At 07:12 PM 4/21/2005, you wrote:
>Interesting financial article on Kodak and the Digi camera business in
>general.
>http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P114415.asp
>Not very pretty, despite increased market share.
>
>Tim Hughes
Problem is . . . Kodak has never truly been a "camera manufacturer." True,
they've made quite a few cameras, but they were really "film holders." The
last half-way decent ones were the post-WWII Retina series with
Schneider-Kreuznach and Rodenstock lenses. They were a continuation of the
pre-war Retina with Schneider-Kreuznach and Carl Zeiss lenses. Even the
long-lived Retina line wasn't without its share of trials and tribulations
(but not from the excellent lenses).
Kodak has always been a film maker and its current image is that of film
maker. The cameras were created to carry Kodak's film. Most recently the
Advantix line was left in the dust by other, real camera manufacturers and
their lines of APS cameras; now a dying consumer-only film format. It was
no surprise to me that Kodak announced it was ceasing camera production,
IIRC some time last year. When most of us who've been around for a while
think of Kodak cameras, the cheap, plastic Brownie, Hawkeye, Instamatic,
Pocket Instamatic, Disc and Advantix models they punched out in the
hundreds of thousands come to mind. None of them were anything to "write
home about," they tended to be over-priced (considering what one got in
terms of a camera), and it's little wonder the rest of the camera making
industry has continuously pummelled Kodak's camera business for decades.
-- John Lind
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