[gaweidert]

Here is an article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle about the first digital camera. Next year it will be 40 years old. Enjoy.

First digital camera on display at Eastman House

[LensBeginner]

A very engaging read, truly a pity that Kodak didn't grasp the potential of that flash of genius...

[tvdtvdtvd]

Truly sad Kodak were unable to better capitalize on the digital revolution. It always amazes me that Kodak was
indeed an early adopter of digital but even so couldn't make the transition. I guess they were just far too entrenched
in film and that massive revenue turned weighty anchor was just too much to bear. May they yet find their place
in modern photography.

---------- Post added 11-22-2014 at 05:38 PM ----------

A very engaging read, truly a pity that Kodak didn't grasp the potential of that flash of genius...

Oh, but they did. Remember this:

Kodak DCS 400 series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They were at the forefront but very quickly fell behind.

[LensBeginner]

*snip*
Oh, but they did. Remember this:

Kodak DCS 400 series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They were at the forefront but very quickly fell behind.

Too late, the patent had already expired.
With 20/20 hindsight (who knows? maybe in their shoes I would have done much worse! ) they could have funded a massive R&D effort and brought digital photography to us much, much earlier.
Then again, in the '80s computers were miles away from now (I still remember fondly 720kB floppy disks... ), so it would probably not have been the right time anyway...

Speaking of which, I now remember that Pentax was among the first (along with Contax) to build a prototype of a FF digital SLR in 2000, the MZ-D...

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Last edited by LensBeginner; 11-22-2014 at 05:13 PM.

[gaweidert]

Several reasons why Kodak "missed" digital. Some self inflicted and some forced upon it by Wall Street gurus.

[crewl1]

Here is an article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle about the first digital camera. Next year it will be 40 years old. Enjoy.

First digital camera on display at Eastman House

That's like having the gun used by John Wilkes Booth on display at the Abraham Lincoln museum.

[monochrome]

Several reasons why Kodak "missed" digital. Some self inflicted and some forced upon it by Wall Street gurus.

At the time Wall Street investment bankers were restructuring and breaking up the conglomerates companies had built in the high-inflation 70's. The idea was to maximize cash flow and return on invested capital by focusing the entire enterprise on the benefit of corporate specialization - do one thing, do it very, very well and do a whole lot of whatever it is.

Film manufacturing with its long production runs and repeat end-user consumption pattern was a perfect product for such a Harvard Business School theory. Inexpensive Film Cameras fit the 'give away the razors and make profit on the blades' model. It was actually an elegant business model until the advent of the ubiquitous home PC. They never saw it coming.

Of course, Wall Street got paid on both ends of the deal and in the end Rochester got nuthin' but square miles of brown fields.

[tim60]

It is ironic that Kodak invented the product that broke the company.


I doubt if a 'digital photo', meaning any method of making digital photos, patent would be defensible. Only a specific method would actually be defensible, so others could probably have thought of better ways and not infringed.

[6BQ5]

It's kind of nutty to me when I think about what Kodak did back then. They were so far ahead of everyone. Think of it. They were pumping out FF sensors and retrofitting them into film bodies! Who wouldn't want to slap one of those on their ME Super or Spotmatic today?

Thinking of Kodak like this makes me wonder about Sony. They too are so far ahead of everyone in some regard with their small mirrorless FF body. Is Sony's edge their's to lose when prices drop? Maybe Ricoh is just waiting for the FF market cracks to get bigger?

Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this into a FF thread. I'm just trying to draw parallels between two companies who released or are releasing game changing technology. It just happens to be FF tech.

[gaweidert]

It's kind of nutty to me when I think about what Kodak did back then. They were so far ahead of everyone. Think of it. They were pumping out FF sensors and retrofitting them into film bodies! Who wouldn't want to slap one of those on their ME Super or Spotmatic today?

Thinking of Kodak like this makes me wonder about Sony. They too are so far ahead of everyone in some regard with their small mirrorless FF body. Is Sony's edge their's to lose when prices drop? Maybe Ricoh is just waiting for the FF market cracks to get bigger?

Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this into a FF thread. I'm just trying to draw parallels between two companies who released or are releasing game changing technology. It just happens to be FF tech.

They were under orders to nothing that would impact film sales in a negative manner. There were theoretical limits to pixel size that was thought to take years to overcome. No one knew how short a time it would take for the computer to evolve from a mainframe with terminals to a desktop tat was just as powerful an all in one system. Digital image files are huge. The only computers of the time that could easily handle the files we cram onto our cameras were the so called super computers like the Cray.

In military terms think of going from the rifled muskets of the Civil War in the US to an M1 Abrams tank in 20 years. That is how fast the electronics revolution advanced. At the time, there were probably only a handful of people on the planet who understood this.

In the late 1980's I was a QA engineer working on the Premier system. This system could scan a transparency and you could digitally manipulate and print the results on a 4 x 5 transparency that could then be used to make separations for the printing industry. Each image was 240 meg and you could fit two on the hard drive. It was powered by a Sparc 5 workstation. And it cost 6 figures. It was an amazing piece of technology for it's day, but not something other than the very big players could ever use. Even by today's standard it could output a very good image but it was quickly surpassed by far less expensive technology.

When I started field service in 1999 ink jet technology was rudimentary and used in the printing industry for things like imposition proofs and quick checks. Never for the final proof to present a customer for and okay. Within 5 years all of that changed too.

[LensBeginner]

*snip*

Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this into a FF thread. I'm just trying to draw parallels between two companies who released or are releasing game changing technology. It just happens to be FF tech.

No, no you're right!
Besides, most everything in the whole world boils down either to "equivalence" or FF!