The more than 130-year-old Eastman Kodak Co. is cautioning on its business operations, but says it is confident it will be able to work out upcoming debt obligations.
I’m not trying to start a flame war about film underneath your comment here but I’ve been bothered for hours so I decided to come back.
Kodak is one of the handful of companies left in the world that can still produce film stock. It’s almost a lost art at this point. They are the only ones that still produce color positive film - Ektachrome (E100) - and they also have the highest quality color negative film still on the market right now - their Portra line.
I wish it was as simple as not making mass market junk like disposable point and shoots and Kodak would be saved, but unfortunately it’s not that simple. They already own the film stock market - even hipster stocks like Cinestill are using Kodak movie film that is modified to shoot in 35mm and medium format cameras. Ilford is trying to make color negative films again after years of only producing b&w and it’s getting better and closer to Kodak’s cheaper stocks (gold/colorplus) but nothing touches the latitude of their Portra line. And obviously there’s nothing like slide film, color positive E100 is truly one of the coolest things you can shoot these days.
For me personally, shooting on film is going back to the physicalness, the manualness of taking a photo. It’s the act of using something physical to capture a memory instead of just taking a million photos on my phone that I’ll never look at again. Getting my rolls back and looking through them is the highlight of my month haha. Organizing my negatives and getting prints and making memories is so much joy that is just lost when I use digital cameras.
Losing Kodak to financial attrition would be a tragedy to a small but passionate (and growing!) community.
It does appear that they have ideas on working through this debt and buying time though so we’ll see.
To be honest, I don’t know much about film at all! That is pretty interesting to hear about Kodak - if all the indie/“hipster” companies are dependent on it, then I can see why you wouldn’t want to lose it.
That was my bad for relying on memories of 20+ years ago - naturally, they would’ve changed since then
I have some photography homies that mainly use digital but have some old canon SLRs for the novelty. I’m a fairly technical person so I asked them about how film works. In the hour or so we talked about the chemical reactions and iso numbers, it was clear that there are only a handful of companies that can produce film stock. Developing it(as in turn it into a picture) can be done by almost anyone, there are thousands of commercial developers in the States, but maybe six manufacturers of stock.
I’m not trying to start a flame war about film underneath your comment here but I’ve been bothered for hours so I decided to come back.
Kodak is one of the handful of companies left in the world that can still produce film stock. It’s almost a lost art at this point. They are the only ones that still produce color positive film - Ektachrome (E100) - and they also have the highest quality color negative film still on the market right now - their Portra line.
I wish it was as simple as not making mass market junk like disposable point and shoots and Kodak would be saved, but unfortunately it’s not that simple. They already own the film stock market - even hipster stocks like Cinestill are using Kodak movie film that is modified to shoot in 35mm and medium format cameras. Ilford is trying to make color negative films again after years of only producing b&w and it’s getting better and closer to Kodak’s cheaper stocks (gold/colorplus) but nothing touches the latitude of their Portra line. And obviously there’s nothing like slide film, color positive E100 is truly one of the coolest things you can shoot these days.
For me personally, shooting on film is going back to the physicalness, the manualness of taking a photo. It’s the act of using something physical to capture a memory instead of just taking a million photos on my phone that I’ll never look at again. Getting my rolls back and looking through them is the highlight of my month haha. Organizing my negatives and getting prints and making memories is so much joy that is just lost when I use digital cameras.
Losing Kodak to financial attrition would be a tragedy to a small but passionate (and growing!) community.
It does appear that they have ideas on working through this debt and buying time though so we’ll see.
Thanks for reading!
To be honest, I don’t know much about film at all! That is pretty interesting to hear about Kodak - if all the indie/“hipster” companies are dependent on it, then I can see why you wouldn’t want to lose it. That was my bad for relying on memories of 20+ years ago - naturally, they would’ve changed since then
I have some photography homies that mainly use digital but have some old canon SLRs for the novelty. I’m a fairly technical person so I asked them about how film works. In the hour or so we talked about the chemical reactions and iso numbers, it was clear that there are only a handful of companies that can produce film stock. Developing it(as in turn it into a picture) can be done by almost anyone, there are thousands of commercial developers in the States, but maybe six manufacturers of stock.
And a lot of the chemicals used for development are manufactured by Kodak too haha.