Sunday March 28 2010
Camera,
Gustavson, Todd,ISBN 978 1 4027 5656 6,2009
This
is a ‘coffee table book’ large, heavy, and replete with interesting photographs
of people and the cameras that took the photos. Gustavson is the curator of the Eastman Camera collection.
Naturally the book had the ‘kodak’ point of view. A few observations from reading the book
·
As always, breakthrough inventions seem to be the work of one or two
people, even today, as Steven Sasson at Kodak saw the future of electronic
imaging, Kodak makes such sensors now
·
Once Gladwell’s Tipping Point is reached a new technology takes off,
Brady opened his studio in NYC in 1844, Lincoln partially credited his Brady
photograph for making him President
·
Cameras of the 1800s reflected the craftsmanship rather than mass
manufacturing of that day with gorgeous walnut bodies and brass encased lenses
·
The French were active in science and manufacturing until 1900,
apparently WW I and the socialist state mindset only allows for cheese, wine
and fashion, forget cameras (okay Bugatti had a fling in the 1930s with cars)
·
Eastman Kodak saw the virtue of mass marketing in 1900, and that the
money was in the software, the film, not the camera
·
The name Brownie did not come from Brownell who made the cameras for
Eastman but popular characters from a children’s book by Palmer Cox,, nothing
new about Buzz Lightyear eh?
·
Kodak was still making a serious camera after WW II but the book
glosses over the fact that Kodak exited serious cameras for the far more
lucrative venture of processing the film for all camera makers
·
The book makes no mention of the financial difficulty EK has had moving
to digital imaging. While there
are Kodak machines seemingly everywhere, the stock has not recovered trading at
$6, the firm has negative equity and is not producing cash flow. Hmm, it will
be ironic if the firm that got America taking pictures and that first made
electronic sensors goes bankrupt but it certainly looks that way.
We will shortly be studying earnings per share and cash flow. Go to finance.yahoo.com and look a at the income and cash flow statements for EK. Now look at the equity sections over the last few years of the balance sheets. The deterioration is evident, as seen in the stock price. EK is not producing income, not producing cash flow, and the OE of A = L + OE is now negative. This will not last, apparently the slowdown in the economy has affected the number of photos processed at EK booths across the country.