Posted on 01/13/2004 7:39:37 PM PST by HAL9000
Eastman Kodak said Tuesday it will stop selling traditional film cameras in the United States, Canada and Western Europe, another move by the photography company to cut lines with declining appeal in favor of fast-growing digital products.With sales of digital cameras poised to overtake film cameras for the first time this year, Kodak is redefining itself in an effort to keep pace. But the No. 1 maker of photographic film will continue to sell one-time use cameras in the West and expand its sales of these and other film-based cameras--and film--in emerging markets where demand is on the rise.
Shares of Kodak eked out narrow gains Tuesday after the announcement, and was one of the few blue chip stocks to close higher on the New York Stock Exchange.
The move comes amid Kodak's controversial plan to focus on high-growth digital products, such as medical imaging systems and production printing, and reduce dependence on its declining film business. Late in 2003, Kodak said it would stop making slide projectors, but still manufactures color slide films.
"Every one of these steps indicates more and more the strength of Kodak's conviction of moving toward digital," said analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research. "However, the jury is out on whether (the digital strategy) will work."
Blaming declining demand, the Rochester, N.Y.-based company said it would by the end of this year quit making reloadable cameras that use 35-millimeter film, including those in the Advanced Photo System (APS) format.
In 1996, when it was unveiled, Advantix was hailed by Kodak as the "most important photographic announcement since Instamatic cartridge-loading cameras were introduced in 1963."
Kodak will still make film for existing Advantix and other cameras, and intends to introduce new high-performance 35mm and APS films next month.
Camera makers typically make little profit--or lose money--on hardware, but enjoy strong margins from sales of supplies such as film and paper, which must be replaced frequently.
Kodak said that it plans to continue making reloadable cameras that use 35mm film for emerging markets, such as China, India, Eastern Europe and Latin America and that it will introduce six new cameras in those markets this year.
"(We) estimate that there are 60 million Chinese consumers who have the purchasing power to participate in photography, but have not bought their first camera," Kodak spokesman Charles Smith said.
Under Kodak's new strategy, unveiled in September, it will shift its investments into digital markets with greater growth potential than the waning film market. But film still provides ample revenue for Kodak--more than 120 million rolls of film are sold each year industry-wide.
According to estimates by InfoTrends Research Group, global film camera shipments in 2004 will shrink to 36 million units from 48 million in 2003, while digital camera shipments will rise to 53 million from 41 million units.
Other companies that helped develop APS--Canon, Fuji Photo, Minolta and Nikon-- will continue to make APS cameras.
"The consumer who has APS likes it a lot, but the growth potential is probably tapped out from Kodak's standpoint,'' said Gary Pageau, spokesman of the Photo Marketing Association, an industry organization.
1 megapixel doesn't cut it. Eight years ago I had one and hated it. The effective storage size of an image varies with the complexity of the picture. Lots of colors, complicated shading and other nuances, and that 1 megapixel image won't look so stunning. A simple image might. I regularly take my 2 megapixel images, run them thru Adobe Photoshop, and create compressed images for web posting or emailing to other people. These images can start out as 60 or 70MB (megabytes) at 1600x1200 dpi, and after compression I have a 50 to 120KB (kilobytes) image at 1200x900 dpi and they look superb on a computer screen.
But try to print them fully enlarged on a 8-1/2x11 piece of photo paper. The lack of quality as compared to 35mm, sucks. If all you want is to look at them on a screen, then fine. Sooner or later you'll want to print them for display in a book, on the wall, in a Christmas card, or to manipulate via software into new images. Probably sooner. Go to 5 megapixel or better and you won't be sorry later.
What resolution can you get with Kodachrome 25?
I have a 42" wide HP Designejet 800 PS. It can make awesome posters if my original is very good.
That would be enough for a grayscale representation.
Multiply by 3 for RGB.
Then divide by 1,048,576.
Then there's *this*:
I doubt if it'll ever make a dent in the digital photo market. It's not high-resolution enough to attract serious photographers and the price is much too high. I see that the latest version has a portion that mounts under the camera body like a motor drive; earlier versions had no LCD display.
It will be a sad day 30 years from now when all of these discs and chips have been lost or fried by the elements and someone wants to remember a small piece of time.
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