"Film is gone" - Kodak

Etaoin Shurdlu wrote:
"rafe b" rafebATspeakeasy.net wrote in message


Jeez, you're just having a ball stirring up the flames,
eh, John? At least you could have brought some
marshmallows.


Marshmallows? Gosh, you are easily pleased. I was going to bring steaks.

I think we could have some fun with the "multipurpose camera" concept he
mentioned. Swiss-Army knife of cameras?



Kodak signed a big product development deal with Motorola recently.
Perhaps you could imagine what some future products might look like, and
how they might function.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

People buy what they think you think they will buy....

Kodak has been sending the wrong messages to its market. If they said:

"We expect the demand for film and to remain very strong, and the
accptance of digital to be limited, becaus eof the advantages of film"
then the market might think twice. If Kodak says "Film? Yeah, we sell
that crap. Are you sure you want to buy that?" then the market gets the
message...


Gordon Moat wrote:
Etaoin Shurdlu wrote:
"rafe b" rafebATspeakeasy.net wrote in message


Jeez, you're just having a ball stirring up the flames,
eh, John? At least you could have brought some
marshmallows.


Marshmallows? Gosh, you are easily pleased. I was going to bring steaks.

I think we could have some fun with the "multipurpose camera" concept he
mentioned. Swiss-Army knife of cameras?



Kodak signed a big product development deal with Motorola recently.
Perhaps you could imagine what some future products might look like, and
how they might function.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

Philip Homburg wrote:
In article . com,
Noons wrote:

wrote:

The first time I read that I thought it said "single-use cameras."
But on reading the Kodak PR blurb, I think they mean single-purpose
as in just-takes-still-pictures. They already make digicams
that can take movies, of course, but their future push appears
to be in the realm of data organization - indexing your pictures,
etc. Not to mention whether the camera should be better integrated
with your computer, PDA, etc. Who knows if this is of interest
to readers of this group, but it could legitimately be of interest
to Joe Consumer, who now has a bunch of digital photos
cluttering his hard drive and not much to help him organize
and retrieve them.

Very good points. I think google and M$ have file management
covered. Any attempt by camera makers to make digital cameras
"manage" images on their own is doomed to fail, quite frankly:
pcs are currently the ideal platform for file management, not
cameras...


I'd like to see how Kodak is going to compete with the camera-phones.
. . . . . .


Kodak recently signed a product development deal with Motorola. I think
Motorola are capable of making some interesting and popular phones.




100% in agreement. It's my gut feel about d-slrs: they all are
re-hashes
of good old flm slrs (f-slrs?!). Nothing fundamentally new, really.
Sincerely hope the concept gets re-invented with some
really new features otherwise p&s slrs will walk all over
them in another coupla years. Kodak already has some
very good, high rez, large sensor, high quality lens p&s
cameras. So does Sony, Fuji and Samsung.


Only Kodak and Dalsa are making large imaging chips for photography.
Fuji do still make a large chip for their 6x8 camera, but I don't know
of anywhere outside of Japan where this is sold. Kodak supplies chips
for PhaseOne and Imacon. Kodak also owns Leaf now, after their purchase
of Creo. Leaf uses Dalsa chips in their medium format backs.




How many electrically powered cars come with three wheels or five? Why copy
the same basic layout as a petrol powered car? Maybe six legs is even better.

Maybe the SLR concept is simply optimal for getting high quality photographic
results.


Ergonomics? Stability with longer lenses?



Of course, Kodak is focusing on the group of users who just want press a
button to get a snapshot. Nothing wrong with that, but the SLR concept is
not for that group of users.

P&S cameras are designed for a different market than DSLRs. Yes, a P&S may
compete with an entry level DSLR with just a kit lens. But if the DSLR user
goes beyond that, the P&S is left behind.


There are some quite nice P&S cameras now on the market. Of course, many
do not have viewfinders at all, so composition is done with the LCD.
Some do have an SLR-style, which attracts some people to them. Quite
often the SLR-style is just a body shape, since the viewfinder is just a
small video monitor. Regardless, these compact digital cameras far
outsell other types, like D-SLRs, or digital backs.




The ideal to me could be MF quality image processing thrown
in with the camera: a docking station or similar with a good
screen, mouse, dedicated keyboard and a good image editor
program. Now, THAT'd make me think about moving
to digital. And it'd keep me from having to upgrade my pc
every second year...


Well, if you have enough space for an extra keyboard and screen, why not
buy a separate PC just for image editing. As long as you keep the same camera
and you remain satisfied with the software you have, there is absolutely
no reason to upgrade the PC.

I sort of doubt that any company can offer dedicated hardware with an image
editor as good as Photoshop without the whole thing being much more expensive
than simply taking a PC with Photoshop. (If you just want low-end image
editing, there plenty of PCs designed for multimedia centers that can be
fitted with a simple image editor).




High end image editing software still exists, and you are right, it is
very expensive. The capabilities are quite good, but it would be more
than any amateur would ever need . . . better to just stick to PhotoShop.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

Etaoin Shurdlu wrote:
wrote:

[...] BTW, I don't think he said "Film is gone" anywhere
in this speech. I know, just a minor detail.

He said it in a NYT interview.

Thanks for posting the link in a timely fashion.

I found it, but it's in the NYT paid archive now.

Noons wrote:

Very good points. I think google and M$ have file management
covered. Any attempt by camera makers to make digital cameras
"manage" images on their own is doomed to fail, quite frankly:
pcs are currently the ideal platform for file management, not
cameras...

But at the same time, as you mention later, our PCs are
stuck in a two-year upgrade cycle. Also tied to whatever
shortcomings are imposed by OS makers. I agree that
I only want to manage images with a keyboard and mouse,
not by pressing little buttons on the back of my camera.
However, I could see that camera makers could improve
the situation for indexing, for example by improving the
metadata that is stored along with the image.

Here's a gee-whiz idea (for all I know this already exists):
Some people take notes as they take images. Imagine a
camera with a microphone that records your notes as an mp3.
(Then when you download it, speech recognition software
transcribes them, except that software is a pain in the ass,
but I digress.) The notes could be anything, from technical
details to "Aunt Shirley at Joey's first birthday."

On a less frivolous note, one thing he emphasized was that
consumers own their own pictures and they have to respect
that. I see this as a pre-emptive strike against excessive
digital rights management. Maybe I'm being naive, but I'd hope
Kodak and other imaging companies can resist the oppressive
DRM rhetoric that movie companies like and that Microsoft
sometimes seems to favor.

Cell phone companies are even worse. In the cell phone
companies' ideal world, you would pay them for a camera phone,
pay them to store the images on their server, and pay them every
time you wanted to look at an image. Their predatoriness
is one thing that will enable camera companies to compete
with GSM camera phones (purely aside from the whole quality
issue).

Of course: the video+image thing seems to be popular, although
I fail to see why. Dedicated hardware is much better at these things,
I reckon. However, he's talking futures: so things might change?

I know lots of people who take those 30-second videos of their
kids, say. A video camera is a much better tool for taking a 2-hour
video. But my friends know nobody will watch a 2-hour home video.

This however, I find very interesting:
""Today's digital cameras are dinosaurs, with the same basic
architecture and functionality as the box Brownie camera that Kodak
introduced more than one hundred years ago," said Perez. "It's a
lens,
shutter and something to capture the focused light. All the imaging
industry has done is to replace silver with silicon. In the next era,
we
will design digital cameras from the ground up to take full advantage
of
the creative power that digital technology provides."

100% in agreement. It's my gut feel about d-slrs: they all are
re-hashes
of good old flm slrs (f-slrs?!). Nothing fundamentally new, really.
Sincerely hope the concept gets re-invented with some
really new features otherwise p&s slrs will walk all over
them in another coupla years. Kodak already has some
very good, high rez, large sensor, high quality lens p&s
cameras. So does Sony, Fuji and Samsung.

The ideal to me could be MF quality image processing thrown
in with the camera: a docking station or similar with a good
screen, mouse, dedicated keyboard and a good image editor
program. Now, THAT'd make me think about moving
to digital. And it'd keep me from having to upgrade my pc
every second year...

In article ,
Gordon Moat wrote:

Etaoin Shurdlu wrote:
"rafe b" rafebATspeakeasy.net wrote in message


Jeez, you're just having a ball stirring up the flames,
eh, John? At least you could have brought some
marshmallows.


Marshmallows? Gosh, you are easily pleased. I was going to bring steaks.

I think we could have some fun with the "multipurpose camera" concept he
mentioned. Swiss-Army knife of cameras?



Kodak signed a big product development deal with Motorola recently.
Perhaps you could imagine what some future products might look like, and
how they might function.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

Yellow cell phone's with the Kodak emblem?

--
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

greg_____photo(dot)com

In article ,
Gordon Moat wrote:
Philip Homburg wrote:
I'd like to see how Kodak is going to compete with the camera-phones.
. . . . . .

Kodak recently signed a product development deal with Motorola. I think
Motorola are capable of making some interesting and popular phones.

In that case, the question becomes how Kodak is going to make money.
Is the profit margin on phones that high that Motorola can affort to
give Kodak a significant part of the profits.

Only Kodak and Dalsa are making large imaging chips for photography.
Fuji do still make a large chip for their 6x8 camera, but I don't know
of anywhere outside of Japan where this is sold. Kodak supplies chips
for PhaseOne and Imacon. Kodak also owns Leaf now, after their purchase
of Creo. Leaf uses Dalsa chips in their medium format backs.

So, if Kodak is serieus about the future of digital cameras, this should
leave the MF sensor market to Dalsa :-)


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

In article . com,
wrote:
But at the same time, as you mention later, our PCs are
stuck in a two-year upgrade cycle.

I don't know why your PCs are stuck in a two-year upgrade cycle, but
I have Celeron 766, with Win98SE, NikonScan 3.x, Photoshop 6, etc. that works
just fine.

Of course, nobody would be stupid enough to connect a Windows system that
is used for important work to the Internet.

Frivolous installs of random software is also a bad idea.

But apart from that, Windows does not degrade any faster than the PC
hardware itself.


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

G- Blank wrote:
In article ,
Gordon Moat wrote:


Etaoin Shurdlu wrote:

"rafe b" rafebATspeakeasy.net wrote in message



Jeez, you're just having a ball stirring up the flames,
eh, John? At least you could have brought some
marshmallows.


Marshmallows? Gosh, you are easily pleased. I was going to bring steaks.

I think we could have some fun with the "multipurpose camera" concept he
mentioned. Swiss-Army knife of cameras?



Kodak signed a big product development deal with Motorola recently.
Perhaps you could imagine what some future products might look like, and
how they might function.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com


Yellow cell phone's with the Kodak emblem?


Well, they changed their logo recently. To me, the new version seems
more like the Lucky Film packaging . . . maybe just a coincidence? ;-)

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com

In article ,
Gordon Moat wrote:


Well, they changed their logo recently. To me, the new version seems
more like the Lucky Film packaging . . . maybe just a coincidence? ;-)

Or a "Lucky" Happenstance ~:^0

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com



--
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

greg_____photo(dot)com