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10-19-2014, 08:22 AM - 16 Likes   #1
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An old timer looks back on consumer photography.

I started working at Kodak in June of 1974. In 1998 I was laid off. I went to work for a company out of Vancouver called Creo. Their motto was "Imagine, Create, Believe." and it was an awesome place to work. Perhaps a few of our members here knew of the company. In 2004 Kodak purchased Creo for $900,000,000. I did not realize how bad they wanted me back. I am still employed by them.

Anyway, here some some interesting tidbits on consumer photography around 1980.

1) The average comsumer camera had 12 rolls of film run through it in it's lifetime. That is why today if you scrounge flea markets and estate sales you can find a lot of old cameras with film still in them.

2) 80% of all consumer photograhs taken in the US at that time were done on propery owned by Disney corporation.

3) More consumers shot more photographs at NASCAR races than any other sporting event. This was the reasoning behind the decision of Kodak to sponser a team.

4) The Kodak Disc cameras was actually petty successful. They sold over 25,000,000 of them.

5) The APS-C sensor today is the same size as the image on Kodak's APS film system. APS stood for Advanced Photo System.

6) The machine that perforates Kodak 35mm film is over 100 years old and still working fine.

7) Kodachrome has no color dyes in the film. If you find a roll of Kodachrome film you can expose it and process with B&W film developer. The dyes were added in processing and you needed an analytical chemistry lab to monitor and control the process. Because the dyes were added during processing they could used ones that were very stable. That is why 70+ year old Kodachrome transparencies still look so good today.

Just a few bits of trivia for those of you who never became familiar with film.

10-19-2014, 09:04 AM   #2
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Funny, I recently bought a small lot of Pentax gear, and the P30T did indeed have a roll of film in it. Mailed the roll back to the owner; he was very grateful.
10-19-2014, 09:11 AM   #3
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QuoteOriginally posted by gaweidert Quote
1) The average comsumer camera had 12 rolls of film run through it in it's lifetime. That is why today if you scrounge flea markets and estate sales you can find a lot of old cameras with film still in them.
Why is that? did they break more often or the user simply bought another camera?

Thanks for the info, it is very fascinating!
10-19-2014, 10:10 AM - 1 Like   #4
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QuoteOriginally posted by LensBeginner Quote
Why is that? did they break more often or the user simply bought another camera?

Thanks for the info, it is very fascinating!
The vast majority of consumers actually don't take very many pictures.

10-19-2014, 10:37 AM   #5
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Thank you for all the trivia, especially coming from someone who is an insider. I could read stuff like that all day long. Please add more occasionally as you think of it, I am sure we would all find it fascinating. For instance, I heard that at times Kodak would clean the floors to reclaim all the silver dust and end up with a rather large "bar" of silver at the end. Any truth to that? Again, thank you for the interesting facts.
10-19-2014, 10:45 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by MBike74 Quote
For instance, I heard that at times Kodak would clean the floors to reclaim all the silver dust and end up with a rather large "bar" of silver at the end. Any truth to that? Again, thank you for the interesting facts.
I don't know about that, but they did make Rochester, NY one of the most polluted places in the country.
10-19-2014, 01:01 PM - 4 Likes   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by MBike74 Quote
Thank you for all the trivia, especially coming from someone who is an insider. I could read stuff like that all day long. Please add more occasionally as you think of it, I am sure we would all find it fascinating. For instance, I heard that at times Kodak would clean the floors to reclaim all the silver dust and end up with a rather large "bar" of silver at the end. Any truth to that? Again, thank you for the interesting facts.
At one time Kodak was the largest commercial consumer of silver in the world. In the early 80,s 20% of the weight of a piece of x-ray film was silver. They had a pretty good silver recovery operation. 90% of the silver that they used was recovered from commercial photofinishing operations. Special canisters were placed in the fixer drain sysem to reclaim silver. These were then collected by Kodak and burned to recover te silver. After assay a check would be sent to the customer who sent them it.

Kodak had loooooooooooong term contracts with silver producers that averaged the price they paid over several months so that they were somewhat insulated from short term price fluctuations.

Kodak Park was a city unto itself. It had it's own security and fire department. The fire department was highly skilled in dealing with chemical spills and often worked with local fire departments when these occured outside the plant. It had it's own waste water treatment facility stocked with trout as they were very sensitive to pollutants. It had it's own railroad and power plant. They had trucks that never left the property and because of all the people walking around they rigidly enforced speed limits. You could get fired for breaking the 15mph speed limit if you were in an accident. There were two water systems flowing through the plant. One with potable water the other without that was used for cooling systems etc.

The building where film is coated operated in total darkness. You learned to count steps to figure out where you were. When you approached an intersection you shouted out beep beep to warn anyone else who was walking near there. It was pretty noisy so you could not hear others walking around. For those of you who have run high speed web presses imaging working on one in total darkness. The safety systems were incredible.

It cost $7,000,000 to shut down the coating lines and restart them. If a machine broke down it was given a total maintenace makeover. If it broke down again the next week, you repeated the whole process. The techs who maintained these made very good money but worked their tails off. If the person who was to follow you on the next shift could not show up for work, you had to stay and work their shift. No questions asked. The only day they would shut down operation with no breakdown was Christmas Day. Even that was not guaranteed.

All of the equipment was custom designed and made by their own personnel.

10-19-2014, 01:40 PM   #8
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Thanks for this very interesting info.
10-19-2014, 01:58 PM   #9
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Enjoyed the read. Thanks for posting.
10-19-2014, 02:00 PM   #10
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Amazing information - I agree with others - please do share as much as you remember if time allows. These are things that we, film lovers are hungry for
(Thx. for Kodakchrome and BW processing tip - I actually might try that !)
10-19-2014, 02:40 PM   #11
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Wow! That is really some great stuff. Thank you so much. Please keep it coming. Was there ever any cases of secrets being leaked to, or key people defecting to say Fuji or Agfa? Or vise-versa? As a Kodak employee, how was Fuji viewed?
10-19-2014, 04:11 PM   #12
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QuoteOriginally posted by gaweidert Quote
2) 80% of all consumer photograhs taken in the US at that time were done on propery owned by Disney corporation
I question that one. 4 times as many photos were taken on Disney property than at all school graduations, family reunions, vacations at non-Disney places, birthday parties, etc. combined?

Combined with #1 (and depending on how the average was defined), the average consumer camera went through 9 rolls of film on Disney property and only 3 rolls elsewhere?
10-19-2014, 04:20 PM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by DeadJohn Quote
I question that one. 4 times as many photos were taken on Disney property than at all school graduations, family reunions, vacations at non-Disney places, birthday parties, etc. combined?

Combined with #1 (and depending on how the average was defined), the average consumer camera went through 9 rolls of film on Disney property and only 3 rolls elsewhere?
A lot of people bought cameras, or borrowed cameras, just for a trip to Disney. My father borrowed my uncle's Nikkormat when we went to Disney World. That same uncle gave me my first camera, a Kodak Disc. I got my first 35mm (Vivitar P&S) a few years later, so I probably only put 8 or 9 discs through it (Mostly on a trip to Washington, DC).

My uncle worked for a company in Rochester called Visual In-Seitz. They made slide shows out of PowerPoint presentations for Kodak. He used to see internal documents from Kodak that showed Fuji was beating Kodak on quality, especially Kodak film that was being manufactured in Mexico.

Last edited by boriscleto; 10-19-2014 at 04:33 PM.
10-19-2014, 04:55 PM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by boriscleto Quote
A lot of people bought cameras, or borrowed cameras, just for a trip to Disney. My father borrowed my uncle's Nikkormat when we went to Disney World. That same uncle gave me my first camera, a Kodak Disc. I got my first 35mm (Vivitar P&S) a few years later, so I probably only put 8 or 9 discs through it (Mostly on a trip to Washington, DC).

My uncle worked for a company in Rochester called Visual In-Seitz. They made slide shows out of PowerPoint presentations for Kodak. He used to see internal documents from Kodak that showed Fuji was beating Kodak on quality, especially Kodak film that was being manufactured in Mexico.
I agree that many photos were taken at Disney. I strongly doubt 80% of all photos were taken at Disney. The original statistics are saying that for every 20 photos taken in DC, NYC, LA, Chicago, Boston, and every other place in the USA added together, 80 were taken at Disney. It's not really important but that doesn't look anywhere near plausible.
10-19-2014, 06:08 PM   #15
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Back in the day, most people rarely took any photos at all. But many. many people went to various Disney owed properties and took all sorts of photos of their kids etc. Most families used cameras to capture "special" moments and little else.
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