Kodak discontinues all but 4x5 TMAX films

[Drew Wiley]

John - now to you - I figure I'll ration my shots of 8x10 TMY pretty carefully, and at
that rate 10-sheet boxes will last me awhile. But just try making color separations and masks this way! Not only do the emulsions have to be very consistent from
batch to batch, or months worth of painstaking recalibration may be required, but
an entire 10-sheet box might be required to print a single color image. And right now, TMax films are the best thing still around for this kind of work. That's a whole different league of expense. I can't just go willy-nilly grab any other black-and-white
film which would produce a decent black-and-white print. It's hundreds of times more complicated. Am I crazy. Probably. But these things won't be mistaken for
inkjets either!

[ic-racer]

Typical US company with no passion for the product. What I don't understand is that since they are tossing their international heritage as a film company to make more money, they don't get into the toilet paper or catsup industry. Those are some big money makers.

LAST YEAR'S QUARTER: Kimberly-Clark [makers of Kleenex and Huggies Daipers] reported profit of $407 million

[BetterSense]

Haven't got a clue, but if I was a multinational company selling film, I would at least make it easy for newbies to get started

That would require Kodak to do something different than it has always done. It would require them to adapt to a changing market. It would require them to show flexibility and it would require them to actually work to market their products when they have always had a collossal demand cash-cow that they could just sit back and milk. Basically, you make a very important observation that Kodak isn't even trying. Everything from their website to the 10-sheet boxes and now their discontinuation of their best film shows that they haven't got a clue, the only reason they stayed in business for decades was the aformentioned cash cow coupled with their economies of scale made them a pseudo-monopoly. And I do love TMY; I think it's the best. I will use it as long as as I can then switch to HP5 without too much trouble.

[Two23]

Typical US company with no passion for the product. What I don't understand is that since they are tossing their international heritage as a film company to make more money, .

If they don't start making SOME money, and quickly, they will be completely out of business. As for them not having a passion for the product, you could not be more wrong. The market has changed and Kodak must change with it. If anything a case could be made they stayed with film much too long. They have to put their limited resources where it will give them the most return. If you want to blame anyone, why not blame all the commercial photographers who quit shooting the film and started shooting medium format digital?


Kent in SD

[mikebarger]

How many people really want to get into LF for every day snaps?

I'm guessing these same conversations went on with memorex and other recording tape manufacturers years ago...do we continue to make 10 inch reels of tape for our loyal customers that know the difference between big tape and cassettes? After all that small tape can't begin to hold all the tonality of the big reels. Those little tapes are a joke.

There are still a few of us consumers using reel to reel units (10 or 7 inch), but the market just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Now people are using something called MP3 to record music??

Don't they know that tape gives a truly better sound? If memorex would just push reel to reel tape, just advertise, give some away free, then everything would be OK. What's the matter with that company? Don't they value loyal customers, can't they see a big market that no one's going after?

Anything look familiar here?

[Robert A. Zeichner]

How many people really want to get into LF for every day snaps?

I'm guessing these same conversations went on with memorex and other recording tape manufacturers years ago...do we continue to make 10 inch reels of tape for our loyal customers that know the difference between big tape and cassettes? After all that small tape can't begin to hold all the tonality of the big reels. Those little tapes are a joke.

There are still a few of us consumers using reel to reel units (10 or 7 inch), but the market just keeps getting smaller and smaller. Now people are using something called MP3 to record music??

Don't they know that tape gives a truly better sound? If memorex would just push reel to reel tape, just advertise, give some away free, then everything would be OK. What's the matter with that company? Don't they value loyal customers, can't they see a big market that no one's going after?

Anything look familiar here?

Interesting analogy! So big is that market, that for weeks now, I haven't had a single bite on an old Revox A77 recorder with a dozen unopened 10" reels of Quantegy 499 Grand Master tape I just happen to have been trying to sell.

In a way, I'm amazed any film from any manufacturer is still available, given the present state of the economy and the shrinking demand. If the market were as big as some of us would like to think it is, there would be no trouble finding some enterprising individual(s) who would jump at the chance to order the master roll's worth of TMY and TMX in whatever size(s) we could want. Nobody wants to end up with an inventory that big that has an expiration date and/or needs refrigeration without a guarantee that it will get bought up in short order. In my view, we should all be thankful that traditional materials are available to the degree they are. I personally try to keep two or three years worth of film and paper in my two freezers so I don't suffer the "shock" of someday discovering I can no longer get the materials I prefer. As I use it up, I buy some more and that isn't hoarding either; it's establishing a personal inventory level and maintaining it.

[Allen in Montreal]

John,

What a great deal for Kodak!!

Pay in advance. Pay extra high premiums. Wait for ever. make people believe you such a great Corp citizen for making the special run.

Such is not be the way for the 8x10.
Pick up the phone, call local retailer, order 1 (or as many as you wish) 25 sheet boxes of HP5. A few days later, said white box is in your fridge.

Somebody has decided that the profit margin on sheet film is too low to bother and custom order, prepaid at much higher profit margins will the only way to get it in the future.

Or buy white.

Yes, I am mighty pissed with Old Yellow on many fronts.
Time to call it like it is and stop making excuses.

Pro fotogs in my family:

My Grandfather, used Kodak ( a cop and part time shooter for the local paper)
My Dad, used Kodak (a newspaper staffer)
My Uncle, used Kodak (a film maker and photog)
My cousin, used Kodak (he is currently still a staff fotog at a daily newspaper, as I am)
I used Kodak. Until the last year or so.

Not much Old Yellow history in that family.

But it is time to call it like is.

Kodak is still coating the film, we will just have to get used to participating in group purchases for 8x10 or 5x7. The ULF folks have been dependent on group purchases for many years now.

Having a SINGLE point of organization like Canham should greatly help facilitate these groups. We can expect to pay more, but such is life for 21st century 8x10 photographers.

As I've said in the past, the only thing worse than paying top $ for film is not being able to purchase the film at all....

[Brian Ellis]

Brian - you somewhat miss the point. Kodak is a big ship which has paid dearly to
turn another direction. Whether it can move fast enough to avoid an iceberg is anyone's guess at this point. The degree of decline in their film and paper sales is to
a certain extent a self-fulfilling prophecy on their part. They made it happen by
neglecting it. And it isn't just large format film they've left in the wake. The biggest lab owner in this area went out of business because so much of his overhead was tied up in digital equipment and service contracts from Kodak. Just when he needed them most, they flaked on him. Time and time again, they've tinkered around with something, made a big publicity splash, and the moment a grasshopper jumped on the path, they ran away screaming. They obviously aren't doing this to be mean to anyone. They just have so many conflicting directions that they can't seem to do full justice to any of them. I'm certainly not going to protest by boycotting their film. I hope to keep shooting not only TMax, but 8X10 color tranny and neg film from them too, because it's good stuff and does what I need. And I'd be perfectly happy to participate in a future pooled order of special cut 8x10. But I'm always looking over my shoulder too, and routinely experiment with options, because they have been
so unpredictable for some time now.

I'm not sure what point I missed. I'm just providing facts relating to Kodak's revenues and profits, which show that film isn't doing well and digital is, and saying it's not surprising given those numbers that Kodak periodically drops some films.

Kodak didn't "make it happen by neglecting it." You surely don't believe that. It happened because digital came along and it had a lot of advantages for many former film users so they stopped buying film cameras and bought digital cameras. You don't seriously think that Kodak could have prevented that from happening if they had just ignored digital and kept pushing film do you?

[Bob McCarthy]

I read some of this perhaps with a different perspective.

Kodak is a corporation that has the capability to do significant analysis and forecast.

They are not going to shutter a profitable line, they might spin it off if it's not performing to corporate goals but that's not the case here. Companies just dont shut down something that is making money. In a small product like this, recovering variable cost can be enough to leave it in the line.

So they are likely loosing money on 8x10, and with there higher prices, it implies cost are more than the market can bear and likely, volume has dried up and overhead can not be recovered.

That implies the number of industry sku's has to collapse. I don' t think film will ever go away entirely, but choices will.

I for one would hope the latest variant of tmax would be the survivor.

Bob

[theBDT]

That implies the number of industry sku's has to collapse. I don' t think film will ever go away entirely, but choices will.

This. Also, this is inevitable. It's kind of silly to wring hands and whine overmuch.

Or, as one of my favorite internet graphics says:

"Looks like you've come down with a case of being a little bitch.
I'm prescribing you a strong dose of man the f**k up!"