Re: Kodak shriks with changing times
One thing that news reporters never seem to learn is that the biggest users of films are those who don't have cameras. On one end there is a big market for release prints of motion picture, and on another end there is medical imaging application. These guys keep the emulsion plant running and the rest of us (especially the pictorial b&w films) are dealing with a market of size far smaller than those. Another thing that those reporters never seem to realize is that the last 8mm movie camera was discontinued in mid-1980, but there are companies (namely Fujifilm and Eastman Kodak Company) who still supply film for 8mm movie cameras. It is quite fallacious to imply that, if the last 35mm camera is discontinued today, the world becomes filmless tomorrow. For past few years, the decline in film camera market was very steep, but that in film market was more gradual. Indeed, all camera manufacturers in Japan combined ship merely a couple of hundred medium and large format cameras every month, and they could drop to zero any day, but I don't think 120 and 4x5 film will disappear anytime soon. My favorite Kodak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot9erQxX-cY -- Ryuji Suzuki "Don't play what's there, play what's not there." (Miles Davis)
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