Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#101

Post by vibrolax » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:21 AM UTC

rgovind wrote: post #54

vibrolax wrote: post #42

Rochester NY resident since 1982, Kodak's peak employment year. Wrote embedded software for Xerox for a couple years around 2000. My belief is that companies like Kodak, Xerox, HP, IBM, etc. have business structures that cannot survive in a low margin business. These companies drove and thrived with technological change for decades. The leadership could not accept the change of their key lines of business into low ma…

If that is true, I believe Google, MS wold have a similar problem but Amazon won''t

Google's cash cow product is knowledge of people's behaviors. Can equivalent product be built for much less, or be much easier to use? MS seems eager to build a similar business. Amazon store seems built to survive at a near zero margin. Maybe AWS as well.

I think Amazon's ultimate success is predicated on eventually developing a higher margin business.

It seems many previous businesses founded on the low cost producer strategy, e.g. Dell, uses it as a means to get scale, then emphasise higher margin products and services.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#102

Post by Finnucane » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:33 AM UTC

Laforet wrote: post #45

devb wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your aside, if you develop black and white at home, there are kits to develop C-41 and E-6 at home as well. They're as easy as any standard black and white process.

I've looked into these processes years ago but backed off because they seemed to require some really stringent temperature control. Is it no longer the case?

It is mostly the case. Some of the kits are designed to be more manageable at home--not requiring lab-level controls. But still a little fussier than b&w, no matter what. Personally, I haven't looked into too much, because I am color blind and have a hard time with the printing. I stick to b&w now mainly.

I just traded two Mamiyas for a Hasselblad 503. The Mamiyas are fine, but I have too many systems to feed now.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#103

Post by SerLava » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:44 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #20

rrrx3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never really put much thought into it, but you're totally right- the expectation was that a chemical company (essentially) would transform itself into a Hardware & software manufacturer. That's a might, mighty leap. That Fuji was actually able to do it is even more impressive. I worked for a company that did some work for Kodak - both directly and indirectly - around some of their software initiatives & partner…

Certainly Kodak did a lot of things wrong but there's a common meme straight out of Marketing Myopia [1] that, had they only thought of themselves as a photography company rather than a film company, all would have been well. This is basically nonsense. Even had Kodak been more aggressive about cannibalizing its film sales with digital, it's unclear how much of its expertise and competitive advantage would have carri…

Maybe they should have obliterated their brand and gone into other chemical research and manufacturing.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#104

Post by estrabd » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:51 AM UTC

I heard a similar story about Polaroid having their own digital camera. Not sure about the details.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#105

Post by shalmanese » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:51 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #20

rrrx3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never really put much thought into it, but you're totally right- the expectation was that a chemical company (essentially) would transform itself into a Hardware & software manufacturer. That's a might, mighty leap. That Fuji was actually able to do it is even more impressive. I worked for a company that did some work for Kodak - both directly and indirectly - around some of their software initiatives & partner…

Certainly Kodak did a lot of things wrong but there's a common meme straight out of Marketing Myopia [1] that, had they only thought of themselves as a photography company rather than a film company, all would have been well. This is basically nonsense. Even had Kodak been more aggressive about cannibalizing its film sales with digital, it's unclear how much of its expertise and competitive advantage would have carri…

I always wondered, if you're an executive with perfect foresight and your analysis shows that you could either cling to your legacy technology and make a billion dollars for 10 years and then zero dollars after that as the inevitable disruption happened or go all in on self-disruption and make 100 million dollars until the end of time, which would really be the better choice?

Given that disrupting yourself would have a 100 year payoff period, it seems far better to try and squash any attempts at change, both internally and externally until progress becomes inevitable. Look at the music industry for example, even a few extra years of CD dominance would exceed the profits of all digital music sales ever.

Of course, if you go this route, your incentive is to play clueless and out of touch since even giving credence to the disruptive idea hastens it's arrival. I'm sure there were a lot of executives who were genuinely clueless but this at least shows how otherwise intelligent executives would have a strong incentive to act clueless.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#106

Post by cpks » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:54 AM UTC

rando444 wrote: post #8

Digital cameras in the 70s and 80s were impractical, low quality devices that were mostly useless without a computer, which is not something that the majority of people had in their homes. Kodak did follow up with digital though. They had a digital SLR by 1994 (before Canon or Nikon) and digital cameras for $299 by 1996. The advantage that companies like Nikon and Canon had are their lenses, and the huge investments…

Minolta had rather astonishingly good lenses, actually. They had a number of oddballs, from an STF lens (great bokeh) to a tiny 500mm autofocus mirror lens (with very good image quality -- not the reputation mirror lenses have), and many others.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#107

Post by aaronbrethorst » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:59 AM UTC

devb wrote: post #38

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #6

There are quite a few articles online that go into some detail about it. Just search for "Kodak Clay Christensen", or something similar. Here's one: http://www.economist.com/node/21542796 Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it...” Bad luck played a role, too. Kodak thought that…

Regarding your aside, if you develop black and white at home, there are kits to develop C-41 and E-6 at home as well. They're as easy as any standard black and white process.

I use a community darkroom about a mile from my home: http://pcnw.org

They have three film sinks, including one specifically designed for tray-based large format black and white film processing.

They also have 18 enlargers, including a monstrous 8x10" enlarger: http://pcnw.org/facilities/black-and-white-darkroom/

I bought Tetenal's C-41 kit last night with the Portra, and plan on developing there, as they also have filtered water, film dryers, and Photo-flo :)

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#108

Post by thisjustinm » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 2:09 AM UTC

evan_ wrote: post #64

thisjustinm wrote: post #51

I worked for Kodak from 2002-2009 in their Windsor, CO plant, in the Thermal Media Manufacturing division and also wrote the occasional post for the corporate blog (thermal media == Dye sublimation printer media used in Kodak Picture Kiosks mainly). AMA. It was the same thing every year - digital is cannibalizing film faster than we thought, we need to close down X or lay off N people. A year or two of that sure but…

Haha, I worked for a photography studio during that time period and we used your printers. We had an 8660, which destroyed itself spectacularly and violently during an event, and an ML-500, which destroyed itself somewhat more slowly and had to have virtually every mechanical part replaced numerous times. When they worked they were great, but that never lasted very long. I spoke with Kodak support people quite a bit…

Oh man, you brought back some memories for me - I mainly referred to the printers by their internal codenames so thinking back through and connecting the model numbers to codenames really took me back.

There was a few years there where demand really outstripped supply. We were the only place in the world that made the media for Kodak at the time and I'd say 2002-2006ish the kiosks were really doing well and we just couldn't keep up (good or bad Kodak didn't seem able to predict the market for it's products). They added on and doubled our capacity somewhere around 2005 and then added on another manufacturing center in Rochester towards the end.

It's interesting to hear your experience with printer breakdowns - I always thought of them as real workhorse machines. But then again I was surrounded by dozens and dozens of each model (except the ML 500, we only had 4-5 of those) and there was a full staff of mechanics running around and a handful of them fixed the printers in addition to the other industrial machines / electronics around.

The 6800/6805 was my favorite - we used to take it out to local events and print off 1000s of free 4x6s for people (we'd take some digital cameras too and set up some sort of "scene" for people). Even running non-stop in the 90 degree sun I only had one overheat on me a couple times.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#109

Post by rplst8 » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 2:10 AM UTC

Syzygies wrote: post #27

My dad devised the "Bayer filter" used in digital cameras, in the 1970's in the Kodak Park Research Labs. It is hard to convey now exactly how remote and speculative the idea of a digital camera was then. The HP-35 calculator was the cutting edge, very expensive consumer electronics of the day; the idea of an iPhone was science fiction. Simply put, my dad was playing. This was the decade that the Hunt brothers were c…

Your dad is Bryce Bayer?

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#110

Post by rplst8 » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 2:16 AM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #20

rrrx3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had never really put much thought into it, but you're totally right- the expectation was that a chemical company (essentially) would transform itself into a Hardware & software manufacturer. That's a might, mighty leap. That Fuji was actually able to do it is even more impressive. I worked for a company that did some work for Kodak - both directly and indirectly - around some of their software initiatives & partner…

Certainly Kodak did a lot of things wrong but there's a common meme straight out of Marketing Myopia [1] that, had they only thought of themselves as a photography company rather than a film company, all would have been well. This is basically nonsense. Even had Kodak been more aggressive about cannibalizing its film sales with digital, it's unclear how much of its expertise and competitive advantage would have carri…

I'm not sure if you've looked into Fuji's digital camera offerings as of late, but their doing much better there IMO than Canon/Nikon. Fuji has been innovating in sensor tech with their X-Trans sensor and their X series mirror-less cameras are very very well liked. Not only are the bodies innovative control-wise, they've hearkened back to older manual dial style cameras that are really simple to use, but the lenses are of top-notch quality.