I'm not sad at all (except for the newly unemployed), though that may be because I never used Kodak film.

The Economist had an excellent article about this IIRC last week, contrasting Kodak and Fujifilm. The former was a leader in digital imaging technology, but is now bankrupt. The latter was able to creatively use its available assets to build new markets, shed redundancies and keep itself profitable. (amazing that Japanese company did it and an American one failed*). Fuji even kept a sector of the pro/enthusiast digital cama market for a while, and now has reentered the enthusiast market in force with the x100, etc.

Also, as Ken Rockwell's (as usual overstated, but in this case IMO basically correct) comment noted, most of the big US airlines have been through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, some several times. Chapter 11 essentially allows management to weasel out of its obligations, in exchange for admitting to the world that they really really failed. They'll hopefully be smart enough to do something useful to do with Kodak's existing buisness lines. in particular, I'm interested to see what will come out of its (now sold) digital sensor business.

Also, film isn't dead, but as mentioned above, its use is now exclusively artistic as far as I've seen. I went to the British National Portrait Photography competition (displayed at London's National Portrait Gallery) in 2010, and the majority of the exhibited photos were clearly done on film - and of the ten winners (where camera, capture method, etc were listed) 8 of 10 were done on medium or large format film, the rest being digital. Personally, for my favorite kind of photography, landscapes, the aesthetic qualities of properly used Fuji Velvia are unmatched for most kinds of landscapes, even with heavy digital post processing. I've dabbled with film, but I'm not good enough yet that I can get by without the digital margin of error. (this is actually another area IMO the film companies could make money in: making software that could accurately and adjustably mimic the tone of their great films when applied to a raw file. DXO and Nik have tried, but I don't think their efforts are even in the right soloar system).

Marc


*I don't mean to knock on the Japanese - I'm an Asian-american nipponophile. But the corporate sector is notorious for undynamic zombie companies. By the way, referencing that Economist article, Thom Hogan rightly wonders if what happened to Kodak could happen to Nikon. I agree with him htat it could in the next 3-4 years, and that if it did Nikon might struggle to respond.

Cheers,

Marc

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"90% of my best life's work could have been made with a manual body, a 24mm lens, and a telephoto zoom in the 80-200 range"
- Galen Rowell
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