Kodak moments die hard

Kodak moments die hard

By surajit agarwal

Kodak commands premium mindspace when you think of photography, especially for the 30+ year-olds who have actually used point and shoot cameras that had 36-exposure film in them. The process of extracting the maximum usable amount out of each roll of film was part of every newbie photographer's first challenge. I still cringe at the memory of my dad's anger when he found just four "keepers" of the first roll I ever shot!

Considering the advent of affordable point-and-shoots towards the end of the 90s and the growth of middle class economies in China, Latin America and South East Asia, I would have imagined that the bosses at Kodak were still sure of a few years of comfortable growth—after all they had everything from the cameras, rolls, processing equipment and chemicals in place already. Plus, early reactions to digital cameras were hardly encouraging. These could barely manage a megapixel, and were not considered good enough for even the casual photographer. So what could go wrong?

A lot, actually. Technology changed quickly, Chinese manufacturing knocked the bottom out of prices (and therefore margins), and digital cameras with LCD screens and reusable memory cards caught on with the public imagination. Kodak quickly found itself at the receiving end of the one of the biggest technology disruptions in the personal electronics space (the only real competitor would probably be the typewriter losing out to the PC, but that’s really more of an office productivity tool).

Anyway, Kodak like every other camera maker embraced the digital camera movement. Though the dominance of the print era was gone, the Kodak Moment integrated well with the whole digital marketplace. The company has a decent presence in the digital camera space, and has recently been among the early movers in a new product category—digital HD camcorders. So is life good again? Well, not exactly. The original disruptive technology is in danger of going the way of the camera roll too. Yes, I believe the digital camera is headed for the museum. Before you rubbish this as preposterous, consider this:

The cameras embedded in mobile phones make it almost redundant to carry a digital camera these days. What do you need to do with a digital camera that cannot be done with your camera mobile? Quality images, video recording, big prints... the mobiles offer all of that. Some have powerful flashes too. Combine the cost of a decent cellphone and a digital camera and you can pretty much get an all-in-one device that does both functions almost equally well. Sure, the sceptic will say the quality of the image from a camera phone is nowhere near that of a digital camera. But, that is changing fast. I use a camera phone with an 8-megapixel resolution. Since I got it a year ago, there has been no reason for me to use the digital camera. The fact that I now have to carry only one charger and data card makes the deal that much sweeter. For the finicky photographer, camera phones have already gone to 12-megapixels. All manufacturers are getting set to launch phones with HD video recording capabilities this year, so what do we need a digital camera for anymore? Those HD camcorders will be redundant as well then!

Technology redundancy is natural fact of life. While I'm pretty sure the digital camera has had its day in the sun, optical disk/drive manufacturers are now having sleepless nights because of memory cards! You know it is the end of the road for the CD/DVD when audio players in Mumbai's black and yellow cabs come equipped with USB ports and media card readers! Netbooks with missing CD/DVD drives are also reinforcing the fact that the CD is no longer the media of choice for digital storage and playback. Other products that I think will not feature for long CHIP’s pages include portable media players (again, replaced by smartphones) and home media players (next gen TV sets will just include the circuitry to play different media formats and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connectivity to receive multiple signals). All in all, quite a few products are headed to the digital museum. But that only means tech innovation is alive and kicking!

– feedback@chip.in