Posted on 12/22/2008 2:10:46 PM PST by vadum
In breaking news out of Minnesota, American icon Polariod is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
This is a tragedy and should not be allowed to happen! Polariod should be given a bailout! Polaroid is "too big to fail," just like the automakers. Polariod is an American icon, just like the automakers.
Wrong.
Polaroid is in trouble. Maybe it is because they failed to be on the cutting edge of technology and adapt to the age of digital photography. Maybe it is because they were mismanaged. Maybe competitors just made better products. I have no idea why Polaroid is in financial trouble, but I am glad to see that they are using legitimate financial mechanisms to deal with the problem.
Bankruptcy is unfortunate, but a necessary part of a market economy. If nothing fails, price signals are distorted to a point far beyond recognition. Preventing failure is what drives people to keep being innovative. When a company fails, it opens up opportunities for others.
While the automakers are doing nothing more than begging at the public coffers, Polariod is taking the necessary steps to restructure and again become financially viable. Will it work? Who knows. What we can be sure of is that Polaroid has a much better chance of turning things around than any of the Big Three automakers. The automakers only delay their inevitable failure. In the meantime, they will do serious damage to the US economy through their panhandling.
Polaroid has been in a coma for a decade.
Polaroid filed Chapter 11 on October 11, 2001, according to Wikipedia.
It was sad, no doubt about it. Polaroid was a private sandbox for one brilliant man. When he lost his edge, Polaroid went into decline. That’s about the size of it.
The name is still worth something.
How am I supposed to shake it like a Polaroid picture?
Polaroid was trying to sell off their patent but they wanted to get out of the business of film.
There are still people who use it, besides hobbyists. Among them are people who shoot medium and large format film. A polaroid “instant print” can let a photographer see that the manual settings are right. There are some multi-thousand dollar digital solutions to this that you can put on the back of the camera, but it isn’t the same.
Land....and wow did we give them all LOT”S of money for their hey day...and they had exclusive rights to instant photos. They soaked us good.
Video killed the radio star.
But I will miss the Polaroid black-and-whites, remember the ones? Where you had to guess the emulsion-time depending on the ambient air temperature?
Kodachrome is something else altogether and it too may have gone out of production (but the remaining inventory may remain awhile). There is a thread about it from this year.
Should I put it on Ebay, or hang on to it for sentimental value? Last time I brought it in for service (just the body, mind you), the technician tried to buy it off me on the spot.
Hmm. This must mean the New Agers found a way to take Kirlian photographs with a digital camera.
My Canon 20D is showing some age and I hope to be able to upgrade to a 40 or 50D soon. I grew up on Canon stuff and usually had great results with those products.
As far as Ebay goes, I would see if anything equivalent was out there and what it was doing. If it looks like it might do OK, I would consider a reserve price to keep from having to give it away.
Oh, make no mistake about that, I’m talking about $2K+ worth of equipment.
Digital photography and print-your-own-pictures-at-home killed the amateur porno industry.
A camera? That’s like a cell phone that you can’t use to talk to people with, right?
Polaroid needs to come up with new products.
I must say, whoever invented the “shoot once, adjust exposure, shoot twice” paradigm should be canonized.
So should the guy who invented pantyhose.
They sold 100 million hula hoops in 1958 and less than that in all other years combined.
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