It seems we're entering into the final chapter of the Kodak Bankruptcy epic. After filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January of 2012, the ex-camera company's final plan to exit bankruptcy received court approval on Monday. What emerges from the ashes, however, will be a company that does zero business with consumers directly.
It will probably come as no surprise to many that Kodak is planning to discontinue production of the acetate base, a primary component film, according to a WROC report published Tuesday.
Rochester, New York — The cold hits me as soon as I leave the Amtrak station, stepping into a swirl of snow eddies that etch the low streets in black and white.
The terminal sits just outside the city center. In the short car ride into town, one building stands out to me from all the others. It is an impressive beaux arts landmark with five large letters, glowing in red, resting at the top
A few years ago we shared photographer Richard Mosse's unique infrared imagery that he had shot in The Democratic Republic of Congo for his series Infra. Taking advantage of an old type of Kodak film called Aerochrome, he infused new color into this war-torn and often forgotten part of the Earth.
Now he's taken that project a step further by creating a documentary film called The Enclave. Shot entirely on 16mm Aerochrome film, the footage reveals both the unseen infrared bouncing off of the vegetation, and this too-often unseen "ongoing humanitarian disaster."
Despite the proliferation of SLRs and Micro Four Thirds cameras, “auto” mode isn’t going anywhere. As evidence, consider a recently published patent application from Kodak that assumes the average camera user can’t even figure out which direction to point the thing.
Late last year, we shared a video in which a photographer tested the radioactivity of an old Pentax 50mm f/1.4 lens that is really popular with film photographers. But that is far from the only lens you have to worry about when it comes to radioactivity.
Camerapedia lists 54 lenses that have been reported as radioactive and that, if you use them often enough, you may want to take note of.
We reported last August that Kodak was looking to sell its camera film business along with a number of other core businesses. Well, the company has now succeeded.
Kodak announced today that it has reached an agreement to sell off its two remaining imaging divisions -- which includes its photographic film business -- in a major deal worth $2.8 billion.
My name is David Lo, and I am a street photographer who enjoys taking vintage cameras, digitizing them, and then using them for street photography. This is a walkthrough on my process of modifying a camera.
According to Reuters, Shutterfly has officially filed court documents in an attempt to shut down Kodak's My Kodak Moments app. Shutterfly -- who purchased the Kodak Gallery from the bankrupt company for $23.8M last year -- is claiming that the app is in violation of the terms of that sale, and demanding that it be taken down.
Kodak burned historic amounts of money in 2012, but is apparently still on track to leave bankruptcy sometime this year. The company released an annual report with performance figures and messages to investors. One of the glaring numbers in the statement was the fact that company lost $1.38 billion in 2012, almost double the amount it lost in 2011.
It's ironic to the point of being tragic to think that one of the pioneers of digital camera technology was Kodak. Now bankrupt and licensing off their brand to mysterious companies, it's easy to forget that it was Kodak that hit many of the initial milestones where digital imaging is concerned.
One would hope that the medium of photography was immune to racial prejudice, but an exhibit by London-based artists Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin shows that this was not always the case. The artists' exhibit, on display at Johannesburg's Goodman Gallery, explores the marks that racism left on early color photography.
Using film designed to capture white faces and a camera that became infamous for helping further apartheid in South Africa, Broomberg and Chanarin took photos of beautiful South African flora -- putting the once-racial implements to better use.
When Kodak announced that it had reached a brand licensing deal with JK Imaging, hardly anybody questioned the move. It meant that Kodak-branded cameras were not a thing of the past -- there's even an upcoming Micro Four Thirds offering -- and after all, Kodak probably has standards when making deals like this.
Interestingly, that's exactly what Kodak said. The company's corporate affairs spokesperson Krista Gleason was clear that the company has "guidelines and standards in place to protect the brand that each of [its] licensees must follow." But nevertheless, there is surprisingly little information out there about JK Imaging Ltd itself.
Kodak had quite the surprise for the camera world today: the company announced that it will be soon joining the Micro Four Thirds standard with a new mirrorless camera called the S1. We had reported earlier this week that the company would soon launch a mirrorless camera (just like Polaroid did recently), but it seems most people didn't expect that the news would have anything to do with the Micro Four Thirds standard.
A week ago, we reported that Kodak had entered into a multi-year agreement with American camera supplier …
After sharing that short feature yesterday on the last roll of Kodachrome, it seems appropriate to share this once-super-popular song written about the same film.
Simply titled, "Kodachrome," it was written by American musician Paul Simon after the first breakup of Simon & Garfunkel.
In 2009, when Kodak announced that production of Kodachrome film would be coming to an end, legendary photographer Steve McCurry saw an opportunity, and asked if the company would give him the final roll. Given his reputation and the many famed photographs he's taken on Kodachrome, it's no surprise Kodak said yes.
As a tribute to this final roll, a crew from National Geographic decided to follow McCurry and document the momentous last 36 frames that would ever be shot on that film -- the video above is the result.
We've known for a while that Kodak is jumping out of the digital camera game, focusing its attention on printing and, thus, ending an era. But, as it turns out, we haven't seen the last of the Kodak digital camera -- it just won't be made by Kodak anymore.
One chapter in the saga of Kodak's escape from bankruptcy has come to an end. The company announced today that it has completed the sale of its valuable imaging patents for $525 million to a group of Silicon Valley companies. The deal involves more than 1,100 patents related to the capturing, manipulating, and sharing of digital photographs.
Yesterday we shared some news courtesy of the Wall Street Journal that Kodak had received a generous bid for its patent patent portfolio of over $500M. This was good news for Kodak, seeing as $500M was the mark the company had to hit in order to receive $830M in exit financing that would play a crucial role in helping Kodak dig its way out of bankruptcy.
However, all we knew at the time was that the bid was being put forth by a "consortium of bidders" out of Silicon Valley. Well, as it turns out, that consortium is being led by none other than the unlikely team of Apple and Google.
Over the last year, no news has been good news for Eastman Kodak. The company's slow and painful climb out of bankruptcy has involved everything from corporate greed to lost patent wars and sub-par auction outcomes. But just a few weeks ago a flickering light emerged at the end of the tunnel for Kodak in the form of $793M in conditional financing.
In fact, since we last reported on the story, the loan amount has gotten even bigger. That sizable $793M has been upped to $830M, every dime of which Kodak desperately needs to get its hands on if it ever intends to escape bankruptcy. But as the saying goes: there's no such thing as a free lunch -- and definitely not one worth $830M. The banks that have agreed to help Kodak out made the financing conditional: Kodak doesn't get the money unless the company's long-awaited patent sale exceeds $500M.
Christopher Bonanos, author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid, has authored …
Respected stock market analysis website Seeking Alpha doesn’t think too highly of the …
Snapping mirror self-portraits may have gotten a huge boost from the introduction of digital photography and smartphoneography, but it is by no means a new activity limited to our era. The photograph above was created back in 1917 -- nearly 100 years ago! It was snapped by an Australian flying ace named Thomas Baker when he was 20 years old.
Kodak has finally been thrown a lifeline. Yesterday, the beleaguered photography company announced that it had convinced banks to loan it $793 million in order to climb out of bankruptcy by the first half of 2013. The loan agreement comes with one big catch: Kodak must be able to sell its extensive collection of patents for at least half a billion dollars.
Since 2005, photographer and photography lecturer Robert Burley has been documenting the demise of film photography through film photographs. He has traveled around the world with his 4x5 field camera in tow, capturing the demolition of buildings, the equipment that once powered a giant industry, and the desolation of factories that were once teeming with workers.
The photograph above shows a crowd watching the implosions of buildings 65 and 69 at Kodak Park in Rochester, New York on October 6, 2007.
It seems like Kodak is having a hard time figuring out how to getting its finances back in the black. Kodak has announced its 3rd quarter financial results, and the numbers aren't pretty -- they're downright ugly, actually. Despite raking in $1 billion over the three-month period ending in September (down 19% from the same period last year), the company still posted a net loss of $312 million (up from a loss of $222M during the same period last year).
Here's an interesting piece of photo trivia for today: did you know that Apple's similarities with Kodak don't end with Steve Jobs modeling his career and his company after Polaroid? The ongoing dispute between Apple and Samsung is strikingly similar to the battle Polaroid had with Kodak many decades ago.
Kodak may be planning to sell its film division, but for the time being the business is still under the company's control. The company announced yesterday that T-MAX P3200 is the latest in its lineup to be discontinued, citing the plummeting demand for ultra-high speed black-and-white film.
Kodak divisions are falling left and right as the company struggles to claw its way out of bankruptcy protection. After killing off its camera business and selling off its film business earlier this year, Kodak announced today that it will shortly be pulling out of the consumer printing business in order to focus on commercial printing.
Bankruptcy has not been friendly to Kodak. The once-important camera company — now a printing company — is worth …
Check out this photo showing the inside of a camera shop (and pharmacy) from 1910. It's the image on a postcard that's currently being auctioned over on eBay (with a starting bid of $100) by a seller named 2raccoons. Here's the description:
Up for auction is this extraordinary photograph of a woman in standard Gibson dress standing at a store counter purchasing a Kodak folding camera. The store employee is wearing a jacket and bow-tie which adds charm to the photograph. It is uncertain if the woman is actually buying the Kodak camera, or if the scene here is "staged," but $25 is about what one would have paid for the Kodak folding camera at that time, which can be seen on the cash register.
$25 for a top-of-the-line camera. Not bad. Add a couple zeros to that price and you'll get what many DSLRs are selling for these days.
Kodak has announced that it'll be shedding even more jobs in an effort to cut costs as it transitions into being a company solely focused on commercial printing and corporate services. Two weeks after announcing the sale of its photographic film business, the company is stating that another 1,000 pink slips will be issued by the end of this year as part of a $330 million cost cutting plan. This is on top of the 2,700 layoff notices already handed out this year, and the new round of cuts will reduce the company's headcount to 13,400, down from the 145,000 employees it had during its glory days.
It's a sad day for film photographers: Kodak has announced that it will sell off its camera film business, one of the huge pillars of what made Kodak Kodak in the eyes of consumers around the world. It's yet another step in the company's effort to climb out of bankruptcy, which it hopes to do by next year, and transform itself into a commercial printing company.
Good news for film photography lovers: Kodak film may be okay for at least a few more years. The company has signed new contracts with four major Hollywood movie studios that will allow it to provide film for movies at least through 2015.
The deadline to put up initial bids for Kodak's 1,100 patent sale is Monday, and The Wall Street Journal reports that the two biggest contenders, Apple and Google, are forming "coalitions" with other companies in preparation for the all out patent brawl. The last time this happened, an Apple/Microsoft alliance ended up winning the battle against Google, that time over a patent sale by Nortel Networks.
Kodak’s ongoing request to dole out millions of dollars in bonuses to executives in the midst of …
My mind is a strange and dangerous place. I shouldn’t go in there alone after dark. But the other night I was thinking, just me and myself, about all the new camera releases this year. Which had made the biggest impact? Was it the Canon 5D III with that world-class autofocus system? The Olympus OM-D bringing mirrorless cameras up a notch in image quality and usability? Should I mention the excellent Samsung NX20, just because no one knows it’s really good? Give the Fuji X-Pro an award for best concept most poorly carried out? Consider the Sony NEX-7 for putting full-frame resolution on an APS-C sensor?
Most people already know that one of the ways Kodak tried to dig itself out of its sizable financial hole was to sell the Kodak Gallery to Shutterfly, and the service officially shut down just a few short days ago. Most Kodak Gallery users probably won't be too upset with the move, but unfortunately, it looks like even the 2-million active users (the Kodak Gallery had a total of about 75-million) will have to go a few weeks without access to their photos as their accounts are transferred over.
Recent news coming out of Rochester yesterday points to the fact that Kodak will be selling off its two massive patent portfolios sooner rather than later, and regardless of any progress made in the suit against Apple and RIM. In accordance with the June 30th deadline outlined in their lending agreement, Kodak has already filed a motion with the bankruptcy court -- to be approved at a hearing on July 2nd -- petitioning for a closed bids auction due to the "special nature of the assets."