Why Fujifilm survived--and Kodak didn't...

[Papa Tango]

I can remember clearly when I began the shift away from Kodak in the early 2000s, to Fujifilm and Ilford. From my lowly observation post, it occurred to me that Kodak had lost its direction--and just could not figure out what it was good at anymore.

We all watched as Kodak took a broad 'discontinued' brush to their wet chemistry division. One after another of my favorite films or developers would disappear. As they say, things change! The following tube does a nice job of discussing the transformation of both companies--Kodak and Fuji--and how the latter still serves us well today in film and equipment.

What was your experience, and how do you see things now?

 

[Cascadilla]

As a working pro from the mid 1980's on this rings true to my experience. Kodak made some great products but they weren't very good at listening to their customers. I loved that they brought back Kodachrome in 120 in the last 1980's but they decided that only one lab (in California) would do all of the processing leading to 2-3 week waits for film to come back. Despite whatever requests you made, sometimes it came back mounted and sometimes it didn't. This from the company that pioneered dropping off slide film at the camera store and getting it back in 48 hours, a revolution in a small town like the one where I live. Once I tried Fuji's pro slide films in the early 1990's there was no looking back. The color was better to my eye and the consistency from batch to batch was much better. NPS really was ISO 160; Portra 160 was more like ISO 100, and my lab could make better prints from it. Something not mentioned in the video was Kodak's foray into putting chips into Nikon and Canon SLRs. Kodak priced them to make up for all of the film that they wouldn't sell to newspaper photographers any more rather than what they cost to produce, which is what Nikon and Canon eventually did. I am genuinely sorry for the thousands of Kodak employees who lost their jobs because top management couldn't figure out a way to transition to a new reality. But this is a story repeated again and again in American industry, and somehow the CEOs still wind up with the multimillion dollar severance packages despite their mistakes.

 

[Papa Tango]

@Cascadilla exactly! I cut my film teeth with an Argus C3 and Panatomic-X. Learned the development process with Microdol-X. Printed on bromide and RC papers. Then, one by one--it was all gone. I live in upstate NY, and am in Rochester several times a month (it's the 'big city' for us). Little of George Eastman's empire remains as direct landscape fabric. Very sad.

Yes, American industry only seems to listen to the most strident voices anymore--my definition of 'triggered' is quite different than that of the current flock of sheeple who become offended by their own shadows. Many corporations quit listening in their drive for "an increased return on shareholder value" knowing full well that we will continue to consume whatever shit they stuff in a pretty package. Rogue 'activist investors' scare the bejezus out of corporations. Oh and then there is that Chinamart thing...

This sort of dynamic is why I left my brand of choice for over 40 years behind--Canon. Time to jump ship for Nikon. Except for their lenses (and those became more cheaply made), I began to lose my confidence in Nikon. And except for the stable of Nikkor lenses I own--I now find myself happily situated in the Fujichrome X-T5 universe. They listen and react quickly. Nice to see a Japanese camera company that still believes in Kaizen...

That camera was released in late November of last year. There have 3 new firmware releases in that time. All of them gave me better functionality & things that would have been seen only in another model release with the other leading brands. And regular firmware releases for virtually all of their previous mirrorless cameras--going back over a decade. My money goes to those who actually work to serve my interests.

I think that this is a true "increased return on shareholder value."

 

[Cascadilla]

I've been tempted by Fuji's cameras and lenses but I've stuck with Pentax since my investment in lenses is considerable and I have been happy enough with their cameras. I have appreciated their willingness to allow old lenses to work with new cameras, and they also have been pretty good about providing firmware updates for older cameras. It is interesting to me how "shareholder value" always seems to involve short term profits over establishing good long term relationships with customers. The biggest mistake that American industry ever made was tying CEO salaries to stock prices. This has led to some questionable behavior when stock options come due, and the price has usually been paid by the workers who had no say in setting bad policy in the first place. My experience with both Canon and Nikon has come through my students in my studio lighting class, and I have been mostly unimpressed with their low end DSLRs. The eye level viewfinders are dim and low contrast for both Canon and Nikon compared with my Pentax cameras which still use pentaprisms instead of pentamirrors. Canon has also disabled hot shoes on some newer models which was a real nuisance for my class since the radio triggers require a functional hot shoe connection--I wound up leaving one of my older Pentax bodies and basic 18-55 zooms for students to use so they could actually fire the flash units.

 

[Benhutcherson]

This sort of dynamic is why I left my brand of choice for over 40 years behind--Canon. Time to jump ship for Nikon. Except for their lenses (and those became more cheaply made), I began to lose my confidence in Nikon. And except for the stable of Nikkor lenses I own--I now find myself happily situated in the Fujichrome X-T5 universe. They listen and react quickly. Nice to see a Japanese camera company that still believes in Kaizen...

That camera was released in late November of last year. There have 3 new firmware releases in that time. All of them gave me better functionality & things that would have been seen only in another model release with the other leading brands. And regular firmware releases for virtually all of their previous mirrorless cameras--going back over a decade. My money goes to those who actually work to serve my interests.

I bought my X-T5 in May of this year. It was delivered May 17th, a week and a half ahead of leaving for a big family vacation. My wife had actually given me the green light on it(after looking and cross-shopping the ZFc and a few others) because of that-we have a what was then a 5 month old baby, and she wanted lots and lots of photos. The thought of hauling around a DSLR all day was not appealing to me, and Fujifilm offered me what I really felt I needed in a camera-great handling small and light bodies with an excellent selection of lenses. I guess I really liked it considering that I bought it new, something I never do.

Even though I used the camera a lot around here, taking a new camera, much less a new system from a new-to-you manufacturer, on a trip is definitely trial by fire. I had people telling me I was both brave and stupid for doing so. I did take my D850 with me as well, but used it once, and took over 2000 photos with the X-T5.

I love the thing. It still frustrates me at times, but I love it. In particular, I love how almost perfect the SOOC files are. The only other camera I have that MAYBE needs less work is my D5, but that's a different beast. The D8xx cameras-I have all three now, going back to 2016 when the D800 became my first real, serious entry into digital photography after mostly using film-have almost always required some PP work to get to where I like them. I could ALMOST shoot JPEG from the X-T5 and be happy. Aside from that, I've heard people call the film sims in the Fuji cameras gimmicky, but it's one setting that I can reach for(and access with a single button push) that changes how the files are rendered. I pretty much use Velvia and Pro Neg Hi, and yes I know I can change the underlying settings on these in my Nikons(saturation and contrast) but I love that Fuji packages the whole thing into a single setting that's easy to access and adds some of their color science "magic" to it. On my Nikons, I pretty much just leave the settings to their default and adjust contrast/saturation to my taste in post. With Fuji, I can pick it and it's probably right, or if I inadvertently leave it wrong it's easy enough to change in post(even in Lightroom, even though a lot of people "claim" that LR doesn't handle this as well as Fuji's software or other optoins).

And yes, the 2.0 firmware, which came out right around the time I bought my camera but I didn't realize until I'd had it a month and a half, addressed a few big complaints I'd run into such as how the autofocus behaved.