well. A few years ago I digitized a bunch of my slides. Unfortunately, many had accumulated dirt over the decades, despite being kept in closed containers. The grime was impossible to remove with a brush or compressed air, so I ended up deleting the spots digitally.

Of course, Kodak was also known for its Carousel line of projectors with their circular trays. They were widely used at scientific meetings, where you'd often see people carrying them to conference rooms. The slides were held in place by a plastic ring which, if inserted incorrectly, could pop off. I once saw this happen to someone right before a presentation – all their slides went flying. That taught me to number them carefully in case it happened to me. Ah, the good old pre-digital days!
 
Of course, Kodak was also known for its Carousel line of projectors with their circular trays.

My dad's slide projector used box magazines – it had to, because it was also built to display film strips (basically a roll of slide film that would be fed one still frame at time through the projector, like for a Keynote-type presentation or classroom instruction graphics.
 
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