Digital BW, The Print

>Kodak, integrity? Give me a break. I delt with their tech reps for
>years about this issue of their Ektacolor paper fading. I saw
>classmates of mine in undergraduate school produce outstanding work
>that faded in no time. Kodak knew their dyes would shift badly.
>Eventually when Fuji had  came up with a better solution and rather
>than try to improve the stability of own their papers they just
>resented Fuji and badmouthed their research. That is why they are
>dying right now. George Eastmant would turn over in his grave. Their
>answer was to claim to us that their color technology was stable, it
>wasn't. Ask any portrait photographer from any decade. Kodak could
>have made a better product they just didn't care about longevity,
>never did. They had always owned the world. Well, they lost it.

A bit over the top John, but yes, Kodak has suffered from a problem of many 
successful corporations and that is complacency. They get big, bigger, 
biggest, and somewhere along the way they stop listening to their customers 
and set up committees to decide how THEY will run the universe.

I believe that the legal battles over chromegenic longetivity are still 
being fought with the film industry (holidaywood) . . . the amounts being 
sought there were in the billions.

I remember when Kodak introduced K25 and K64 (kodachromes) to replace 
Kodachrome II and Kodachrome X. They were greenish in colour and it upset 
virtually ALL of the commercial/professional shooters. Kodak's response? "We 
produce a professional line of films called Ektachrome . . . use them if you 
don't like it". Nothing like customer service? (the new ektachromes were 
just as bad . . . that is when pros started to look eastward to Europe and 
beyond . . . all the way to Japan).

Thirty plus years ago I had a great row with a Kodak tech rep over my (and 
thousands of others) dropping most of their B/W material and switching to 
Ilford . . . not a quantum leap better, but better and Ilford listened . . . 
and the product improved. Kodak was, and still is, a leviathan and could not 
be swayed.

Fuji, like so many other Japanese companies looked, listened, and then 
jumped in with a better and lower priced product. The Japanese are the world 
leaders at taking a "good" idea, improving it to the nth degree, and then 
re-introducing it at a lower price . . . just look at the American junk heap 
industry . . . oops, I mean automotive industry . . . it is years behind 
what the orient can do.

Kodak is in no real imminent danger of collapsing . . . Eastman is one of 
the largest chemical companies in the world, and Kodak division is still the 
largest supplier to many specialised industries . . . medical imaging, 
various hi-tech imaging areas, and the film industry to name a few . . . you 
guys, and me, on this list, represent probably less than one tenth of one 
tenth of one tenth of a percent of their market . . . so we don't really 
count . . . but like you John . . .

they really piss me off sometimes!

my $0.03 (inflation y'know)

Paul Aparycki