Kodak Alaris, the spin-off of Eastman Kodak that produces the photographic film products the Kodak name is known for, may be in trouble. The company plans to shut down one of its five major manufacturing facilities by the end of this year.
It came out first in 1940, when Europe was plunged into war but America was enjoying the dying days of calm before the storm. It was Kodak’s new black-and-white film, designed to be shot on location. The only problem was, it was only available in large format.
Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke is on a mission to bring film back, and his business card reflects that: it's literally a strip of 35mm film that has his information displayed on it.
While other photo brands are busy announcing their latest and greatest digital cameras, Kodak has a rather unusual unveiling: it's bringing back the legendary Super 8 camera as a film product with digital features.
Back in July 2013, we shared how major filmmakers had banded together to rescue Kodak by committing to purchasing film from the company. One of the big names was J.J. Abrams, the director of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opens this week.
The new Star Wars was shot on Kodak film, and thanks to a number of other major productions using Kodak as well, Kodak says it may be profitable starting next year.
Tips from the Top Floor podcast host Chris Marquardt recently got a private …
When photographing the world around us, the property of color is likely something most people tend to take for granted. We expect our cameras to portray the visible light spectrum accurately. However, in a world so engrossed with color, we sometimes forget how long it took to get to this point in time and how many photographers and scientists viewed the concept of color photography as a pipe dream.
Back in July of 1956, Kodak printed a helpful photography guide for Disneyland visitors. The pamphlet was titled: "Kodak Camera Tour of Disneyland" and featured colorful illustrations, technical camera tips, and sample photos.
Vox has published a short 5-minute video that tells the story of how early film stocks in photography were designed with light skin as the ideal skin standard, and therefore sometimes had problems rendering darker skins -- especially in photos that showed both darker and lighter complexions.
JK Imaging has announced the latest in their series of Kodak-brand action cameras. The new PixPro SP360 4K is a 12MP action camera with the ability to take 360-degree spherical images or 4K HD video up to 2028x2028 at 50fps. Positioned as a successor to the original SP360, the SP360 4K is promising to deliver higher resolution video and a 720p 120fps slow-motion capture mode.
If you enjoy injecting analog warmth into your digital photographs, then you may want to check out the new RNI Films app for iOS. Developed by Really Nice Images, the application allows mobile photographers to apply realistic film simulations to their images with a few taps. Similar to the company’s film pack for Lightroom, RNI Films comes with a collection of real negative, slide, instant, vintage, and monochrome film stocks for you to simulate.
Once readily available, direct positive photo paper has near seemingly disappeared from the market. Ilford recently resurrected their Harman Direct positive paper with plans for it to be available throughout the world this August. Now, another competitor, Galaxy Company, is working to bring their own positive photo paper to life. And Galaxy has a unique feature on their side, which they are calling ‘Hyper Speed.'
Yesterday marked the end of another piece of Kodak's once-powerful film manufacturing business. The company used 100 pounds of dynamite to take down the 92-year-old Building 53 at Eastman Business Park in Rochester, New York. The sprawling 250,000-square-foot plant, once used to manufacture acetate base for camera film, was reduced to 1,500 tons of steel and concrete in less than 20 seconds.
The debate between analog and digital may never end, but there can be a happy medium. One of the reasons that analog continues to live on is due to the wondrous ‘color profiles’ that one can find in different packages of film, along with their unique grain profiles. VSCO, a company that designs presets for Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, has released their latest collection “VSCO FILM 07” - the eclectic films package.
From the annals of strange photography promo products comes this: a barbecue grill that's designed to look like a roll of Kodak's 200 Kodacolor VR film.
The New York Times has published an in-depth feature in its business section …
Ronald K. Fierstein is a man who has had a front row seat to the evolution of photography as we know it. He's a lawyer who helped represent Polaroid during its lengthy legal battle with Eastman Kodak over patents.
Fierstein has written a new book that sheds light on the life and career of Polaroid founder Edwin Land, the "original Steve Jobs" (Jobs revered Land and modeled his career after his). It's titled A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War.
The Kodak Brownie line of affordable cameras was first introduced in 1900 and cost $1, bringing photography to the masses and pioneering snapshot photography. Mexican photographer Raymundo Panduro of Tlaquepaque, Jalisco wanted to pay tribute to this iconic camera, so he spent two weeks (in his free time) building a homemade pinhole camera based on a Brownie Hawkeye that he had purchased at a flea market.
Before Canon and Nikon became juggernauts in the world of DSLRs, Kodak actually created one of the first DSLRs by modifying the Nikon Pronea 6i film SLR. Called the Kodak DCS315, the camera was the world's first DSLR to feature an image preview LCD and JPEG processing in the camera itself. It was launched in 1998 and boasted an amazing (at the time) 1.5 megapixels.
“Film didn’t die with Kodak’s Chapter 11” bankruptcy filing in 2012, says the Financial Times. The British …
Kodak announced it would be jumping into the smartphone game late last year, and today the company did. The device is called the IM5 and is a stupidly simple Android device that is geared toward helping people snap, share, and print photos with minimal hassle.
Kodak is jumping into the world of smartphones to try and make a splash in mobile photography. The company has announced that it will be launching a number of mobile devices in 2015.
Kodak, or rather JK Imaging pretending to be Kodak, recently launched a new entry into the action camera market. It’s called the Kodak PixPro SP360, and its intriguing form factor and lens allow it to capture 16-megapixel photographs and 1080p video with a 360º field of view.
In the funny-but-also-sad ad from 2006, Kodak sought to convince the world that it was ready to move to the forefront of the digital revolution that it had given birth to and then ignored for so long. You know... the same one that ended up forcing the company to declare bankruptcy a little more than half a decade later.
Kodak recently issued an official statement confirming the discontinuation of yet another film stock: the much-loved, fine grain, chromogenic black & white film BW400CN.
Just last week we shared the news that a number of top filmmakers were helping to save Kodak motion picture film, pushing through a deal between the noted film manufacturer and studios.
While initial reports stated Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Judd Apatow and J.J. Abrams are all dropping some names and heartfelt thoughts on the matter, a letter to Kodak from iconic director Martin Scorsese recently poured some serious gasoline on the film-love fire.
One of the last vestiges of the Kodak of old, the one part of its film division not sold off in 2012, is the company's motion picture film business. But even that is in trouble, and might be taking its dying breaths right now if it wasn't for some of Hollywood's biggest filmmakers coming to the rescue.
Lomography released yet another unique type of film emulsion. Or rather, it’s managed to repackage an existing emulsion, converting it for use in 35mm cameras.
The Electro-Optic Camera was designed and constructed by Eastman Kodak Company under a U.S. Government contract in 1987 and 1988. Kodak's Microelectronics Technology Division (MTD) had announced the first megapixel CCD in 1986. In 1987, a government customer asked Kodak's Federal Systems Division (FSD) to build a prototype camera around the new CCD. It was a true skunk works project with a very small team. Ken Cupery was the project manager. I (Jim McGarvey) was the lead engineer. MTD engineer Bill Toohey designed the CCD analog circuitry, and technician Tom McCarthy assembled the whole system.
At first glance, this little black camera looks like a tiny, worn-out shooter from a hundred years ago. But …
It's #throwbackthursday, right? Good, because we have a rather interesting piece of photography history to share with you, courtesy of NASA, Nikon and Kodak.
Almost a year to date after the digging up and opening of Oklahoma City's Century Chest, researchers are getting a rare glimpse at early 20th century Oklahoma City thanks to the help of a Kodak Vest Pocket Camera and eight negatives found in "pristine condition" buried inside the time capsule.
There's one final gear announcement from CES that we just didn't manage to get to this week, and that is the new line of Kodak-branded products that JK Imaging showed off at the trade show. From lens cameras that look an awful lot like cheap knock-offs of Sony's QX10 and QX100, to an updated line of superzooms, a Micro Four Thirds model and a couple of 'rugged' action cameras, here's what JK/Kodak brought to the CES table.
Analog photography buffs can rest a little easier: Photographic film is now supported by the combined economic majesty of Lomography and the photographic offshoot of post-bankruptcy Kodak.
You might not thing there was much economic clout left in the Kodak brand, but apparently it still carries some weight in the courtroom.
The one-time photography monolith recently won a $76 million judgement from Japanese electronics conglomerate Ricoh to settle a dispute over patent licenses and royalties.
It could be argued that consumer photography didn't begin until 1888, when Eastman Kodak made his Kodak No. 1 (the followup to the Kodak Box) available to the public at large alongside the now famous slogan: "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest."
And thanks to the National Media Museum, we now have a small gallery of sample photographs that show what photos taken 125 years ago with the Kodak No. 1 looked like.
Now that Eastman Kodak's bankruptcy woes are over and the company has switched its focus primarily to commercial printing, its name probably won't show up here as often as it once did. But that doesn't mean that the Kodak photographic legacy is dead.
One of the steps Eastman Kodak took to get out of bankruptcy was to sell its personalized and document imaging businesses to the UK Kodak Pension Plan (KPP), and that has birthed a company that plans to keep that legacy alive: Kodak Alaris.
Kodak clawed its way out of bankruptcy this past Tuesday, but the Rochester-based company has a long climb yet.
There's been plenty of talk on this topic over the past week, but most of it seem to be focused on what Kodak gave up to emerge from the shadow of Chapter 11. NBC News, for example, emphasizes the loss of consumer-oriented operations and a 50% reduction in yearly expected revenue when they discuss the "New Kodak Moment."
Anyone with an appreciation for Kodak’s heritage is sure to feel a twinge of sadness over these developments, but it is still far too early to be asking if the sacrifice was worth it. The more important question is "will it work?"
It's been a long and depressing tunnel, but Kodak has finally reached the light at the end. Over a year and a half after declaring Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, the once-great camera giant officially reached the end of its financial troubles yesterday.
You might not know this, but there was metadata before there was, well, metadata. Way back in 1914, Kodak introduced the Autographic system, a combination of autographic cameras and film that allowed you to permanently sign, date and title your negatives as you shot them.