[Leica] Kodak retreats

[sethrosner at nycap.rr.com (Seth Rosner)]

Doug, I believe that Kodak had announced in January that it was trimming
15,000 jobs world-wide; this announcement added 10,00 job cuts to total
25,000.

Last year I invited Kodak to send a representative to speak at the LHSA
annual meeting on Kodak, digital and film. She did and assure us that Kodak
was not abandoning silver halide but was rationalizing its production to
eliminate film that was insufficiently used to be commercially viable for
them. They may have changed policy since then but she was asked specifically
if Kodak was going to eliminate TRI-X or Kodachrome; the answer as to TRI-X
was no, as to K-chrome was they had already eliminated K25 but were
continuing to produce and suppot 64 and 200.

I suggest all doom-and-gloomers go to the Kodak website and click on
"Pro-photographer/Lab" to see the film emulsions they produce, including
some new emulsions. K64 and K200, six different Professional Ektachrome
emulsions, two brand-new Ultra Professional color print films with high
color saturation.

In b+w Kodak continues Tri-X, three T-MAX emulsions: 100, 400 and 3200,
Plus-X 125, High-speed infra-red and BW400 CN, the b+w chromogenic film.

All are professional films, therefore fresh and dated and they have on the 
website a service where you input your location and they will give you the 
location of a dealer for the product you want.

Instead of lamenting the demise of Kodak film, I would think we who use and 
love their films would make an effort to use them so that rumors of Kodak's 
end of film production does not become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

C'mon, guys and gals, get back on the yellow box. I still have hundreds of 
Kodachrome slides that are 55 years old whose color is still as vivid as 
when the yellow boxes  came back to me in 1950 et seq.

Seth

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "dnygr" <dnygr@cshore.com>
To: <lug@leica-users.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 2:33 PM
Subject: [Leica] Kodak retreats


>I read this morning in The New York Times that Kodak is going to trim
>10,000 jobs. Deutsche Welle reports, however, that Kodak is going to shed
>25,000 jobs.
>
> Whether this means for the future of film, I don't know, but I do know
> that it means I will quickly start to figure out what products to buy as
> replacements for the Kodak items I use. They have lost my confidence.
>
> I would have thought that Kodak would keep some presence in the film world
> so that it could outlast the lesser capitalized companies, but it looks
> like Kodak's chief has ordered a general retreat.
>
> Doug Nygren
>
>
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