It uses traditional film, but like a digital camera, it has a 1.8-inch liquid display that lets the user see how the developed picture will look. It would show, for example, whether someone in the picture closed his or her eyes. The new products are just a way Kodak is trying to find its place in the new, more competitive marketplace for images. At one time, Kodak dominated its industry and was able to create a corporate culture of virtually guaranteed lifetime jobs. Despite the pain, pricing pressure continues from Fuji Photo Film, and there has been nothing but red ink to emerge from the digital business where constant innovation is necessary just to be a player.
Conventional photography is in the cross hairs.
Kodak faces two scenarios, Henderson says. Either it fails in the digital world. Or it succeeds and dries up the film business. Kodak wins when people take more pictures of any kind, and there were 2.2 billion more shot in the USA last year than in 1998, he says. Raised in a Mayberry-size town in the Appalachian Mountains where his family ran a clothing store, Carp joined Kodak 30 years ago as a statistical analyst and built his career in Latin America and Europe.