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Kodak: Fading Away

Kodak made brilliant dental imaging equipment. Traditional x ray sources and plates but also intraoral sensors, phosphor plate scanners and cone beam computed tomography 3d xray systems (ones that rotate around your head and form a 3d image and Intraoral camera systems.

They sold it all off in 2007 and it's sold as Carestream now.
It's very good gear, easy to support, repair and install plus it integrates well with third party practice management and patient record software as well as their own.
When I left the industry they were still supporting the earlier Kodak systems.

Carestream Dental | Home | United Kingdom

Carestream Dental United Kingdom provides industry-leading digital imaging, software, and practice management solutions for dental practitioners across the world.
www.carestreamdental.com
 
bruto said:
Kind of thread drift, but I was always mystified by the death of Sears, which, if you think about it, was the Amazon of the 19th century.
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bruto said:
Once upon a time you could buy anything from a house to a hammer handle.
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What I always remember, mainly because it was mentioned in the Call of Cthulhu RPG, is that you used to be able to buy Tommy Guns through the Sears catalog.
 
Ryan O'Dine said:
My first digital camera was a 3MP, 3x zoom Kodak. Which is a little ironic since, as I understand it, their delay in getting into the digital market is what started their downfall.
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You have that backwards. Kodak was a leader in digital camera technology. Problem is it took a long time for the technology to mature enough to replace the cheap film cameras that Kodak made. Transitioning from making the bulk of their sales from consumables to getting it all from cameras would not be easy, especially when electronics giants like Sony could get in on the action.

Kodak
In early 1974, KRL began an effort to develop a one-piece color video camera / recorder (now known as a camcorder), to replace home movie cameras which used 8mm film. While working on this project, Kodak Scientist Peter L. P. Dillon invented integral color image sensors... which are now ubiquitous in products such as smart phone cameras, digital cameras...

In 1993, Whitmore announced the company would restructure, and... and focused on an incremental shift to digital technology... By 2005, Kodak ranked No. 1 in the U.S. in digital camera sales, which surged 40% to $5.7 billion... Despite the initial high growth in sales, digital cameras had low profit margins due to strong competition, and the market rapidly matured. Its digital cameras soon were undercut by Asian competitors that could produce and sell cheaper products.
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If Kodak had a good reputation for more upmarket film cameras - like eg. Asahi, Nikon or FujiFilm - they might have done better. But they didn't, so they couldn't compete in that higher profit market either. We often hear the argument that Kodak was slow to get into the digital camera market, but this isn't true. The real problem was that to make a profit they had to get into a camera market they were never in, while seriously downsizing their film division as sales dropped off.

BTW after giving up photography as a hobby 25 years ago I finally got back into it a few days ago. I considered just buying film for my old Pentax Spotmatic SLR, but then I discovered that moden digital SLRs only need a cheap adapter to work with old manual lenses (of which I have several). So I bought a used FujiFilm X-T2 body and adapter for M42 (Pentax screw mount) lenses. The latest version of this camera costs over NZ$3000, but I got the X-T2 for NZ$849 with the adaptor. Having lots of fun using the manual controls like I did back in the 80's, and the image quality is amazing! Now I'm scouring the web looking for more old lens at bargain prices.
 
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bruto said:
I don't recall this. Maybe at first, but they went pretty quickly to regular JPG. I had one of the early 1.1 megapixel digitals, and it actually took pretty decent pictures.
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They also set up an early version of Instagram before sites like that existed. I think it was a bit early maybe or that it was proprietary.
 
bruto said:
Kind of thread drift, but I was always mystified by the death of Sears, which, if you think about it, was the Amazon of the 19th century. They basically had the whole idea in their hands already: a company with a single big central warehouse ...
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Better than that ... Each Sears store had a large room in the back for handling catalog orders. So they already had small warehouses all over the country and a distribution system in place. All they needed was a little imagination ....
 
jadebox said:
Better than that ... Each Sears store had a large room in the back for handling catalog orders. So they already had small warehouses all over the country and a distribution system in place. All they needed was a little imagination ....
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Yes, and catalogue stores for places that couldn't support a whole store. And not all that long ago, a parts service that actually worked.
 
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