[PRCo] Re: Kodak

Sat Nov 3 10:01:44 EDT 2007

Sad thing about this is that people like me who want to use film have  
almost been forced not to.   I would like to use Kodachrome but there  
is only one laboratory left in the world that processes it ...  
Dwayne's in Parsons, Kansas.   If you send the film to Kodak, it gets  
resorted to go to Parsons, then sent back to Kodak and repackaged for  
the customer disguising who actually did the work, in the processing  
adding weeks to the turn around time.   If you overnight your film to  
Parsons with a personal check, you might just get it back in a week.

However, I switched to Fuji Astia which is an E6 compatible  
process.   The Ektachrome compatible dyes are a lot longer lasting  
than they were in 1950 or 1960 and they'll out last me.   I can drop  
off a roll of Fuji at a local plant in the afternoon and pick up the  
slides at 8:30 the next morning.   I came back from Europe Monday  
evening, dropped the film off Tuesday, had the slides back Wednesday.

So much for Kodachrome.....

Now, Jim and the rest of yins, if I just had the time to sit down and  
caption 560 images.

I need to acknowledge that the quality built into some of those ink  
jet printers today is marvelous.   You can do wonders in Photo Shop  
to clean up old images.   Over the last year our former list member  
John Bromley has given me hundreds of prints he made from new digital  
images, as well as faded, scratched and dirty color slides and color  
negatives which he worked on in Photo Shop to produce absolutely  
stunning visuals.   The nice thing about Photo Shop is that John has  
also become quite adept at cleaning up distracting elements in  
pictures in minutes that used to take me forever with a paint brush  
or an air brush.   If a utility pole is in the wrong place or an  
automobile is clearly distracting and ruins the composition of a  
picture, John has become quite good at removing it and cloning the  
background over it in minutes.   This technique is also good if the  
photographer wasn't holding the camera level and you need to  
straighten the picture and rebuild part of a building.   I also  
remember one picture where the film tape fell off in a camera and  
wiped out a group of trees in a scene on top of Mount Royal in  
Montreal ... John rebuilt the trees simply by cloning other nearby  
trees.   That is a skill that is possible in Photo Shop that you  
could have never done properly with art colors and a paint brush.

Being run out of my house a in September meant I lost my photo lab.    
It's pretty clear to me that, when and if I ever get access to my  
negative files again, I'll probably be going digital.   It's too  
simply too easy compared to working in a photo laboratory.   But I do  
miss the lab.

On Nov 3, 2007, at 5:50 AM, Jim Holland wrote:

> This has been mentioned here before -- Digital vs. Film:::::::
>
>
>
> """Digital PROFITS--[emphasis added] surged to $82 million from $28
> million..."""
>
>
>   Eastman Kodak Posts 3Q Profit, Sales Dip
>
> By BEN DOBBIN, AP Business Writer
>
> Thursday, November 1, 2007
>
> (11-01) 14:42 PDT Rochester, N.Y. (AP) --
>
> Eastman *Kodak* Co., rounding the final bend in a four-year digital
> overhaul, swung to a $37 million profit in the third quarter  
> Thursday as
> digital revenue almost tripled and wider profit margins overshadowed a
> slight drop in overall sales.
>
> The photography products maker earned the equivalent of 13 cents a  
> share
> in the July-September quarter, mirroring a loss of $37 million, or 13
> cents a share, a year earlier when it also took hefty charges.
>
> Sales eased to $2.58 billion from $2.60 billion in last year's third
> quarter.
>
> Excluding one-time restructuring costs of $96 million, or 33 cents a
> share, operating profits came to $128 million, or 46 cents a share. On
> average, analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial forecast a profit  
> of 27
> cents a share on sales of $2.49 billion. The earnings estimates
> typically exclude one-time items.
>
> *Kodak* shares fell 90 cents, or 3.1 percent, to close at $27.76  
> Thursday.
>
> Digital profits surged to $82 million from $28 million as sales rose 1
> percent to $1.123 billion. In contrast, earnings from film, paper and
> other traditional, chemical-based products slumped from $110  
> million to
> $91 million as sales plunged 16 percent to $986 million.
>
> *Kodak* said gross profit margin rose to 26.4 percent for the quarter,
> compared with 25.1 percent a year earlier. It also reported a lower  
> debt
> level of $1.63 billion at the end of the quarter versus $2.78  
> billion at
> the end of 2006.
>
> "In my view, all the pieces are coming together," *Kodak*'s chief
> executive, Antonio Perez, said in a conference call with analysts. "We
> have created with all this work a much more cost-effective business
> model .... from which I believe we can launch and sustain profitable
> growth."
>
> Ulysses Yannas, a broker with Buckman, Buckman & Reid in New York,
> thinks *Kodak*'s transformation is "coming to a successful end" with
> increasingly profitable digital businesses "now taking over from film.
> They've survived the restructuring not as a second-rate company but  
> as a
> first-rate company. That's the important part."
>
> But analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research in Short Hills, N.J.,
> cautioned that operating profits in the quarter were driven by
> "leveraging cost-cutting in the film business" and one-time royalty
> payments from digital-camera technology.
>
> "It's still difficult to determine what the long-term, core operating
> profit of this company will be because ... we're not going to really
> know for a couple of years the scope of the investments they're making
> right now in things like inkjet printers and CMOS (image sensors in
> digital cameras)."
>
> The company reiterated its guidance for 2007 operating earnings of  
> $300
> million to $400 million.
>
> In 2003, *Kodak* acknowledged its analog businesses were sliding
> irreversibly and outlined a strategy to become a digital front  
> runner in
> photography and commercial printing by 2008. It embarked on a  
> nearly $3
> billion shopping spree but also began closing film, paper and other
> raw-materials plants around the world.
>
> Shifting from a shrinking film business into the highly competitive
> digital arena has proved costly. *Kodak* has piled up nearly $3.3
> billion in restructuring charges and accumulated $2.1 billion in net
> losses over the last 12 quarters — nine of which ended in deficits.
>
> In February, the photography pioneer said it was eliminating 3,000  
> more
> jobs, raising its planned tally of layoffs to 28,000 to 30,000 since
> 2004. But the company said Thursday that the layoff count will  
> actually
> end up between 27,000 and 28,000.
>
> By year-end, its work force could slip to around 34,000, less than  
> half
> what it was at the end of 2002.
>
> Revenues from consumer digital imaging products rose 1 percent in the
> quarter to $1.23 billion, helped by a 16 percent jump in sales of
> cameras, retail kiosks and other digital products but offset by its
> costly foray into a high-margin inkjet-printer market dominated by
> Hewlett Packard Co. *Kodak* is aiming to sell a half-million inkjet
> printers this year and reach $1 billion in sales by 2010.
>
> Graphic communications revenues rose 5 percent to $928 million, driven
> by improved sales of digital plates and software.
>
> In the first nine months of the year, *Kodak* earned $461 million, or
> $1.60 a share, compared with a loss of $617 million, or $2.15 a share,
> in the first three quarters of 2006. But sales fell to $7.2 billion  
> from
> $7.57 billion — reflecting the $2.35 billion sale in April of its
> 110-year-old health-imaging business.
>
> ___
>
> On the Net:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/24uskl
> *
> *
>
> http://www.*kodak*.com <http://www.kodak.com>
>
>
>
> ^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
> .
> .
> Jim Holland
> .
> Studying Pittsburgh Railways Company (PRCo)
> .
> ..............................From 1930 -- 1950
> .
> Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (PTM)
> .
> http://www.pa-trolley.org/
> .
> N.M.R.A.
> .
> http://www.nmra.org/
>
>