A 'toaster with a lens': The story behind the first handheld digital camera • Hacker News Board

Re: A 'toaster with a lens': The story behind the first handheld digital camera

#61

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

sgerenser wrote: post #22

GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #19

I'd encourage people to look at the history of Fujifilm (the Japanese peer to Kodak) to see why they didn't fail, but Kodak did. https://petapixel.com/why-kodak-died-and-fujifilm-thrived-a-... TL;DR: Fujifilm diversified quickly, Kodak clung to the film business for far too long.

That’s not an accurate summary of the article. The problem was that Kodak stuck to the photography business for too long. As the article states, in the early 2000s they were the number one seller of digital cameras. It just turns out making consumer digital cameras was a “crappy business” as their CEO went on to say. Fujifilm diversified into healthcare, cosmetics, and making LCD display films.

So Kodak clung to the design of one product, but Fujifilm diversified?

Yep, that's completely different from the post you replied to.

Re: A 'toaster with a lens': The story behind the first handheld digital camera

#62

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Dec 15, 2025, 9:38 PM UTC

user28712094 wrote: post #6

engineers were probably screaming about digital. middle management (who are the only ones irreplaceable by ai btw) probably called it a fad

Neat theory, but AFAIK just the opposite. At least, as a young optical engineer, I was bombarded with technical experts proclaiming with great assurance that "digital would never fully replace film photography", because "its resolution would never compare".

And yet, if you took a crayon and continued the line of maximum resolution achieved on a single chip... that line wasn't plateauing.

Somehow, everyone believed Moore's Law, but not as it applied to detectors (which are basically transistors, which is what Moore's Law discusses).

Re: A 'toaster with a lens': The story behind the first handheld digital camera

#63

Post by sgerenser » Tue, Dec 16, 2025, 2:40 AM UTC

IAmBroom wrote: post #61

sgerenser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an accurate summary of the article. The problem was that Kodak stuck to the photography business for too long. As the article states, in the early 2000s they were the number one seller of digital cameras. It just turns out making consumer digital cameras was a “crappy business” as their CEO went on to say. Fujifilm diversified into healthcare, cosmetics, and making LCD display films.

So Kodak clung to the design of one product, but Fujifilm diversified? Yep, that's completely different from the post you replied to.

It sounds like you’re being sarcastic, but yes, it is indeed completely different. The person I responded to said that Kodak clung to the film business too long, implying they did not embrace digital cameras. The reality is that despite embracing digital photography they still failed. The idea that they stuck with film too long is a common trope that the parent poster was repeating even though the article itself disagreed.