Hey everyone, I hope all of you are staying safe! I just wanted to say thanks so much for supporting my content through this weird time in our world and especially thanks for watching this video. July is going to be a big month as I have two more major videos coming out, both Abandoned episodes. Stay tuned!
I think it's important to remember what Kodak did. Before Kodak, no one smiled in photographs. Partly this was due to long shutter speeds and the difficulty of holding a smile for several minutes, but mostly this was because photographs were serious. Your picture was expensive and your image was being saved for posterity. So no one would do anything as whimsical as to smile in a photograph. But after Kodak, everyone had a camera and could take a picture at any time. People wanted to remember happy times of the past. So Kodak produced a world in which everyone wants to smile while being photographed.
It's because smiles aren't natural most of the time. It is a vastly learned response. Not all smiles are fake, there are legit happiness caused smiles. But not of them are just that 100% fake.
The fact Kodak even exists anymore is remarkable. Even if they had successfully made the jump to digital cameras, smartphones would have killed that industry anyways. Being able to change to focus on printing and still survive proves that they are still a great company, at least in creativity and spirit. Respect.
Now the only people who care about digital cameras are photographers,film makers, and vlogger not something the normal citizen would use over a smartphone
@staringcorgi6475 Yep. Not to mention how a lot of new modern phones absolutely dumpster even relatively newer cheaper dedicated cameras. To actually have a camera be better than the average phone, you'll be spending into the thousands.....which automatically pushes out the average consumer.
@@faizalf119 Your totally wrong about that. Kodak manufactured all their still cameras, movie cameras and projectors for about 80 years until competition grew from Japan and China. The Rochester (U.S.A.) manufacturing facility, the Kodak Toronto facility, where I worked for 29 years, and several other facilities around the world manufactured and assembled cameras. The need for competitive global manufacturing did occur around the time that digital photography exploded, so Kodak digital apparatus were manufactured by other camera manufacturers or dedicated Asian Kodak manufacturers. Kodak followed the vision of George Eastman to produce economical photographic equipment to make photography simple, affordable and available to the general public. Kodak never saw themselves in the high-end camera market, but was happy to provide the film products for those cameras you mentioned. People are rarely aware of the scope of products that Kodak and The Eastman Chemical Company produced. Cameras and photographic apparatus contributed less than 5 percent to Kodak's total sales.
Kodak's biggest mistake (besides suppressing the digital photography they invented) was panic-selling all those patents. Every camera, printer, and photocopier you touch today, has original Kodak patents in it. They lost a lot of guaranteed revenue they could've used while they transitioned. They were so used to winning that they didn't realize the severity of their wound.
As a Canadian, I see the downfall of Kodak starting when Fuji Film started to built parking lot film booths, where you could leave your film and get it back the same day. Kodak made you mail in your film or leave it at a store to come back two weeks later. Fuji film cost a lot less and was just as good.
@@IO-zz2xy: As a mayoral candidate in Welland, Ontario, I used a photocopier to make campaign statements. The federal government removed a defamatory libel law used to arrest me and the Province of Ontario created two new laws based on my political experience. You really can't buy a photocopier any more. I see that technology as being suppressed because it's too easy for the public to use. They are now being built for a cost over $5,000 and you have to have the maintenance man come over every time you use it. Retailers don't stock them.
My Dad was a lead Engineer at Kodak in Rochester NY, he told me that on.a regular basis Fuji technology thieves/spys were encountered walking around with cameras taking pics of the huge multi story fully automated building sized machines for making color photography film . They usually would not get away but im sure a lot of IP was stolen over the years
@@jpslayermayor9293: Here in Ontario, Ontario Hydro was run by a man from the United States. He set up a deal for Ontario Hydro to buy an electricity provider in the States. An American judge stopped the deal, saying Ontario politics could influence the deal in the long term, and fined Ontario Hydro $124,000,000, American. The executive quit and became the new executive officer of The Tennessee Valley Association, the most historic hydro company in America. The new Ontario Hydro head said you won't see this fine in your bills. You might think this is irrelevant, but I got tired of typing about Donald Trumps real estate project in Toronto.
@@BuschWhackerReviews Almost as fire as your UA-cam channel. All of my excitement to see one of my favorite NASCAR UA-camrs aside, it really is sad what happened to Kodak. They were so iconic, important, and provided some nice NASCAR liveries. We still have a Kodak camera circa 1960s down in our basement somewhere. I don't think it works, but I remember finding it while searching for some lightbulbs.
The Coca-Cola Company not only licenses a lot of their retro imagery but also uses it for their promotional gifts consistently, year after year, just saying... What you say does hold true in many other cases, though.
To me, Kodak dying was like Sears closing alot of stores and Kmart going away. They were places and things that were big parts of my childhood that I always thought would be there. Kind of a comfort as I aged. Then they started going away and my nostalgia kicked in
I remember when I was a kid going to walmart and seeing the shelves by the registers full of disposable kodak cameras and film the nostalgia definitely kicks in
@@WickedPhase I remember as a grammar school kid how everywhere you went in tourist Southern California, Kodak was king and there was a smaller competitor named Fuji Film that was trying hard. Kodak even had a blimp although it was smaller than Goodyear.
@@WickedPhase Same here, and every gas station had them as well at 3 times the markup. Another company that was not mentioned here is Polaroid, my family used their instant cameras a lot back in the 80's. My Grandfather even had the first commercial model B/W Polaroid instant camera.
In the Philippines Kodak is synonymous with "take a picture of me" in the Visayan region we usually say "Kodaki ko bi" which means take a picture of me, so Kodak was a huge part of history
I guess it’s the same situation as LEMMiNO: if they get signed they will lose their freedom of creativity, plus it will be behind a paywall meaning they may lose fans who watch here on UA-cam.
1st mistake: not jumping in to digital cameras 2nd mistake: not investing enough on the high end of digital cameras. If they had, they would have kept a good name.
Imagine if they had leveraged the patent on the digital camera in the 80s when it became viable. They could have ridden the wave into the early 2000s and a smart CEO could have leveraged it into making cell phone sensors. The very technology that put them under, replacing the likes of Toshiba and Sony who make many of them now. Or an even savvier CEO would have invested in the storage cards for those digital cameras/phones. That would have positioned Kodak to be a potential player in the Flash/nand storage boom of recent computing. Turning SD cards buisness into SSDs.
@SteelRodent Thats the point. THEY INVENTED THE TECHNOLOGY. They COULD have pushed it. They had the patents. They had the research. They could have controlled the digital camera and optics industry, or at least a large market share of it, right up until the cell phone camera killed it. They CHOSE not to
Which is a shame because I'm one of those weird people that really enjoys film photography and then all honesty we don't need another company making the same generic digital camera
@@TwoDollarGararge I'm right there with you. I do photography on the side and there is a big trend im seeing in people go back to film. I even see people manipulating digital pictures to have that old asthetic
@@brandonj.harris yeah humans have that tendency they have a process that is imperfect then they find a better process that's more perfect but then they enjoy the imperfect process after
Imagine if Kodak CEO didn't have the "Michael Scott The Office" mindset, they would have their own Smartphone by now with great cameras challenging Samsung, Sony and Huawei.
And they'd still be relevant in the camera industry i think it's kind of funny how they were out competed by their own invention. Imagine if kodak released a digital camera in the 70s.
Michael Bootlegger Lol ok captain obvious, are you stupid? If they didn’t reach those agreements and pursue other ventures, they would be liquidated. Leveraging Hollywood to continue to use film instead of RED cameras is adapting to change. What part of that do you not understand? Had they not reached agreements in film production, they would be finished. “The agreements make it possible for Kodak to continue to manufacture motion picture film while also pursuing new opportunities to leverage film production technologies in growth applications, such as touchscreens for smartphones and tablet computers. Kodak also went on to state that “this also positions the company to remain the premier supplier of camera negative, intermediate stock for post production, and archival and print film.”
@@qazmko22 ".. those things aren't really that old..." = your one opinion vs many other opinions, dude. Get that into your head. Whats old to one person is not old to another. How do you define an "antique?"
San Francisco sure, something being old is relative. But I just looked it up, it’s a movie from 1993. Kodak was founded over 100 years earlier, simply in relation to Kodak it’s not old at all. Kodak was founded 3 years before the brothers Lumière even invented the cinema. A 30 year old movie doesn’t qualify as old in that regard at all.
Honestly, your attempt at trolling is absolutely pathetic. There's not a single person alive today in 2020 who can say "Dracula" the novel isn't old. I mean is this really what you do with your spare time? Seriously? You can't even be bothered to look for at least a mildly controversial comment to disagree with, in the hopes that some random person on the internet will get upset and start arguing so you can intentionally try to get them to lose their cool online. Really? You're THAT lazy that you can't even put in a tiny bit of effort into your trolling? Honestly, that's the saddest part. This is the only reply you'll get from me. Go use someone else to stroke your sad ego to make you feel better about yourself. Or, crazy idea, actually go out and maybe do something genuinely productive with your time that'll actually make you feel good.
@@johndrews206 Ha ha you live here you know how it was . When the English men who purchased French,s took the company apart it left an impact . French,'s Potato Pancake Mix was the Best . I still cannot find a substitute for it . Thank you for your memories .
Something very similar happened to Polaroid. They were bought and sold many times over and eventually stopped making cameras and film and purged all the factories. A very small group of employees banded together, calling themselves the Impossible Project, and saved the last factory before it was destroyed and worked for years to remake instant film. Now this year that same group of people got so popular they bought back the Polaroid corporation.
Ooof. My dad spent 28 years with Kodak before splitting off with Carestream Health (the medical and dental xray and now digital xray department). I was born and raised in Rochester NY. This one hits close to home.
My mom worked for Fuji Film for 32 years so she was there when Kodak went under. There was some surprise but mostly empathy at Fuji when Kodak declared bankruptcy. No one cheered, no one was glad because they all knew if it could happen to Kodak, it could happen to them.
Heyyyyyy what’s up guys! I am also from Rochester (specifically victor) but I’m guessing y’all were also just as excited as I was when this vid poped up in my feed😂
Reminds me of Blockbuster above all other corporations. Blockbuster leaned to the idea that digital video and streaming platforms/companies such as Amazon would never overtake the physicality of video and people would rather come to brick and mortar stores rather than shop online, refusing to accommodate their customers with a high quality rental website. Unfortunately, the times change so fast in the 21st century that companies holding onto older ideals are almost sure to perish with the times they hold onto so dearly.
@SteelRodent Plus Blockbuster _did_ try to get into streaming. It was just a.) very early (c. 2000), when Internet access was less common, bandwidth was a lot more limited, and they were still inventing some of the tech needed, and b.) they partnered with Enron to develop that tech, meaning it crashed and burned when Enron did.
I’m not the only one that thought of Blockbuster. Companies that refuse to change with the times tend to hit a brick wall later on. People quickly adapt to the latest in technology as it becomes more and more convenient. Less maintenance, less hassle, time saving.
I'm originally from Rochester and all my neighbors and most of my family worked for Kodak. One of the biggest downfalls they had was not listening to their engineers. When my dad was working for their space division he knew a guy who invented a photo sensing sunscreen and they turned him away. He also knew someone that helped created the first disposable camera and originally management shelved it until they thought it was worth while to bring it up. Kodak's biggest issue was that they never really looked to the future and were contempt with where they were. And that saddens me because I grew up around their industrial parks in Rochester and remember going to Red Wings games in the summer and seeing the famous Kodak sign on top of their building as a glorious beacon. Now just like the rest of rochester, it's just a shell of what it used to be.
Dude, I could not say this any better than you did. As someone in the film industry in the 1980s and 1990s, Kodak's demise can be summed up with one word -- COMPLACENCY.
And now Rochester is considered In the top tier of impoverished and dangerous cities in the US. I'm glad my parents didn't live to see what happened to our city.
“To my friends, my work is done. Why wait?” I don’t relate to this from experience but imagining being in his shoes, this makes total sense. He knew that he had made all of his historical accomplishments and that he would make no more, so why wait to be old and break down physically? What was the point? That hits hard, understanding what he was thinking, he was kind of right. And how he was able to explain that in just 9 words is incredibly impactful.
Scotch , He was Sick and in Pain . I am not Happy about it but I was not in his Shoes . The Luger was . 30 Cal He is Buried off Lake ave Right next to the Park .
Hope you eventually talk about the Hotel Haegumgang in your Abandoned series. It was the world’s first floating hotel. It was a Four Seasons floating above the Great Barrier Reef. Currently sitting abandoned in my country
You should’ve mentioned the directors that endorsed Kodak by buying out their 35mm motion picture film for movies created by Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino. This made Kodak generate profit.
No movie holds my unabated attention like an old Kodak reel & projector. I love the skips, random fuzz, the odd colors of fading...... There is nothing like them. ❤️🥰😍
Landmarks Kodak missed: Introduction of filetypes for pictures: .jpg .gif .png These should have been .kdk Introduction of photo manipulation software: It should have been Kodak Photoshop. Even if they couldn't invent it, they should have bought it, they had the money back then. Introduction of face cam/web cam: Mine says logitech. Why doesn't it say Kodak? All reasons Kodak isn't around much anymore.
@@AshrakAhmed that's more like it. Although Photoshop was first released back in 1990, so Kodak should have started switching to digital way earlier than it actually did (at least a decade earlier).
And don't forget Kodak Gallery after they acquired Ofoto. 3-million subscribers at one point. This was prior to Instagram, and when Instagram came along a primary feature everyone liked was the ability to mimic the look of film. The other of course being the social aspect. Kodak could have done both of those, but Kodak was a lot more close-minded about it, wanting to perfect the color, not make it look vintage, and to them the social aspect was sharing digital photo albums with family. They were not thinking big enough, and were playing it safe.
Imagine if Kodak had realised the lightning they caught in the bottle in inventing the first digital camera in the 1970's, and had actually invested the time and money into perfecting the technology THEN, instead of running away in fear of the technology and having to then play catch-up in the early 2000's when other brands had already surpassed them in the technology. Perhaps the digital age would have arrived a decade earlier. They only have themselves to blame.
No, that would not have happened. At best, they could have been a few years ahead of the market. Because even if they developed a great camera, it wouldn't have had the batteries, storage media and computers capable of supporting and utilizing the data. How would you have viewed or shared the pictures?
@@kcgunesq - AA batteries ran most cameras until the late 2000s/early 2010s (P&S or many DSLR). Photoshop initial release was 1990, Storage media could have been created by Kodka instead of Sandisk/Intel/Toshiba - CompactFlash/Miniature Card/SmartMedia. To view and share maybe invest in a dominant Operating System at the time or a simple solution, purchase Commodore Computer which would have gained their multimedia Amiga computer... But Kodak poured billions into Advanced Photo System that launched in 1996
@@detroitcoffeeartdetroit6502 Actually, my recollection of cameras through the mid-aughts was that while AA's were common, they were far from universal. I know we owned a couple of Panasonic and Sony P&S's that used proprietary batteries. My older manual cameras used button cells. My D300 could use AA's with an expensive adapter, but shipped with a proprietary battery. But the main point is that without the processors and memory that didn't exist, it would have remained a niche even if they somehow developed sensors that were several generations better than what we had in 2000 (e.g., the sensor in the D300), as very few people would have been willing to wait minutes for each photo to process or display.
Kodak, the reason Journey Into Imagination took a nosedive and the reason a Mt Fuji coaster isn’t a thing. Seriously, I wish the Japan pavilion had that coaster
Great, more proof that the original "Journey into Imagination" was the attraction that creeped me out as a baby when my parents pushed me in with them.
It's weird to think back on the days when you'd go on a trip or to an event and had a limited number of photos you could take and you wouldn't know how they came out until you got home and had them developed. It's also weird to see that some parking lots still have a structure that was obviously one of those standalone one hour photo places.
George Eastman didn't invent the first camera or the first film, but he did move the marvel of photography from the hands of the professional to average Joe public. George once stated that he envisioned a time in the future when every person would carry a camera, just as they carry a fountain pen now. His vision came true, but he didn't see the camera being integrated into every cell phone.
I drive past the old facility in Rochester when I go to my college buddies house. It is super depressing to see such a massive factory sit mostly abandoned. Part of it still runs though as it is leased by some electronics company.
@David Wang Obsolescence of products and technologies have been happening since the beginning of civilizations. AI is in our near future and is likely to render more technologies and products obsolete that we have ever seen in history.
I remember Kodak. My mom bought one an it was a fun thing to have. The new generation will never experience the thrill of going to a developer for the finished pictures
Does anybody remember the Pitbull song (Give Me Everything) that began with “Picture that with a Kodak, or better yet go to Time Square take a picture of me with a Kodak”?
2 things. 1. Keep up the phenomenal work. You do an amazing job with each video and I genuinely enjoy them. 2. This series has really made me sit back and think about how much things have changed. There use to be thousands of brands but a good 80-85% of those companies have folded.
America sent them overseas and sat idle while the digital revolution consolidated them. Voters didn't demand government do they're supposed to and prevent monopoly.
Long time fan, first time caller. I really love that you film your own ads for your sponsors. I can’t tell you how cool that it is and how much better it is for your sponsors as well given that I’m more inclined to keep watching.
50 off Kodak ads, this is crap, he talks bullshit, and then ad, or is it content????? MAD COMMUNITY IT IS!!!!! Kodak chrome killed them, 1990 was digital! Fuji was 1970!
It's wild, and depressing, to see how much has happened since their heyday, especially as someone who lives in Rochester. My first cameras were film. If people are in Rochester, definitely recommend checking out the Eastman house, it's a great local museum on Eastman Kodak Company's history, as well as Eastman's personal history. Gorgeous architecture, cool organs, camera history, art museum, the Eastman house has it all.
Here in the UK about the only time i see the Kodak name now, is on packs of cheap AA batteries in the pound shops (Dollar stores). But i remember family holidays back in the 70's where at the end of the holiday we would send our rolls of Kodak film in for processing, eagerly awaiting the photos to arrive. Things are very different now, back then we would end up with cupboard draws full of old photos, now we just have them all on a hard drive.
Ha! The more things change, the more they stay the same… Old family snapshots stored in shoeboxes hidden on top shelves in closets, or… New family snapshots stored on hard drives on computers. Probably either set gets looked at with about the same frequency. (But I bet there are a helluva lot more digital photos than those from film, digital being “free.”)
Definitely a classic example of a company outpaced by technology...same as the typewriter companies. BUT, I can say that my parent’s old Kodachrome slides from the 1950’s have the most vibrant and captivating colors that can never be captured with digital photography. I’m in the process of trying to preserve them now...
As a photographer, and a child of the late 80s/early 90s this hit me in a weird way. I remember taking so many rolls of film to get developed from vacations, sharing them in class days when returning to school, and yet a company that was so pivotal to capturing much of my childhood has been resigned to a fallen icon. Perhaps this will spur me on, to repair and get my grandmorhers 1920s/1930s era Kodak running again. Theres a bit of nostalgia that I do long for.
Yes, Their lifelong journey of theft disguised as charity is finally over. Thanks to the Prime Minister's cronyism (finance minister's involvement), and outright corruption. All at the expense of the taxpayer who unknowingly/unwillingly funds this abuse of power. Absolutely disgusting.
I'm a total camera and photography nerd and absolutely loved this. I own more Kodaks than I can count. I'm always so weirded out when I see some low budget random Kodak electronic device in a resale or outlet store. It's almost like an identity crises. I'm glad that they at least still make some film products, it makes one less (film) thing for people to hoard and resale for 10x more. (But of course even now there are other and often more affordable options than Kodak for film 😅)
I went to college in Rochester in 1991, and I can't really convey just how much of the city was dominated by Kodak. It was wild. The city was lucky to have spawned so many other tech companies around Kodak, otherwise losing them would have killed it.
As to their collapse, I think it's too simplistic to say they were delusional or blind. When it comes to photography, they were the 800lb gorilla, and while the market was changing, they still felt like anything they did would be a massive force in changing it. It was quite literally killing the goose that laid the golden egg, and they weren't prepared for that kind of risk. They were looking at their peers like IBM and Xerox and their struggles, and couldn't see how to handle big transitions better. They unfortunately delayed big decisions until they were taken out of their hands.
Kodak was one of the few American company which had a big impact in India. Our first camera was a Kodak KB-10 which my father got for just 1000Rupees. Posters of the Bollywood movies had the line "Shot on Kodak film and Camera" written at the bottom. Here at one point Camera= Kodak. We miss Kodak here in India too.
i’m so glad you made this video! as an upstate new yorker i’ve always been interested in kodak as a company because it feels so close to home. having one of my favorite channels talk about it is so nice! thank you for all that you do 💕
This guy is telling all about the US, but then Fuji? Fuji is bigger outside the US, but KODAK is not for the US only! Weirdo people! Why you need this community? What is he telling? How big was Kodak? lol 1990 was Digital! Fuji took them over in 1970 ish already! Demanding Kodak Chrome services killed them!
I lived at Weston Rd and Eglinton Ave and passed that building twice a day for work. I’m so glad they kept and moved the building instead of demolishing it.
I worked there as a high tech exec from 1998 to 2000. Since software was not a core business we were in a corner of building #5 where the movie film guys were. It was fascinating to see Hollywood directors coming in to see demos of new film product. They sold $100m worth of movie film per year in Toronto. The manufacturing plants were also interesting. Imagine a 96 acre parcel of land in the middle of Toronto still dedicated to photo film/paper manufacturing in 2000. But before condos could go up they had to clean up the hazardous waste areas. In the 1900s they just dumped the chemicals into Black Creek.
Great video -- thank you! My dad moved to Rochester for a job at Kodak, and worked there for years, so this hits home for me (literally). My take on it -- Kodak missed the boat when they said "we're a camera company" or "we're a film company", instead of saying "we're a chemical company whose largest product is film". You have thousands of the smartest chemists in the world, all in the same town, and you can't make something new with that? Instead, they spun off the chemical company! What a management disaster.
My dad was a VP at Kodak, 30 years with the company, imagine how we feel. My dad got the last executive comp package when he quit shortly before the bankruptcy.
I'm pretty sure Kodak would still be a decent market player in the digital camera market if it weren't for smartphones. Once smartphones came around and finally got decent cameras around 2012 or so, that pretty much killed the consumer market for separate cameras. Even my mom, who wanted to use her separate digital camera when she got an iPhone 4 because it was better, eventually stopped using the camera because it was easier to just use her phone. As soon as I got my first iPod touch in 2014, I've never looked back at digital cameras.
I've been using digital cameras from 2012-2017 before I got my first iPhone and started to use it as a camera because it was more convenient than having to wait for my camera to open when I wanted to take a photo.
I am kind of torn on this one, I often use Kodak film to this day and love the colors it produces, which to me feel more vibrant than the results from many digital cameras ... but I know charging nearly $10 for one roll of film is not a sustainable business model. On top of that playing off on nostalgia does not win new customers and will not retain current customers a few years down the road. I wish Kodack would succeed... but it also does not seem very likely given the volatility of trends and the cost and inconvenience of using film in this age. To me it really feels like Kodak has not learned a thing since the late 1990's.
One of their current factories is behind where I used to live here in Rochester, so this is familiar territory for me. Not to mention that my senior paper in college was Kodak's effects on Rochester.
As a lifelong resident of Rochester, NY, I have had the strange and unfortunate privilege of witnessing the demise of Kodak. I remember the 1,600-acre Kodak Park manufacturing complex at its peak in the 80s/early 90s. I have also been present at the demolition of many of its giant manufacturing buildings in the 2000s. The complex now sits as a shell of its former self, though in recent times it has seen new life serving other purposes. I will say that Kodak Park is (was) an absolute marvel, a self-contained city with its own power plants (it had 2), its own railroad system, its own sewer system, its own fire/police force, etc... Each time I drive through the enormous complex I still cannot believe a place like this ever existed. Something truly mind-blowing and mysterious about it. Thank you for this documentary. Very well done...
Hey, I live in Rochester! I love driving by the Kodak Center, its so cool to see it, and plays now and events are held at it instead of the main building collapsing!
I remember using those little printers as a kid waiting for each color to be processed. We were a very Kodak driven family so it’s crazy to just see them wiped out now.
Thank you so much for all the effort and care you put into this series. I’ve been watching Abandoned and Bankrupt all throughout the lockdown and I feel I have learnt so much. It’s rekindled my love of architecture, product design and history. Thank you!!
great vid Jake AND BSF!! quite interesting. I was born in 80 so i feel like I was on the tail end of one tech culture to another I kind of got to see stuff as it was , like cassettes , corded phones, CRT tvs, PC's weren't really a thing, Atari was was big, then eventually NES.....etc, etc.... then through the 80's and 90's all of that slowly went away or transformed to what we have today. I feel like a lot of people probably 5-10 years younger than me just wouldn't know even half of it. Pretty Crazy I think there's definitely still a place for film photography/video. Kodak was pretty slow to realizing that. sure they tried with digital but were slow to respond but maybe they just never were going to be a digital giant regardless. looks like they're doing pretty well with that they're doing now , but for the most part i think in a lot of people's minds they'll always be a film company
I had a Kodak digital camera from the 1970s. When the whole nostalgia craze kicked in for film I sold it for$200 so I could buy a commercial camera. The collector who bought it said it's the only camera in his collection that fully functional and he uses it. I decided not to sell the other cameras I had
Er no. You did not have a Kodak digital camera from the 70’s. They first went on sale to the public in the mid-90’s. (Although as shown in the video a single prototype was made in the 70’s, which is now in a museum).
I still shoot film in all sorts of formats - 35mm, 120, 4x5… Kodak still makes it all, and I love it. I never want to shoot digital - the process of shooting and developing your own film is something that digital cannot replicate. I really do hope Kodak keeps taking advantage of the fact that film demand is coming back for the aesthetic and nostalgia!
As a photography enthusiast who use both film and digital even with kodak and fuji stopping making films it gave rise to "indie" film roll makers who made film rolls for enthusiasts. Of course I still mourn the loss of the kodachrome and fujichrome line.
My first camera was a Kodak Playful Easyshare pocket camera. It was a tiny camera and I would commonly sneak it in to my elementary school with friends. It was no bigger than a small matchbox and I remember bringing it to Ceder Point back in 2011. I still have the camera and despite it's rough shape, it still works.
interesting: NO mention of Polaroid, which was always a thorn in their side, especially when Polaroid sued them successfully for infringing on the instant self developing film and camera patents.
As a consumer product company, Kodak reached 4 billion dollars in sales by the end of 60s, and 16.3 billions by the 90s, really astronomical for its time. All of this plus its innovative corporate culture in its early years, and how it revolutionized and dominated normal people’s lives, all reminded me of Apple’s trillion dollar worth and its effect on today’s people. At least Kodak was successfully for over a hundred years before it got too comfortable and failed. Compared it to how people is already criticizing Apple for being less innovative and getting too comfortable- it made me wonder if the history is going to repeat itself, and maybe in less than 50 years Apple would also fail and become a remotely familiar name to the younger generations. NOTHING is ever too big to fail..
I grew up and still live in Rochester, NY where this all started. When I was a kid in the early 80s, at least a third of all the students in my class had at least one parent who worked for Kodak. To illustrate, in 1983, 14% of all jobs in my county was a position at Kodak. And I could tell they were paid very well through bonuses when these Kodak kids showed up to class with the latest and greatest toys for show and tell.
I worked as a photo tech for 4 years while working at Target. We only used Kodak. Processing film will always be a favorite memory of mine. There were a lot of steps and chemicals involved but seeing the process take place from a roll in a camera to an actual photograph on paper was always so amazing to see :)
Hey everyone, I hope all of you are staying safe! I just wanted to say thanks so much for supporting my content through this weird time in our world and especially thanks for watching this video. July is going to be a big month as I have two more major videos coming out, both Abandoned episodes. Stay tuned!
Thanks for what you do. I support a different UA-cam content producer a month. I will see you on patreon soon. Still want a BSF PIN!
stay safe and healthy, Also excited for your other projects to
@@QuietJ0Y Thank you! I'm working on those pins!
Will we be getting anohter abbonded episode soon?
Thanks Jake for everything
I think it's important to remember what Kodak did. Before Kodak, no one smiled in photographs. Partly this was due to long shutter speeds and the difficulty of holding a smile for several minutes, but mostly this was because photographs were serious. Your picture was expensive and your image was being saved for posterity. So no one would do anything as whimsical as to smile in a photograph. But after Kodak, everyone had a camera and could take a picture at any time. People wanted to remember happy times of the past. So Kodak produced a world in which everyone wants to smile while being photographed.
Poetic.
Now we all hide the pain on reflex.
I saw research which suggested that people who smiled in early photographs were clinically insane. (Watch A Million Ways to Die in the West.)
Eastman, not like “East Man Kodak.”
It's because smiles aren't natural most of the time.
It is a vastly learned response. Not all smiles are fake, there are legit happiness caused smiles. But not of them are just that 100% fake.
I wrote a case study about Kodak’s issues and downfall at university which made watching this video twice as enjoyable
Did you learn anything this second time around? lol 😂
Isn't it just great when that happens
same
Pretty cool to hear that
So you're a socialist?
"To my friends, my work is done, why wait?"
Jesus christ, didn't expect that emotional dropkick
I'll remember that one.
Plot twist. Killed for inheritance.
My gut sank.
That was unexpected and heavy.
I’m at a feeling of disbelief.
The fact Kodak even exists anymore is remarkable. Even if they had successfully made the jump to digital cameras, smartphones would have killed that industry anyways. Being able to change to focus on printing and still survive proves that they are still a great company, at least in creativity and spirit. Respect.
Now the only people who care about digital cameras are photographers,film makers, and vlogger not something the normal citizen would use over a smartphone
@staringcorgi6475 Yep. Not to mention how a lot of new modern phones absolutely dumpster even relatively newer cheaper dedicated cameras. To actually have a camera be better than the average phone, you'll be spending into the thousands.....which automatically pushes out the average consumer.
@@Shyvorixuh no. Digital cameras obliterate phone cameras due to sensor and glass size.
I was always surprised Kodak didn't strike a deal with Apple or Samsung to become their camera makers for the phones
Rumors said that It was close to make something with Motorola ...but nothing of real happened.
Kodak didn't even make their own digital cameras. Most were rebranded Chinon products.
Most Kodak camera manufacture was moved to China years ago.
Because kodak never make their own camera. Camera enthusiasts will always point at brands like nikon, Canon, leica, zeiss, and more for better camera.
@@faizalf119 Your totally wrong about that. Kodak manufactured all their still cameras, movie cameras and projectors for about 80 years until competition grew from Japan and China. The Rochester (U.S.A.) manufacturing facility, the Kodak Toronto facility, where I worked for 29 years, and several other facilities around the world manufactured and assembled cameras. The need for competitive global manufacturing did occur around the time that digital photography exploded, so Kodak digital apparatus were manufactured by other camera manufacturers or dedicated Asian Kodak manufacturers. Kodak followed the vision of George Eastman to produce economical photographic equipment to make photography simple, affordable and available to the general public. Kodak never saw themselves in the high-end camera market, but was happy to provide the film products for those cameras you mentioned. People are rarely aware of the scope of products that Kodak and The Eastman Chemical Company produced. Cameras and photographic apparatus contributed less than 5 percent to Kodak's total sales.
Kodak's biggest mistake (besides suppressing the digital photography they invented) was panic-selling all those patents. Every camera, printer, and photocopier you touch today, has original Kodak patents in it. They lost a lot of guaranteed revenue they could've used while they transitioned. They were so used to winning that they didn't realize the severity of their wound.
Kodak turned down the inventor of the photocopier, see my comment above.
As a Canadian, I see the downfall of Kodak starting when Fuji Film started to built parking lot film
booths, where you could leave your film and get it back the same day. Kodak made you mail in your
film or leave it at a store to come back two weeks later. Fuji film cost a lot less and was just as good.
@@IO-zz2xy: As a mayoral candidate in Welland, Ontario, I used a photocopier to make
campaign statements. The federal government removed a defamatory libel law used to
arrest me and the Province of Ontario created two new laws based on my political experience.
You really can't buy a photocopier any more. I see that technology as being suppressed because
it's too easy for the public to use. They are now being built for a cost over $5,000 and you
have to have the maintenance man come over every time you use it. Retailers don't stock them.
My Dad was a lead Engineer at Kodak in Rochester NY, he told me that on.a regular basis Fuji technology thieves/spys were encountered walking around with cameras taking pics of the huge multi story fully automated building sized machines for making color photography film . They usually would not get away but im sure a lot of IP was stolen over the years
@@jpslayermayor9293: Here in Ontario, Ontario Hydro was run by a man from the United States. He set up a deal for Ontario Hydro to buy an electricity provider in the States. An American judge stopped the deal, saying Ontario politics could influence the deal in the long term, and fined Ontario Hydro $124,000,000, American. The executive quit and became the new executive officer of The Tennessee Valley Association, the most historic hydro company in America. The new Ontario Hydro head said you won't see this fine in your bills. You might think this is irrelevant, but I got tired of typing about Donald Trumps real estate project in Toronto.
When you start selling retro T shirts to relive the past....
It's acknowledgement the past will never return.
this is deep
Those T-shirt’s are pretty fire though
BuschWhacker Reviews facts them shits hard
@@BuschWhackerReviews Almost as fire as your UA-cam channel.
All of my excitement to see one of my favorite NASCAR UA-camrs aside, it really is sad what happened to Kodak. They were so iconic, important, and provided some nice NASCAR liveries. We still have a Kodak camera circa 1960s down in our basement somewhere. I don't think it works, but I remember finding it while searching for some lightbulbs.
The Coca-Cola Company not only licenses a lot of their retro imagery but also uses it for their promotional gifts consistently, year after year, just saying... What you say does hold true in many other cases, though.
To me, Kodak dying was like Sears closing alot of stores and Kmart going away. They were places and things that were big parts of my childhood that I always thought would be there. Kind of a comfort as I aged. Then they started going away and my nostalgia kicked in
I remember when I was a kid going to walmart and seeing the shelves by the registers full of disposable kodak cameras and film the nostalgia definitely kicks in
HeyItsMeDaisy I haven’t seen those in years,
Times sure do change
@@WickedPhase I remember as a grammar school kid how everywhere you went in tourist Southern California, Kodak was king and there was a smaller competitor named Fuji Film that was trying hard. Kodak even had a blimp although it was smaller than Goodyear.
@@WickedPhase Same here, and every gas station had them as well at 3 times the markup. Another company that was not mentioned here is Polaroid, my family used their instant cameras a lot back in the 80's. My Grandfather even had the first commercial model B/W Polaroid instant camera.
So i should expect Walmart and Amazon to be gone in the next 20 years? Sounds great.
In the Philippines Kodak is synonymous with "take a picture of me" in the Visayan region we usually say "Kodaki ko bi" which means take a picture of me, so Kodak was a huge part of history
I think Netflix needs to sign BSF to a streaming service. Just imagine what he could do with a big budget. Such great content.
I guess it’s the same situation as LEMMiNO: if they get signed they will lose their freedom of creativity, plus it will be behind a paywall meaning they may lose fans who watch here on UA-cam.
@@imblack011 chill out lmao. You’re not entitled to anything he’s gotta make money too. I’m not in charge anyways so calm down.
Later video bright sun films file for bankruptcy protection
Then someone will end up doing video documentary about him......
Cases of binge-watching would skyrocket
1st mistake: not jumping in to digital cameras
2nd mistake: not investing enough on the high end of digital cameras. If they had, they would have kept a good name.
Imagine if they had leveraged the patent on the digital camera in the 80s when it became viable. They could have ridden the wave into the early 2000s and a smart CEO could have leveraged it into making cell phone sensors. The very technology that put them under, replacing the likes of Toshiba and Sony who make many of them now. Or an even savvier CEO would have invested in the storage cards for those digital cameras/phones. That would have positioned Kodak to be a potential player in the Flash/nand storage boom of recent computing. Turning SD cards buisness into SSDs.
@SteelRodent Thats the point. THEY INVENTED THE TECHNOLOGY. They COULD have pushed it. They had the patents. They had the research. They could have controlled the digital camera and optics industry, or at least a large market share of it, right up until the cell phone camera killed it. They CHOSE not to
Which is a shame because I'm one of those weird people that really enjoys film photography and then all honesty we don't need another company making the same generic digital camera
@@TwoDollarGararge I'm right there with you. I do photography on the side and there is a big trend im seeing in people go back to film. I even see people manipulating digital pictures to have that old asthetic
@@brandonj.harris yeah humans have that tendency they have a process that is imperfect then they find a better process that's more perfect but then they enjoy the imperfect process after
“My work is done. Why wait?”
Chilling.
I thought it was brilliant.
I believe it to be morbidly poetic.
He went out rhe way he wanted to. I can respect that.
He has been a benefactor....
Imagine if Kodak CEO didn't have the "Michael Scott The Office" mindset, they would have their own Smartphone by now with great cameras challenging Samsung, Sony and Huawei.
@@eastindies2937 Unwillingness to adopt new technologies and advancements.
funny how you mention the office when jim is this video at 9:02
@@jemoederiseenperzik Andy samberg is next to him
And they'd still be relevant in the camera industry i think it's kind of funny how they were out competed by their own invention. Imagine if kodak released a digital camera in the 70s.
the huge issue with kodak was legacy...they still used to make and develop kodachrome up until the end i think
As a Rochesterarian I can’t tell you how much of an impact this and Xerox’s bankruptcy affected the city
I buy their paper. Interesting to know.
The #1 rule of business should be “adapt or die”.
@Michael Zootlegger I think he meant that the company will die in relevance.
@Michael Zootlegger ok.
Do you feel smart when you come up with empty phrases like that?
Michael Bootlegger Yeah, Kodak adapted. Those 2015 contracts is what saved their company. What’s the confusion?
Michael Bootlegger Lol ok captain obvious, are you stupid? If they didn’t reach those agreements and pursue other ventures, they would be liquidated. Leveraging Hollywood to continue to use film instead of RED cameras is adapting to change. What part of that do you not understand? Had they not reached agreements in film production, they would be finished.
“The agreements make it possible for Kodak to continue to manufacture motion picture film while also pursuing new opportunities to leverage film production technologies in growth applications, such as touchscreens for smartphones and tablet computers. Kodak also went on to state that “this also positions the company to remain the premier supplier of camera negative, intermediate stock for post production, and archival and print film.”
I'll never forget reading Bram Stoker's "Dracula," and in the novel; Kodak was mentioned. Had no idea the company was that old until then.
Or that Bram Stoker's Dracula is that new.. both of those things aren't really that old.
@@qazmko22 ".. those things aren't really that old..." = your one opinion vs many other opinions, dude. Get that into your head. Whats old to one person is not old to another. How do you define an "antique?"
@@sanfrancisco9661 your one opinion vs. many other opinions, dude. Get that into your head. Whats old to one person is not old to another.
San Francisco sure, something being old is relative. But I just looked it up, it’s a movie from 1993. Kodak was founded over 100 years earlier, simply in relation to Kodak it’s not old at all. Kodak was founded 3 years before the brothers Lumière even invented the cinema. A 30 year old movie doesn’t qualify as old in that regard at all.
Honestly, your attempt at trolling is absolutely pathetic. There's not a single person alive today in 2020 who can say "Dracula" the novel isn't old. I mean is this really what you do with your spare time? Seriously? You can't even be bothered to look for at least a mildly controversial comment to disagree with, in the hopes that some random person on the internet will get upset and start arguing so you can intentionally try to get them to lose their cool online.
Really? You're THAT lazy that you can't even put in a tiny bit of effort into your trolling? Honestly, that's the saddest part. This is the only reply you'll get from me. Go use someone else to stroke your sad ego to make you feel better about yourself. Or, crazy idea, actually go out and maybe do something genuinely productive with your time that'll actually make you feel good.
I live in Rochester, and Kodak was such an important part of our economy. When they (and Xerox) went down it almost took the whole city with it.
Yup it sure did, I remember the panic it caused hearing these companies were laying people off and everything
and Bausch and Lomb, Champions, French's mustard, Ragu. All Rochester products that left
Hopefully with its now rebirth, itll bring some zeal back to Rochester and provide employment growth as well!!
Frederick It Looks like Kodak is Back in the News .
@@johndrews206 Ha ha you live here you know how it was . When the English men who purchased French,s took the company apart it left an impact . French,'s Potato Pancake Mix was the Best . I still cannot find a substitute for it . Thank you for your memories .
Something very similar happened to Polaroid. They were bought and sold many times over and eventually stopped making cameras and film and purged all the factories. A very small group of employees banded together, calling themselves the Impossible Project, and saved the last factory before it was destroyed and worked for years to remake instant film. Now this year that same group of people got so popular they bought back the Polaroid corporation.
They had a great advertising campaign "It's a Kodak moment". I had a Brownie 8mm movie camera and countless instamatics. Great memories.
Ooof. My dad spent 28 years with Kodak before splitting off with Carestream Health (the medical and dental xray and now digital xray department). I was born and raised in Rochester NY. This one hits close to home.
What's up man, I'm a chili native. My grandad moved up here from Pennsylvania to work at Kodak. He worked there for probably 30 years
My mom worked for Fuji Film for 32 years so she was there when Kodak went under. There was some surprise but mostly empathy at Fuji when Kodak declared bankruptcy. No one cheered, no one was glad because they all knew if it could happen to Kodak, it could happen to them.
Oh hey! Also a Rochester native here!
Garbage plates ftw
Heyyyyyy what’s up guys! I am also from Rochester (specifically victor) but I’m guessing y’all were also just as excited as I was when this vid poped up in my feed😂
Reminds me of Blockbuster above all other corporations. Blockbuster leaned to the idea that digital video and streaming platforms/companies such as Amazon would never overtake the physicality of video and people would rather come to brick and mortar stores rather than shop online, refusing to accommodate their customers with a high quality rental website. Unfortunately, the times change so fast in the 21st century that companies holding onto older ideals are almost sure to perish with the times they hold onto so dearly.
@SteelRodent Plus Blockbuster _did_ try to get into streaming. It was just a.) very early (c. 2000), when Internet access was less common, bandwidth was a lot more limited, and they were still inventing some of the tech needed, and b.) they partnered with Enron to develop that tech, meaning it crashed and burned when Enron did.
I’m not the only one that thought of Blockbuster. Companies that refuse to change with the times tend to hit a brick wall later on. People quickly adapt to the latest in technology as it becomes more and more convenient. Less maintenance, less hassle, time saving.
Just said the same thing then i found your post. Good minds think alike
What Blockbuster should've done was purchase Netflix to then squash them like a bug and carry on with their physical media rentals.
I thought Kodak was gone! Happy to hear that they're still kicking! Focusing on the film industry is likely the smartest move they could have done.
I'm originally from Rochester and all my neighbors and most of my family worked for Kodak. One of the biggest downfalls they had was not listening to their engineers. When my dad was working for their space division he knew a guy who invented a photo sensing sunscreen and they turned him away. He also knew someone that helped created the first disposable camera and originally management shelved it until they thought it was worth while to bring it up. Kodak's biggest issue was that they never really looked to the future and were contempt with where they were. And that saddens me because I grew up around their industrial parks in Rochester and remember going to Red Wings games in the summer and seeing the famous Kodak sign on top of their building as a glorious beacon. Now just like the rest of rochester, it's just a shell of what it used to be.
Kodak summer 2020: We make pharmaceuticals now?
No, Greedy CEO's with inside trading just fucked it up.
"To my friends, my work is done, why wait?"
Jesus christ, didn't expect that emotional dropkick
@@ibm_businessman6033 Yeah. You would've thought that the CEO would've tried to play it smart.
9:00 Jim halpert makes an appearance when he's not selling paper he's selling Kodak
came here to comment the same thing, lol
I saw it too! hahaha
Dude, I could not say this any better than you did. As someone in the film industry in the 1980s and 1990s, Kodak's demise can be summed up with one word -- COMPLACENCY.
That’s so sad, but it’s amazing how Kodak opened the door to film.
Kodak's impact on Rochester can't be understated. It's been so critical to the city's entire economy for decades.
Many other companies established themselves in Rochester because Kodak was there.
And now Rochester is considered In the top tier of impoverished and dangerous cities in the US. I'm glad my parents didn't live to see what happened to our city.
I still have my Nikon SLR. It may be obsolete now, but it helped me make memories for 20 years.
“To my friends, my work is done. Why wait?”
I don’t relate to this from experience but imagining being in his shoes, this makes total sense. He knew that he had made all of his historical accomplishments and that he would make no more, so why wait to be old and break down physically? What was the point?
That hits hard, understanding what he was thinking, he was kind of right. And how he was able to explain that in just 9 words is incredibly impactful.
He also had a severe spinal affliction which limited his ability to move and caused him immense pain.
MarlonBitoy And his decreasing mental stability too.
He was drunk.
Scotch , He was Sick and in Pain . I am not Happy about it but I was not in his Shoes . The Luger was . 30 Cal He is Buried off Lake ave Right next to the Park .
Hope you eventually talk about the Hotel Haegumgang in your Abandoned series. It was the world’s first floating hotel. It was a Four Seasons floating above the Great Barrier Reef. Currently sitting abandoned in my country
can i play you my accordion?
He already did.
Edit: nvm
Supreme Leader!
who’d you execute this time for watching a bollywood movie?
@@wyatt-mv6pd Youre thinking of the floating McDonalds barge.
You should’ve mentioned the directors that endorsed Kodak by buying out their 35mm motion picture film for movies created by Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino. This made Kodak generate profit.
Yeah, that move was a saving grace for Kodak!
Amen Bro.
No movie holds my unabated attention like an old Kodak reel & projector. I love the skips, random fuzz, the odd colors of fading...... There is nothing like them. ❤️🥰😍
Landmarks Kodak missed:
Introduction of filetypes for pictures: .jpg .gif .png These should have been .kdk
Introduction of photo manipulation software: It should have been Kodak Photoshop. Even if they couldn't invent it, they should have bought it, they had the money back then.
Introduction of face cam/web cam: Mine says logitech. Why doesn't it say Kodak?
All reasons Kodak isn't around much anymore.
Pretty much correct, aside of filetypes...
@@DeerKoden Nope filetype makes sense if Kodak was making Photoshop software, so insted of ".psd" it would be ".kdk".
@@AshrakAhmed that's more like it. Although Photoshop was first released back in 1990, so Kodak should have started switching to digital way earlier than it actually did (at least a decade earlier).
Kodak phones, Kodak computers...
Instead of those, it's now kodak printer.
And don't forget Kodak Gallery after they acquired Ofoto. 3-million subscribers at one point. This was prior to Instagram, and when Instagram came along a primary feature everyone liked was the ability to mimic the look of film. The other of course being the social aspect. Kodak could have done both of those, but Kodak was a lot more close-minded about it, wanting to perfect the color, not make it look vintage, and to them the social aspect was sharing digital photo albums with family. They were not thinking big enough, and were playing it safe.
Imagine if Kodak had realised the lightning they caught in the bottle in inventing the first digital camera in the 1970's, and had actually invested the time and money into perfecting the technology THEN, instead of running away in fear of the technology and having to then play catch-up in the early 2000's when other brands had already surpassed them in the technology. Perhaps the digital age would have arrived a decade earlier. They only have themselves to blame.
so true. i think sadly kodak got the point of been run by the investors. lets milk the cow dry f*ck everyone else
A very successful company and smart leaders evaluated by Cryssa Rosa in 20/20 hindsight. LOL. What is CR successful in ? Anything? Or just opinions?
No, that would not have happened. At best, they could have been a few years ahead of the market. Because even if they developed a great camera, it wouldn't have had the batteries, storage media and computers capable of supporting and utilizing the data. How would you have viewed or shared the pictures?
@@kcgunesq - AA batteries ran most cameras until the late 2000s/early 2010s (P&S or many DSLR). Photoshop initial release was 1990, Storage media could have been created by Kodka instead of Sandisk/Intel/Toshiba - CompactFlash/Miniature Card/SmartMedia. To view and share maybe invest in a dominant Operating System at the time or a simple solution, purchase Commodore Computer which would have gained their multimedia Amiga computer...
But Kodak poured billions into Advanced Photo System that launched in 1996
@@detroitcoffeeartdetroit6502 Actually, my recollection of cameras through the mid-aughts was that while AA's were common, they were far from universal. I know we owned a couple of Panasonic and Sony P&S's that used proprietary batteries. My older manual cameras used button cells. My D300 could use AA's with an expensive adapter, but shipped with a proprietary battery.
But the main point is that without the processors and memory that didn't exist, it would have remained a niche even if they somehow developed sensors that were several generations better than what we had in 2000 (e.g., the sensor in the D300), as very few people would have been willing to wait minutes for each photo to process or display.
Kodak, the reason Journey Into Imagination took a nosedive and the reason a Mt Fuji coaster isn’t a thing. Seriously, I wish the Japan pavilion had that coaster
Great, more proof that the original "Journey into Imagination" was the attraction that creeped me out as a baby when my parents pushed me in with them.
It's weird to think back on the days when you'd go on a trip or to an event and had a limited number of photos you could take and you wouldn't know how they came out until you got home and had them developed. It's also weird to see that some parking lots still have a structure that was obviously one of those standalone one hour photo places.
George Eastman didn't invent the first camera or the first film, but he did move the marvel of photography from the hands of the professional to average Joe public. George once stated that he envisioned a time in the future when every person would carry a camera, just as they carry a fountain pen now. His vision came true, but he didn't see the camera being integrated into every cell phone.
I drive past the old facility in Rochester when I go to my college buddies house. It is super depressing to see such a massive factory sit mostly abandoned. Part of it still runs though as it is leased by some electronics company.
I know a former Kodak employee that still works out of a Kodak Rochester factory. His company makes spaghetti sauce.
@David Wang Obsolescence of products and technologies have been happening since the beginning of civilizations. AI is in our near future and is likely to render more technologies and products obsolete that we have ever seen in history.
I remember Kodak. My mom bought one an it was a fun thing to have. The new generation will never experience the thrill of going to a developer for the finished pictures
We still can, I’m pretty young and have recently picked up film photography and I have to say, it’s so much better than digital imo
@sn4ketooth220 it has that nostalgia feels, you know
Does anybody remember the Pitbull song (Give Me Everything) that began with “Picture that with a Kodak, or better yet go to Time Square take a picture of me with a Kodak”?
Oh yeah, from that Internet Historian video
ohnoitschris oh my god that was the first thing that came to mind too
Kodak was a sponsor, there are kodak cameras in the video
also the fact that the next line is a pun "took my life from negative to positive"
meaturama a rapper😭😭😭
After seeing Kodak in the intro for so many years it’s cool to see the actual story
2 things.
1. Keep up the phenomenal work. You do an amazing job with each video and I genuinely enjoy them.
2. This series has really made me sit back and think about how much things have changed. There use to be thousands of brands but a good 80-85% of those companies have folded.
America sent them overseas and sat idle while the digital revolution consolidated them. Voters didn't demand government do they're supposed to and prevent monopoly.
In southern Philippines, in our dialect, we would say “Kodaki” which means to take a photo. Just shows how Kodak how impacted the camera industry.
Long time fan, first time caller. I really love that you film your own ads for your sponsors. I can’t tell you how cool that it is and how much better it is for your sponsors as well given that I’m more inclined to keep watching.
50 off Kodak ads, this is crap, he talks bullshit, and then ad, or is it content?????
MAD COMMUNITY IT IS!!!!!
Kodak chrome killed them, 1990 was digital! Fuji was 1970!
"Mama don't take my Kodachrome away!" -Paul Simon
I was actually thinking of that song when the Kodachrome label came on! lol
I remember :-)
Better Days.
It's wild, and depressing, to see how much has happened since their heyday, especially as someone who lives in Rochester. My first cameras were film.
If people are in Rochester, definitely recommend checking out the Eastman house, it's a great local museum on Eastman Kodak Company's history, as well as Eastman's personal history. Gorgeous architecture, cool organs, camera history, art museum, the Eastman house has it all.
Here in the UK about the only time i see the Kodak name now, is on packs of cheap AA batteries in the pound shops (Dollar stores). But i remember family holidays back in the 70's where at the end of the holiday we would send our rolls of Kodak film in for processing, eagerly awaiting the photos to arrive. Things are very different now, back then we would end up with cupboard draws full of old photos, now we just have them all on a hard drive.
Ha! The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Old family snapshots stored in shoeboxes hidden on top shelves in closets, or…
New family snapshots stored on hard drives on computers.
Probably either set gets looked at with about the same frequency. (But I bet there are a helluva lot more digital photos than those from film, digital being “free.”)
Kodak Black one of Kodaks best innovations to the market. Thank you 🙏
I still shoot 35mm and there's nothing like a roll of color Kodak film. It just has a quality all its own that digital hasn't fully captured yet
Definitely a classic example of a company outpaced by technology...same as the typewriter companies. BUT, I can say that my parent’s old Kodachrome slides from the 1950’s have the most vibrant and captivating colors that can never be captured with digital photography. I’m in the process of trying to preserve them now...
As a photographer, and a child of the late 80s/early 90s this hit me in a weird way. I remember taking so many rolls of film to get developed from vacations, sharing them in class days when returning to school, and yet a company that was so pivotal to capturing much of my childhood has been resigned to a fallen icon. Perhaps this will spur me on, to repair and get my grandmorhers 1920s/1930s era Kodak running again. Theres a bit of nostalgia that I do long for.
I remember when Kodak was part of every Disneyland Map.
True I remember that
Walkin' through the city, lookin' oh so pretty...I've just got to find my way.
You should do an episode for WE charity, they shut down Canadian operations today
Yes, Their lifelong journey of theft disguised as charity is finally over. Thanks to the Prime Minister's cronyism (finance minister's involvement), and outright corruption. All at the expense of the taxpayer who unknowingly/unwillingly funds this abuse of power. Absolutely disgusting.
HAHAHA!!!! Just money spinning for the KBR brothers. No different than Trump.
but in reality that saying "You should do an episode for WE charity" is not a option anymore. M&H Racing
I worked at Ritz Camera in the mall in 2000. What a great time to be in photography. It was half film and half digital. Best of both worlds.
My hometown, it has been nice to see the company rebound somewhat the past couple years.
They came back?
@@nobleactual7616 they still sell for film photography and it's very expensive
@@brandonj.harris yeep.
I'm a total camera and photography nerd and absolutely loved this. I own more Kodaks than I can count. I'm always so weirded out when I see some low budget random Kodak electronic device in a resale or outlet store. It's almost like an identity crises. I'm glad that they at least still make some film products, it makes one less (film) thing for people to hoard and resale for 10x more. (But of course even now there are other and often more affordable options than Kodak for film 😅)
I would really enjoy a “bankrupt” about Atari! I really enjoyed this video! Keep up the amazing work!
Yes so would i. Good call
I went to college in Rochester in 1991, and I can't really convey just how much of the city was dominated by Kodak. It was wild. The city was lucky to have spawned so many other tech companies around Kodak, otherwise losing them would have killed it.
As to their collapse, I think it's too simplistic to say they were delusional or blind. When it comes to photography, they were the 800lb gorilla, and while the market was changing, they still felt like anything they did would be a massive force in changing it. It was quite literally killing the goose that laid the golden egg, and they weren't prepared for that kind of risk.
They were looking at their peers like IBM and Xerox and their struggles, and couldn't see how to handle big transitions better. They unfortunately delayed big decisions until they were taken out of their hands.
did you go to UR or RIT?
Kodak was one of the few American company which had a big impact in India. Our first camera was a Kodak KB-10 which my father got for just 1000Rupees. Posters of the Bollywood movies had the line "Shot on Kodak film and Camera" written at the bottom. Here at one point Camera= Kodak. We miss Kodak here in India too.
i’m so glad you made this video! as an upstate new yorker i’ve always been interested in kodak as a company because it feels so close to home. having one of my favorite channels talk about it is so nice! thank you for all that you do 💕
This guy is telling all about the US, but then Fuji? Fuji is bigger outside the US, but KODAK is not for the US only!
Weirdo people! Why you need this community? What is he telling? How big was Kodak? lol 1990 was Digital!
Fuji took them over in 1970 ish already! Demanding Kodak Chrome services killed them!
i still argue that them being around period is a miracle. i give them credit for that at least.
Jake with another banger. No one on UA-cam is as consistent as you man
I used to go to the Kodak plant in Toronto to have my grandfather’s film developed. It’s been gone since 2006 and is now becoming a transit hub.
I lived at Weston Rd and Eglinton Ave and passed that building twice a day for work. I’m so glad they kept and moved the building instead of demolishing it.
I worked there as a high tech exec from 1998 to 2000. Since software was not a core business we were in a corner of building #5 where the movie film guys were. It was fascinating to see Hollywood directors coming in to see demos of new film product. They sold $100m worth of movie film per year in Toronto. The manufacturing plants were also interesting. Imagine a 96 acre parcel of land in the middle of Toronto still dedicated to photo film/paper manufacturing in 2000. But before condos could go up they had to clean up the hazardous waste areas. In the 1900s they just dumped the chemicals into Black Creek.
Great video -- thank you! My dad moved to Rochester for a job at Kodak, and worked there for years, so this hits home for me (literally).
My take on it -- Kodak missed the boat when they said "we're a camera company" or "we're a film company", instead of saying "we're a chemical company whose largest product is film".
You have thousands of the smartest chemists in the world, all in the same town, and you can't make something new with that? Instead, they spun off the chemical company! What a management disaster.
My dad was a VP at Kodak, 30 years with the company, imagine how we feel. My dad got the last executive comp package when he quit shortly before the bankruptcy.
I'm pretty sure Kodak would still be a decent market player in the digital camera market if it weren't for smartphones. Once smartphones came around and finally got decent cameras around 2012 or so, that pretty much killed the consumer market for separate cameras. Even my mom, who wanted to use her separate digital camera when she got an iPhone 4 because it was better, eventually stopped using the camera because it was easier to just use her phone. As soon as I got my first iPod touch in 2014, I've never looked back at digital cameras.
Matthew Miller along with Kodak’s leadership itself.
I've been using digital cameras from 2012-2017 before I got my first iPhone and started to use it as a camera because it was more convenient than having to wait for my camera to open when I wanted to take a photo.
May *Kodak Moments* live on ♾📸🙏
BSF is a GOAT when it comes to content like this, great job, jake!
I work at Target electronics during the digital camera age and you are spot on about Kodak and it's competitor. You've really done your research!
I am kind of torn on this one, I often use Kodak film to this day and love the colors it produces, which to me feel more vibrant than the results from many digital cameras ... but I know charging nearly $10 for one roll of film is not a sustainable business model. On top of that playing off on nostalgia does not win new customers and will not retain current customers a few years down the road. I wish Kodack would succeed... but it also does not seem very likely given the volatility of trends and the cost and inconvenience of using film in this age. To me it really feels like Kodak has not learned a thing since the late 1990's.
Grew up in Rochester. My parents met at Kodak! Great video!
Living in Rochester it’s weird driving by Kodak and seeing 4 cars in a parking lot for thousands
I remember back in the 1970's, those parking lots were filled.
Must be great for drifting
Yeah I plowed snow at kodak in those parking lots. Very dead. Just like a ghost town
I only really care about the tower since it’s next to the mainline, so whenever I look at the track I usually look at the building too
Yoo y'all live in Rochester too? :D neat
Since I live in Rochester NY, this is familiar to me
I need to get up there see friends and get a plate from Nick Tahous. Great city.
yo
Chris Longbeard never been 😆
One of their current factories is behind where I used to live here in Rochester, so this is familiar territory for me. Not to mention that my senior paper in college was Kodak's effects on Rochester.
Same
As a lifelong resident of Rochester, NY, I have had the strange and unfortunate privilege of witnessing the demise of Kodak. I remember the 1,600-acre Kodak Park manufacturing complex at its peak in the 80s/early 90s. I have also been present at the demolition of many of its giant manufacturing buildings in the 2000s. The complex now sits as a shell of its former self, though in recent times it has seen new life serving other purposes. I will say that Kodak Park is (was) an absolute marvel, a self-contained city with its own power plants (it had 2), its own railroad system, its own sewer system, its own fire/police force, etc... Each time I drive through the enormous complex I still cannot believe a place like this ever existed. Something truly mind-blowing and mysterious about it. Thank you for this documentary. Very well done...
Hey, I live in Rochester! I love driving by the Kodak Center, its so cool to see it, and plays now and events are held at it instead of the main building collapsing!
I actually just found a Kodak printer in my house as well as an old Kodak camera at my great grandmother’s house from the 80’s.
I have an old ass underwater camera sitting in my room lmao
Beuler lol same but it isn’t a Kodak one
Funny I saw this brand yesterday in a store and wondered because I never have heard of it lol
I think I have a Kodak digital printer from like 2004-2005
I remember using those little printers as a kid waiting for each color to be processed. We were a very Kodak driven family so it’s crazy to just see them wiped out now.
Thank you so much for all the effort and care you put into this series. I’ve been watching Abandoned and Bankrupt all throughout the lockdown and I feel I have learnt so much. It’s rekindled my love of architecture, product design and history. Thank you!!
Ahhh I have so many fond memories of going to a Rochester Red Wings game and then seeing the Kodak building in the distance
In my fictional world, this company never bankrupt and still successful
Leave the fantasy and come back to reality.
great vid Jake AND BSF!! quite interesting. I was born in 80 so i feel like I was on the tail end of one tech culture to another I kind of got to see stuff as it was , like cassettes , corded phones, CRT tvs, PC's weren't really a thing, Atari was was big, then eventually NES.....etc, etc.... then through the 80's and 90's all of that slowly went away or transformed to what we have today. I feel like a lot of people probably 5-10 years younger than me just wouldn't know even half of it. Pretty Crazy
I think there's definitely still a place for film photography/video. Kodak was pretty slow to realizing that. sure they tried with digital but were slow to respond but maybe they just never were going to be a digital giant regardless. looks like they're doing pretty well with that they're doing now , but for the most part i think in a lot of people's minds they'll always be a film company
I had a Kodak digital camera from the 1970s. When the whole nostalgia craze kicked in for film I sold it for$200 so I could buy a commercial camera. The collector who bought it said it's the only camera in his collection that fully functional and he uses it. I decided not to sell the other cameras I had
Er no. You did not have a Kodak digital camera from the 70’s. They first went on sale to the public in the mid-90’s. (Although as shown in the video a single prototype was made in the 70’s, which is now in a museum).
@@AtheistOrphan I guess I got scammed than. Was told it was a 70s camera, Guess someone slapped a Kodak logo over the original brand name.
That intro was 100% nostalgic for 80s and 90s kids
I still shoot film in all sorts of formats - 35mm, 120, 4x5… Kodak still makes it all, and I love it. I never want to shoot digital - the process of shooting and developing your own film is something that digital cannot replicate. I really do hope Kodak keeps taking advantage of the fact that film demand is coming back for the aesthetic and nostalgia!
My grandfather worked for kodak in the 60s and 70s, and he has a few patents attributed to him from mostly the sixties regarding printing technology
As a photography enthusiast who use both film and digital even with kodak and fuji stopping making films it gave rise to "indie" film roll makers who made film rolls for enthusiasts. Of course I still mourn the loss of the kodachrome and fujichrome line.
The crazy thing is, Kodak was REALLY onto something a couple years ago with their racing/hobby drones and FPV cameras.
I love this channel, the editing and facts are just amazing. Such great content.
Thank you so much!
My first camera was a Kodak Playful Easyshare pocket camera. It was a tiny camera and I would commonly sneak it in to my elementary school with friends. It was no bigger than a small matchbox and I remember bringing it to Ceder Point back in 2011. I still have the camera and despite it's rough shape, it still works.
rochesterian here, this video is super informative and interesting! so cool to think my city played such a huge role in photography advancement!
interesting: NO mention of Polaroid, which was always a thorn in their side, especially when Polaroid sued them successfully for infringing on the instant self developing film and camera patents.
@meaturama That's what Kodak said, until Polaroid won in court.
I never clicked on a video so fast before. Whenever I see that you post I already know its gonna be amazing ‼️‼️‼️
I was waiting for this video since yesterday.
Yo if you ever do a follow up o can get you an interview with my grandfather. He was pretty high up in the company
Shoot me an email, I’d love to! Contact@brightsunfilms.ca
WhereTab _ Great idea!! Interviews w/ exworkers to now their experiencies 🤩
Oh this sounds interesting!
As a consumer product company, Kodak reached 4 billion dollars in sales by the end of 60s, and 16.3 billions by the 90s, really astronomical for its time. All of this plus its innovative corporate culture in its early years, and how it revolutionized and dominated normal people’s lives, all reminded me of Apple’s trillion dollar worth and its effect on today’s people. At least Kodak was successfully for over a hundred years before it got too comfortable and failed. Compared it to how people is already criticizing Apple for being less innovative and getting too comfortable- it made me wonder if the history is going to repeat itself, and maybe in less than 50 years Apple would also fail and become a remotely familiar name to the younger generations. NOTHING is ever too big to fail..
I grew up and still live in Rochester, NY where this all started. When I was a kid in the early 80s, at least a third of all the students in my class had at least one parent who worked for Kodak. To illustrate, in 1983, 14% of all jobs in my county was a position at Kodak. And I could tell they were paid very well through bonuses when these Kodak kids showed up to class with the latest and greatest toys for show and tell.
Nowdays, a bunch of old companies we loved are going bankrupt.
Like Kodak, many of them failed to see the changing times and ultimately did it to themselves
Best channel ever, so interesting and entertaining
I loved Kodak's "K Rainbow" logo more than their films :0
There is something poetic in a company, specialised in saving memories, not willing to change it's ways of the past...
I worked as a photo tech for 4 years while working at Target. We only used Kodak. Processing film will always be a favorite memory of mine. There were a lot of steps and chemicals involved but seeing the process take place from a roll in a camera to an actual photograph on paper was always so amazing to see :)