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Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

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

#211

Post by paulmd »

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?

In general I'd say the C-41 kits are relatively simple for someone who's accustomed to B+W development. It comes down to being sure the chemicals are at the proper temperature and that agitation is even. There's much less tolerance for variation compared to B+W but it's still well within the reach of a diligent amateur who focuses on reproducibility and good lab skills.

The main requirement is a temperature-controlled hot-water bath for warming the chemicals, which are relatively easy to construct with some creative use of aquarium equipment. Buy yourself a digital thermometer from Amazon to verify your chemical temperatures (you should have one anyway for B+W development).

You may also want to consider a rotary development instead of hand agitation. If you can find a "roller base" unit, you can just place a standard developing tank on the rollers and it works fine. I love mine for B+W development too. Works like so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60rYmqkyfDg

E-6 is a little more complex than C-41 and I do not recommend the DIY kits in general. The DIY kits are a simplified 3-bath version of the full 6-bath process and has negative consequences for quality and long-term stability of the resulting slides. Since it's more difficult and the finished product is inferior I recommend just getting it commercially processed.

You can send it out at most supermarket photo centers, just mark "E-6 Process" on the "special instructions" box. It all gets sent to a processing company (often Fuji) and they know what to do with it. Nobody does in-house ("1-hour") processing anymore, sadly.

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

#212

Post by paulmd »

ekianjo wrote: post #178
ohazi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really true anymore. While large format film may still have a slight resolution advantage IF you have high resolution lenses to match, most high-end sensors have better dynamic range than film (~14-15 stops vs ~13 stops).

> While large format film may still have a slight resolution For 4x5 format it's not "slight resolution" advantage, it's a major resolution advantage. The most expensive sensors these days go in the range of 50~80 M pixels, 4x5 goes way beyond that if you want to use pixels to reproduce the kind of details it provides. That's why film is still used for stuff like very large posters.

The caveat here is that large format has rather shallow depth-of-field, and if you stop way down then diffraction limits your resolution. There is somewhat of a resolution advantage from moving to larger formats, but it's not as large as you'd think when comparing to an equivalent depth-of-field with a smaller format.

The counter-caveat is of course that large format is often shot using camera movements that allow the line of focus to be creatively placed to make the most of the smaller depth of field, so stopping down an equivalent amount is not always necessary.

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

#213

Post by sgt101 »

cpks wrote: post #106
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.

And Minolta is now Sony I think?

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

#214

Post by mathgeek »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #200
mathgeek wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xerox derives much of its income from contracts rather than selling printers directly. They rent you the printer and charge you per page printed. Source: worked tech support for better part of the 2000's and had to get Xerox printers on our networks often. Spent a lot of time updating settings when the contracts renewed and new printers were leased.

That sounds like something their customers want, whether you think they should or not.

That's essentially what I found in my time working with them. This was public sector so the idea of budgeting the hardware cost as a lease and paying per print really appealed to the administration.

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

#215

Post by grkvlt »

smcl wrote: post #160
bostik wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was another one: "made in Hong Kong". I remember seeing that in various things, ever since my father pointed it out. It was common enough to exist in daily lingo. Most of the time it was a synonym for cheap knock-offs.

I also remember seeing "Made in Macau" on the bottom of little toy cars I played with when I was a kid, as well as other cheap toys and things. Bit of a contrast to today where Macau is the Vegas of the east

Macau has been the Vegas of the East (or, the Monte Carlo of the East) for a long time - Portugal made gambling legal there in 1850 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_Macau

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

#216

Post by rplst8 »

Syzygies wrote: post #186
rplst8 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your dad is Bryce Bayer?

Yes

That is cool. While I think it's sad that Kodak and it's employees were displaced by digital imaging, I also think part of the role of technology is to bring a better life to all, through its use in medicine or by reducing the cost of "things." I think society owes a great amount to your father's work in this regard.

Any thoughts on Fuji's "re-interperetation" of the Bayer-filter in their work on X-Trans?

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

#217

Post by grkvlt »

dredmorbius wrote: post #161
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I remember 1985 is that "made in China" wasn't a phrase but "made in Japan" absolutely was, see forex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_%28film%29 and reckon that that didn't get made in a vacuum.

This probably isn't the most valid use of Google's Ngram viewer, but it looks as if "Made in Japan" started taking off about 1980, "Made in Taiwan" slightly earlier, but on a lower trajectory, and "Made in China" really in 1993. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=made+in+China%...

It is interesting though. I wonder why Japan peaked in 1991? Perhaps as simple as the start of the Chinese ascendancy in exports, and from then onwards 'Made in China' just gradually replaced 'Made in Japan' for the pejorative sense of the phrase, which is why it has now returned to pre-1980 levels, which would be a simple factual usage of the phrase?

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

#218

Post by WalterBright »

monocasa wrote: post #201
WalterBright wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the Digital Mars C/C++ compiler still supports DOS programming (I just can't seem to let that go!)

Can I write DOS code in D?

Sorry, no. D has a bit much overhead for the 16 bit world. C++ does, too, which is why to C++ for 16 bits has exception handling and RTTI removed.

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

#219

Post by mateo411 »

grkvlt wrote: post #217
dredmorbius wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This probably isn't the most valid use of Google's Ngram viewer, but it looks as if "Made in Japan" started taking off about 1980, "Made in Taiwan" slightly earlier, but on a lower trajectory, and "Made in China" really in 1993. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=made+in+China%...

It is interesting though. I wonder why Japan peaked in 1991? Perhaps as simple as the start of the Chinese ascendancy in exports, and from then onwards 'Made in China' just gradually replaced 'Made in Japan' for the pejorative sense of the phrase, which is why it has now returned to pre-1980 levels, which would be a simple factual usage of the phrase?

The Japanese economy went into a big recession in the early 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Decade_(Japan)
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