Kodak will stop manufacturing digital cameras.

[lpbk2713]

In another sign of the times Kodak, once the only name in photography in the USA, announced today they will
cease manufacture in that product line but they are considering licensing their name to other manufacturers.


Eastman Kodak Co., which invented the digital camera in 1975, is getting out of the digital camera business.
The bankrupt printing and imaging company announced Thursday that as part of its efforts to focus on profitable lines of business, it plans to get out of the digital camera, pocket video camera and digital picture frame business by July.

While Kodak itself may no longer offer these products, Kodak-brand cameras may continue on the market, as Rochester-based Kodak said it would explore licensing its name to another company offering such gear.


Link: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/story/2012-02-09/kodak-digital-camera-cuts/53024238/1


Rochester must be a dreary place these days. People there worked at Kodak for generations.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Anyone remember these ?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Kodak_Instamatic_60_(vers_1973).jpg

I don't remember Kodak ever making anything much better than amateur-level "fun" cameras. With the switch to digital, they didn't have any real technological advantage to carry over, and economy of scale went to the chip makers. High-end camera makers had big investments in optics/lens design they could adapt to digital products. Companies that stuffed camera chips into cheap plastic bodies faced a suddenly more competitive market with no great advantage carried over from earlier technology.

Marketing a cheap, simple product to the masses worked for over a century. But a tectonic shift in technology changed the whole market, and, somewhat oddly, it was the more specialized niche markets that survived. Kind of the opposite of biological evolution.

Just MHO.

[frylock]

2. i have a beautiful retina reflex s 35mm with a retina-tele-xenar lens (135mm) from the 50s..

scored it when my grampa, a 25-year employee of kodak, passed away. i think they did have a line of cameras that, while not professional-level, were a bit more advanced then the Brownies and other point-and-shoot cameras that they were famous for.

[MineralMan]

3. They also made a very nice 35mm rangefinder camera

back then. I still have one of them. It's not a Leica, but it's a very nice camera, and it still works great. Good lens, excellent construction, and dead reliable. It's the only 35mm camera I still have, and I use it when I want film quality photos. No more Kodachrome, sadly, but there's plenty of good 35mm films.