Re: OT, was

From: Dave Rose <cactuscowboy@bresnan.net>
Subject: OT, was (Re: Kodak B&W Paper Discontinued? Good Ridence.)
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 20:45:44 -0600

> This kind of political commentary is off topic but not unexpected
> for this list. I've endured so much far left liberal nonsense on
> alt-photo-process.

As a general comment apart from the past postings in this thread, I
think "left liberal" and "left liberal nonsense" are very different
things. I would think a good number of the former would agree with a
reasonable fraction of what you said.

> As for Kodak discontinuing B&W paper, it's a wise and prudent
> business decision. Kodak needs to either remain profitable, or face
> financial ruin.

I agree. Every time they drop some products there are enough people
blaming their business decisions as if Eastman Kodak Company was a
charity. I do miss some of their very unique products like direct
positive dupe films, etc., but I wouldn't blame them for discontinuing
products that don't sell. At this point of the game I'd rather have
more secure supply of Kodak b&w films than Kodak b&w papers and I'm
glad they dropped papers if it was indeed a necessary decision.

> Not to worry, if there's sufficient demand, a small manufacturer
> will step in and capture the market that Kodak has abandoned.

I'm not very certain about this. Silver gelatin is obsolete but that
doesn't make it "low tech." Large manufacturers had full scale
corporate research facilities and staff to do basic scientific
research as well as product development, but they don't share their
commercially important findings with others. I do not think a small
company who didn't make equal effort in the past can jump in the
market and make post-1990 quality films. They'll need time to do
necessary research to come up with Kodak- or Fujifilm-quality
products, so the market would be further shrunk by then.

In my view, it is thus our best interest to support a selected group
of a couple of viable manufacturers that can fully adapt to shrinking
market rather than to blame them. I wouldn't count on small
corporations that are yet to emerge.

Ryuji Suzuki
Received on Tue Jul 12 23:45:07 2005