On Sunday, Nov 23, 2003, at 14:11 James King-Holmes wrote:
Reading the US financial press shows that Kodak are currently under share-holder pressure and a corporate financier has bought a large tranche of shares. Apparently his idea is to split the film and digital divisions which would seem to be very sensible.
Did you get the impression that Kodak would remain committed (for the
forseeable future) to the 14n in particular and professional photography -
film and digital - in general, even though trading conditions are changing?
Quite how the corporate commitment extends to the digital division is not a question I asked as quite honestly I would not expect the person I was talking to to reveal such commercially sensitive information and really my concerns were to talk about the 14n and its technical development. Kodak have always been a monolithic and secretive company and the UK division has always, in my experience at least, been treated with extreme caution by the US management. I recall an incident years ago when I wrote an article predicting the release of 120 Kodachrome: a very senior Kodak manager rang me and tore into me about commercial irresponsibility and denied my assertion. He had been assured by Rochester that no such development was planned - I rather dented his confidence by explaining that my comments were based upon examination of a Rochester built Kodachrome processing machine which actually had all the 120 processing equipment built in and when Kodak did indeed announce it, he made a handsome and very embarrassed apology. Such is Kodak's way of doing things.
What I was told is that the 14n firmware development is continuing unabated and that improved noise and colour control are being worked on as a matter of urgency.
What is clear from reports from both UK and US is that Kodak are looking to downsize wherever possible and some staff have already been shed from the digital division. I think it is dawning to a lot of people that Kodak have missed the initial opportunity to remain as future market leaders in the area of of photographic recording media. When you think that four years ago they were the leaders in virtually all forms of film, paper and processing with only Fuji to challenge their hegemony, their present plight is quite extraordinary.
Film is being replaced by digital capture backs and cards, darkrooms have gone and their media are generally allied to whatever printer is used to output the images. The Kodak logo appears on a very small proportion of these items and with their Ektachrome film sales declining by about 30% per quarter the professional film division looks like disappearing in a puff of smoke in a very short time.
Given that Kodak themselves admit that the film market is contracting at about 3 times faster than they had anticipated and for a company who are heavily invested in the "silver-halide" way of doing things, that must be pretty scary. Indeed it might just be a pointer to the reason behind the way in which the 14n was launched: the initial announcement at Photokina in sept 2002 promised delivery in Dec and in the event we got a skeleton camera in late March. The tech people at Kodak are pretty damn clever and they must have known how far short it was of its stated performance when it was first sold so I would suggest that Kodak realised just how quickly their film interests were going down the pan and rushed the 14n into the market place as a desperate measure to keep a foothold in the market. Really it is the digital division which holds their only hope of staying as a leading name in the business
so I would guess that the 14n is a vital part of this process.
Personally I would not be surprised to see the 14n appearing with a Canon badge on it sometime soon - it would be a logical step. The 14n carries a rather unnecessary "Nikon F Mount" label which only makes sense if it is intended to delineate it from other similar bodies with a different lens bayonet...
Cheers
Mike St Maur Sheil
T> + 44 [0] 1367 870 276 F> + 44 [0] 1367 870 641 M> + 44 [0] 7860 508 679
E> triffid[at]macunlimited.net W> sheilphoto.co.uk
=============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
