

Kodak's long fade to black - tokenadult
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20111204,0,507980.column

======
todayiamme
If I was on the Kodak board then right now I would use every single penny I
have to buy Lytro's light field technology. I would then use all of the work
that Kodak has ever done in optics and cameras to increase the resolution,
decrease the size and make light field a part of the camera. That is one thing
an iPhone can't and won't do for the foreseeable future.

I would then leverage Kodak's knowledge of chemical printing to push
lenticular printing forward and tie it in with a light field camera. I would
push things out with aggressive marketing. I would make it fashionable to
shoot your lover with that camera. ("Capture your Kodak moment like never
before") After launch if the services idea picks off and Kodak's lenticular
printing facilities start humming then I would lower the Lytro camera's profit
margin and make it mainstream.

The second thing I would get into is making book/poster publishing a commodity
and create an on demand publishing system using Kodak's expertise. I would tie
in with Amazon et al and make it better, cheaper than doing mass runs the way
we do today. It will be challenging, but it is achievable.

The third path I would pursue if I was serving on that board is to use old
printing technology to improve 3D printing. I would ask the question, is there
a way to focus a beam of light and locally catalyze a reaction so that a
crystal can be created layer by layer? If not then is there a way to do
something equivalent to this? The answers to these questions might very well
be Kodak's long term future.

~~~
9999
Lytro's light field is a bullshit product that very few photographers and even
fewer consumers will actually give a shit about. Nikon, Canon, etc. have made
far more significant advances in the last five years than Lytro. Here is a
short list of reasons why Lytro's product is just a big ball of hype:

1) Horrible low light performance from the sensor, which they have deflected
by talking up the relatively large aperture of their lens, which is not really
even that impressive (f/0.95 would be impressive, maybe even an f/1.4, but
f/2? go buy a Panasonic LX5, it blows the Lytro out of the water). 2) No one
cares about adjusting focus after the fact, get it right the first time, or
don't bother. Even when you can adjust the focus, 99.9% of the time, that
feature is only useful for macro photography, which is generally tightly
controlled and reproducible at the time of exposure 3) The resolution sucks.
4) The form factor is way too big for a supposedly revolutionary product 5)
There is no convenient way to share your photos directly from the device 6)
Slow frame rate (again, even the lowly and well aged LX5, which you can buy
for around $270 on Amazon right now, blows it out of the water) 7) The UI
sucks. They're going for Apple level quality there, but they're a bunch of
third rate amateurs. 8) Only hobbyists and pros want to fiddle with an image
after it's taken, your average Joe just wants it to look great the second they
take it. What's better, red eye reduction in some software on your computer or
red eye reduction in the camera?

You know who gives a shit about Lytro? Gadget bloggers do, because it's
something new. That's it. The technology is hardly revolutionary. Due to the
small sensor size in what they're offering, it's pretty hard to even tell
you've shifted focus in anything other than a macro shot. Go look at this
example:

<http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/144>

This is one of the very few honest examples in their gallery. You can barely
detect the focus shift because the depth of field is pretty high already,
which is commonly the case with the cameras average users have embraced (wide
angle lenses and a small aperture mean that almost any cell phone will
guarantee that everything is in focus in a daylight pic). Furthermore, for the
vast majority of photography there are not multiple points that _should_ be in
focus. 99% of the time, you either want everything in focus or only one thing
in focus. Look at this example:

<http://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/138>

Why would I want only one in focus?? So my gadget blogging buddies can fiddle
fuck around with it using some proprietary widget on some website? Jesus.

Lightfield's everything in focus tech comes at a cost that is far, far too
high. None of Kodak's expertise can correct for that, because it is basically
a question of processing power and what the sensor is optimized for. What do
you want? High resolution? Great low light sensitivity? Super high frame
rates? Selective focus in editing? Super long battery life? You can't have
them all. Consumers won't care about it, pros don't care about it, and there
will be a terrible, terrible bunch of reviews as soon as they get to market. I
wish they were public so I could short them.

Lenticular printing?? Seriously? Hollywood and every TV manufacturer are
slowly realizing (again, because they like to do this every 40 years or so)
that almost no one cares about 3D TVs or programming. You want Kodak to go
down that path in a format where it's not even as beneficial?

Printing 3D objects is something Kodak could go after, but do they have any
expertise whatsoever in that field? Creating a truly revolutionary digital
camera (e.g. something that captures things people actually care about, like
crazy fast action at a kid's soccer game from 30 yards away like the new Nikon
V1 can, and can be shared instantly) is another thing they should go after.

Lightfield. Ha.

~~~
Pheter
"Lytro's light field is a bullshit product that very few photographers and
even fewer consumers will actually give a shit about."

You're underestimating how the technology can be used to simplify the process
of taking an image for the average consumer. With the right marketing and UX
Lytro could sell their camera as one that 'just works'.

No one wants to bother focusing an image. Everyone is disappointed when a
photo comes out blurry. Yeah sure they could invest time into learning how to
take better pictures but for a lot of people who just want nice pictures of
their friends when they're on holiday/at a club/out for dinner, they don't
want to waste their time doing that.

A camera where focusing an image is abstracted away so that the consumer
doesn't have to think about it would be a huge step forward. (Think post-shot
auto-focus with optional tweaking for when the camera doesn't get it right).
Combine this with features already available such as automatic red-eye
reduction and the barrier to entry for taking decent quality pictures is much
lower. A lot of people would buy that camera.

~~~
justincormack
Photos are usually blurry because the exposure time is long because light
levels are low. Depth of field is very high on consumer cameras sofocussing is
pretty much unnecessary.

------
pilom
As a Rochester native and a son and grandson of Kodak employees, this article
hits pretty close to home. Unfortunately I'm too young to remember the Kodak
my grandfather worked for. My grandmother bought 10 shares of Kodak stock for
me when I was born as an investment for my college account. With all of that
in mind my optimism may be naive.

In my opinion, if their patents are not enough to save the company, they at
least have kept around many of the right employees to move forward in a
digital internet enabled society. They are starting to make a platform for
turning digital images into physical prints. Every Target and many CVS stores
have Kodak printing kiosks which allow you to print straight from facebook and
film. They just released a facebook app for making prints and photobooks. They
may not have film and they may not have the its popular digital cameras, but
they have the best platform for making prints hands down.

~~~
terinjokes
But the amount of photos that get printed are small, very small. Is it enough
to save the company, without patents, without cameras?

I only have 1 traditionally printed picture, framed and sitting on my desk. I
only have it because it was a gift. (I pulled off the back of it, it was
printed on, you guessed it, Fijifilm)

The other pictures I have are done in a less traditional manner. I've had a
few done by Fracture, which people have loved (of which, ironically, I
personally own none). No film involved.

Can Kodak survive? I think so, but they won't be anything like the Kodak my
parents or I grew up with, and only if they get out of the camera (and
possibly home printer) markets.

~~~
marquis
Is that also a matter of marketing? I love printed photos, and have recently
starting printing photos books - amazing christmas presents for a start. I
grew up looking through our family albums and I want my kids to have the same
experience. It may be that there is a renaissance in the printed photo yet to
come, and I'd trust Kodak for the technology of that if they could figure out
how to fuel a boom.

~~~
terinjokes
You bring up a very good point, one that I didn't even consider. I, also,
would want my children to have similar experiences as me, it terrifies me
slightly to think of how different things could/will be.

I still think that puts Kodak outside the realm of cameras and printers, but
could possibly reinvent themselves to that market.

Last December my mother purchased a Kodak slide projector for my grandfather.
We set it up and projected some of the 17 carousels, and clicked through them,
as he and my mother would tell stories relating to them. It was a wholesome
family experience, and we would probably not all crowd around a computer
screen to do something similar in iPhoto.

[Note to Kodak: Ignore my earlier statement about getting out of the
camera/printer market and do a couple production runs of slide projectors…
we've now gone through two of them because they're just so old!]

------
mathattack
Very tough for Kodak to recover. What's amazing is how ahead of the game they
were. Digital cameras in 1975. Fischer was also ahead of the game, and they
scaled back because their short term earnings suffered. In a way they remind
me of another aging Rochester company - Xerox.

Regarding other comments about the town... If you're a specialist in a small
or medium sized city, and not willing to move, you are at risk. This is true
if you are branding specialist in Cincinnati, a Russian literature specialist
in Albuquerque, an also if you're an imaging specialist in Rochester. The idea
that a company can protect you because it is large is obsolete. By encouraging
that thinking, they are making their demise all the more likely.

------
ilmare
Kodak is pretty much both feet in grave after they sold their image sensor
business, which was probably the only competitive thing they have. Now it's
interesting what Leica would do after kodak sensors are gone. Well, maybe
their business solutions(printing, kiosks) can survive.

