My fingers pine for the magical ergonomics of my OM-1.

I have yet to really make my peace with the Canon 30D-too big, too bulky, too many darn options.

Oh, for the days of three controls: shutter speed, focus, and aperture--all three sensibly laid out ALONG THE LENS, not one on top of the camera, or on the back, or what have you.

But the Olympus stays on the shelf. Times change. The problem is, most of the time the Canon stays on the shelf, too, such is my dislike for the feel.

Wow, that's a surreal statement! ;)
sort of like saying you are forced to buy an Ipod because of the 8-track tape shortage..

Scot (Kodak employee, *sigh*)

Not really. 8-track is obsolete and handled only by collectors & hobbyists. Film is in great decline but is far from being completely obsolete just yet.

With the stories of impending bankruptcy, the other day I bought 100 shares of Eastman Kodak. It was at 0.42 at the time. As I announced to my Facebook friends, I missed out on Titanic; this time I am going down with the ship!

I am still debating whether to spring for the extra forty bucks to have the brokerage send me an actual physical stock certificate to frame.

Steve

yeah I know..it was just an analogy, but not a perfect one! ;)

I just found it humorous that "sbhunterca" said he had to buy digital cameras due to a "shortage of film"..as if the shortage of film is what is "forcing" people to buy digital cameras..when in reality the exact opposite is true; the rise of digital is what has caused the decline of film..

(and in reality, there is no "shortage of film"..if you still want to buy film you can still find it everywhere you could always find it...problem is, virtually no one wants to buy it.)

But I agree film will still be around for a long time..but at about 1% of the sales levels it has been in the past...Kodak went from 60,000 employees in Rochester in 1985 (and thats just Rochester! not even world-wide) to about 6,000 today, and still falling...thats an amazing 90% drop..
9 out of 10 Kodak employees have been laid off..and its all due to digital..

I think Kodak will survive, in some form...what that form ends up being is virtually unknowable at this point..

Scot

Reminds me of the time I bought five thousand shares of Xerox.

Actually, I only bought one share and Xeroxed the rest. [rimshot]

Steve -- get the paper certificate if you can, it beats any other art that may be on your wall. Most people under 50 have never seen a paper bond, with actual coupons for the interest payments, and the next generation will not believe stock certificates existed either.

The Pittsburg, Shawmut & Northern Railroad was in bankruptcy from 1905 to 1947. When the bankruptcy was settled with the abandonment of the railroad, the payout was about 6 cents on the dollar. When I bought a $1,000 bond certificate as memorabilia a few years ago, the price was $60... roughly what the actual payout had been... they hold their value.

Scotty -- the shortage of film is real on a practical level. You used to be able to go to any chain pharmacy or large supermarket and get Kodachrome [R.I.P], but it's difficult to find anything but 200 speed print film in mass-market stores today. The inability to get Kodachrome in Pittsburgh (save for a single 9am-5pm weekday camera store) drove me to digital a couple years before Kodak pulled the plug.

I have a Joliet & Northern Indiana (it used to pass a stone's throw away from me) stock certificate but one that was never filled out and endorsed. The corporate shell seemed to still exist in the 70's; I assume it was absorbed since then. Most of the ROW is a trail now but a segment along the Illinois / Indiana line still exists to serve a Ford plant.*
Speaking of paper railroads, more accurately a railroad that was previously paper, I was thinking of buying some P&W both for fun and for admiration of their coming back from paper in the 1970's. If it makes money even better.

Steve

* Although Conrail served a couple customers out in Frankfort under state subsidy for a time, the line west of Chicago Heights was not included in Conrail and I'm pretty sure the trail people had to deal with American Premier Underwriters, successor to Penn Central

Another ex-Kodaker chiming in here;

Everybody KNEW that film was going away eventually. I was part of a big expansion that Kodak did in the early 1980’s when they hired a huge pile of electrical engineers. Problem is, they didn’t want to hear what we had to say……….

I suggested in the mid 1980’s that inkjet prints would eventually look as good as photographic prints… Boy, the feedback was almost vicious… Photographs are the best; nothing will ever be as good as they are….. Well, it turns out there are other ways to make an image.

In the end it’s VERY SAD to see it come to this, but very predictable in many ways. How many other companies made a successful transition when a new technology displaced an older one ? ALCO, Baldwin and Lima come to mind, as well as Wang, Amperex and lots of other examples as well.

VERY SAD, but unfortunately predictable. My best wishes to those still employed by EK, a GREAT AMERICAN COMPANY.

Cheers, Kevin.

Not unlike, say, railroaders being told intermodal/piggyback was going to be the way of the future, and laughing in response......



Given that Alco, Baldwin, and Lima (as well as a few minor players like Vulcan, Porter, et al) either no longer exist or have nothing to do with the business for which they were founded, I would not call said transitions "successful". But of course, that's your point. There are firms that manage to stay the course somewhat--Motorola and Yaesu come to mind in radio gear, for example.

Let's be brutal about this: Times change. Does anybody order from the Sears Catalog anymore, or call an operator, or use Railway Express Agency? Even LL Bean and Land's End, two mail-order businesses that helped "destroy" mass catalogs like Sears, are going online-only, it seems. In my own lifetime I've never actually seen a telegram sent, received, or delivered, and have had to explain what those slips saying "Western Union" are to younger folks when they are found--they haven't even seen them in vintage movies the way I did. Anyone remember when Polaroid was going to replace Kodak, but that never actually developed? [rimshot]

I'm a "bitter-ender". I still shoot slide film (Fuji Provia) in my FM2, which you can still get mail-order from B&H out of NYC, and I have a local lab that still processes E6. I'm told there are now only about 100 labs left in the U. S. that have E6 capability. I shot my last roll of Kodachrome a little over a year before the last roll was processed (last frame turned out to be an old Geep on the Wheeling & Lake Erie Cleveland line near Canton).

I learned early on about using film other than Kodachrome and Kodak processing. The three rolls of Ektachrome I shot of the first operation of 765 at the '79 NKP HS convention came back from the drug store purple-ish. I've kept them, and think that they can be rescued in Photoshop. But that was the beginning of my commitment to Kodachrome and Kodak processing. My video camera has a digital still function, and I do use that sometimes, but I still prefer film for any image I truly care about. I've probably got around 15,000 or so transparencies. For about 10 years I also shot 6X7 cm Kodachromes as well. Really looks impressive holding those images up to a light.

"Let's be brutal about this: Times change. Does anybody order from the Sears Catalog anymore, or call an operator, or use Railway Express Agency?"--Alexander D. Mitchell IV

Amazingly, in a way we still do use REA, under its current corporate name, Federal Express (FedEx). It's my understanding that its employees are still covered by the Railroad Retirement Act because of this, and that this has been a subject of debate due to a supposed economic advantage from not paying into Social Security.

Small point-- I don't believe there is any corporate connection between FedEx and the REA, so by extension, that's not why FedEx is under RRA.

FedEx is under RRA becuase RRA covers airlines, and Federal Express was originally organized as a freight airline not a general multi-modal package delivery or logistics company. FedEx was covered by RRA from incorporation, not through any inherited rights or obligations from another company.

But you are right, UPS does want FedEx moved out of RRA for competitive reasons.

I think that Federal Express and the other airlines are under the Railway Labor Act (R.L.A.), not the Railroad Retirement Act (R.R.A.). Since employers' Railroad Retirement Act Taxes are higher than Social Security Taxes, competitors might want Federal Express to stay in RRA!

D'oh. You are so right, Jim.

The Railway Express Agency, or as it was known after 1969 - REA Express was liquidated under Court order in 1975 after filing for bankruptcy. Several of the officers also faced criminal charges for stealing from the company.

UPS, unlike FedEx, started out as a package delivery company that later started an airline. The UPS airline is actually a seperte company, more than likely done so to shield regular UPS employees from the Railway Labor Act.

I believe it was either the 1934 or 1936 amendments to the Railway Labor Act that included airline employees.