Kodak Quits Camera Business

It was on the cards, and now it's official—Kodak is to stop making cameras and camcorders ... oh, and digital photo frames too. After 120 years of manufacturing photographic equipment, Kodak has decided to concentrate on its printer and photobooth businesses.

The Kodak brand dates back to 1888, when Eastman Dry Plate (which became Eastman Kodak four years later) released its first camera. The firm then made a name for itself producing consumer cameras with reasonable price tags that made photography accessible to almost anyone who fancied having a go at it. In fact, the firm's long-running slogan 'you press the button, we do the rest' pretty much sums up a company philosophy far-removed from the scientific image of photo labs, complicated chemicals and dark rooms.

Emblematic cameras that have marked the company's history include the Brownie series—an immensely popular line of cameras launched in 1900, and which ran right until the 1960s. Similarly, Kodak's Instamatic cameras were the iconic consumer compacts of the 1960s. Finally, who could forget the numerous Kodak folding cameras from the early 1900s, which accompanied the likes of Mallory and Irvine as they scaled Mount Everest, or were tucked away in Mr Harker's case in Bram Stoker's Dracula ... you may also have spotted one in the bottom left-hand corner of our camera test scene.

Among its ranks, Kodak can boast Steven Sasson, who built the first electronic camera with a CCD sensor in 1975, just before his colleague Bryce Bayer brought colour to the equation with the Bayer matrix. And it was Kodak that outed the DCS 100, the first digital back for the Nikon F3 SLR, not to mention the first digital camera aimed at consumer users (Apple QuickTake 100), the first digital camera to come with Wi-Fi (Easyshare One), and the first consumer digital camera to use a 23 mm wide-angle lens (V570).

Unfortunately for Kodak, none of these innovations really took off, and competitors using the same technology ended up meeting with more success. And so comes the news that Eastman Kodak will be phasing out its 'dedicated capture devices business', including cameras, camcorders and digital photo frames. Kodak will therefore be following Cisco's Flip in pulling out of the relatively new pocket camcorder market.

The Kodak brand won't be disappearing entirely, however, as the firm will continue to work in several of its more profitable fields after carrying out the heavy restructuring required after its recent bankruptcy. Instant photo printing stations, for example, will continue to be developed, as well as connected photo printing tools for online photo print set-ups. In fact, printing equipment and minilabs have been the core of Kodak's business for several years now.

Kodak will continue to make inkjet printers too.

Any Kodak camera owners can rest assured that product warranties will be honoured and that the Kodak Gallery website will stay up and running. Plus, anyone still using a film camera should be able to pick up a few remaining types of Kodak film.


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