The name "Kodak" is synonymous with photography. After all, the company's founder invented photographic film. And, as an avid photographer for many years, it was sad for me to learn this week that Eastman Kodak announced that it would be cutting up to 10,000 jobs in the near future...this after last year's 12,000-15,000 person layoff announced last year. These job cuts total about 25% of Kodak's entire workforce.
It saddens me, not only for the employees who will lose their jobs, but because what the layoffs really represent is death of film as a media for taking pictures. Even Kodak admits that digital cameras and media are replacing traditional film products in the marketplace even faster than their predictions.
According to Kodak's Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Perez, "Sales of our consumer traditional products are declining faster than expected," he said. "Although we have been moving rapidly to get our costs down ... we are picking up the pace dramatically. This is what the company needs to succeed as a digital company."
Other analysts agree. The digital photography boom has been and still is, killing film sales at a pace much quicker than many companies, including Kodak, could have anticipated. And the market will continue to founder, with the effect on film vendors and processors being close to "catastrophic," said Charles LeCompte, president of Lyra Research.
"Kodak is the most public company to suffer from how quickly film is declining, but there are plenty of others hurting," he said, adding that a number of European companies focusing on film have gone bankrupt within the past few years.
These enterprises did see the size of the digital photography wave, LeCompte added, but not its speed. Kodak has been investing heavily in digital photography for nearly 10 years while demanding that executives to concentrate on the issue, but the company didn't move quickly enough to avoid layoffs, said Mike Wolf, director of digital photography trends at research firm InfoTrends.
"Anyone who has been reliant on film in the past has had to adjust their model or meet their maker," said Wolf. "What's happening at Kodak is happening across the industry."
"Some people didn't see the shift to digital cameras happening so fast, but we did see, early on, that film was on its way out," said Dan Havlik, public relations specialist at Canon USA.
Film will always have a place in the photography world, Havlik said, but it will likely get pushed to the hobbyist and specialist market as digital photography matures.
What does all this mean for people like you and me? It means we had better consider buying a digital camera in the near future, if we haven't already done so. Look for film costs to go up as well as film processing prices as the number of available vendors offering these services decreases. With costs going up on film and processing and the price of quality digital cameras coming down, it makes sense to think about moving to digital photography.
I offer myself as an example. As some of you may know, I shoot mostly slide film in my work as an artist. To shoot a roll of 36 exposure slide film these days costs me about $10 for each roll...$5 for film and $5 to process it. That means that every time I click my shutter, it costs me 28 cents. And I buy my film from a New York dealer who specializes in getting gray market film, otherwise I would be paying almost $10 per roll.
That is why I am looking strongly at going digital in the near future for much of my work. With 8 megapixel SLR digital cameras now being offered at a more reasonable price, it just makes sense to consider making the change. These cameras now offer me the same basic image resolution that I get when I scan my slide into my computer with my film scanner.
If I can get the excellent image quality that I now get with my film cameras and scanner, it just makes good sense to go digital. I can click the shutter to my heart's content and not worry about the costs. After the initial expenses for a camera and extra memory, there are no other costs to worry about.
I just bought Susan a 4 megapixel digital camera for her needs and am now beginning to experiment with it to see if going digital is right for me. We are very late in getting into the digital photography game as probably most of you have already done so. But, shooting film has been a big part of my life for many years and it will be difficult to let go. But, it is inevitable.
Just ask Kodak.
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