Kodak Instant Cameras: a Failed Gamble
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ค. 2024
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In 1976, Kodak tried to challenge rival Polaroid's dominance of the instant photography market by releasing its own line of instant film and cameras. Designed to skirt as many of Polaroid's patents as possible, Kodak instant cameras integrated a number of unique features, such as rear-exposed film and hand-cranked film ejection. While these products were initially successful, Kodak was swiftly sued by Polaroid for patent infringement and ultimately lost, forcing it to end production of its instant cameras after only 10 years.
Thanks, as always, to Julian Horn for his assistance in researching this video.
Polaroid Video Series:
Part I: • Polaroid Cameras Part ...
Part II: • Polaroid Cameras Part ...
Part III: • Polaroid Cameras Part ...
Camera Flashes Video: • The History of Camera ...
0:00 Intro
01:56 Polaroid vs. Kodak Film Chemistry
5:54 Polaroid vs. Kodak Camera Design
7:12 Kodak EK-2 "The Handle" Features and Function
9:12 Kodak Instant Film Specs
10:06 Kodak ColorBurst 50 Features and Function
11:54 The Kodak-Polaroid (and Fujifilm) Lawsuit
14:25 Outro
SOURCES:
mikeeckman.com/2021/01/kodak-...
kodak.3106.net/index.php?p=201
camera-wiki.org/wiki/Kodak_Ins...
library.torontomu.ca/asc/2013...
blog.jimgrey.net/2013/07/24/r...
www.nikonweb.com/ek2/
www.lomography.com/magazine/1...
vintagecameralab.com/kodak-ha...
vintagecameralab.com/kodak-co...
I worked at Target in the 1970's when the Kodak instant camera came out. We carried Polaroid and Kodak in the camera dept, so I played with both systems a lot. We had a lot of film to use as demo product. The difference between the 2 camera systems was night and day. Kodak was vastly superior to the Polaroid in its image quality. I saved up my minimum wage earnings and bought a Kodak Handle. 45 years later, the prints still look pretty damn good!
I have some polaroid pictures I recently found from my childhood that still look pretty decent. Those photos are from the 80s and I think they were taken with some of that more higher-end Polaroids. When was the Polaroid Spectra and a few of the others I believe were taken with the sun 660 what time does sonar autofocus.
The colour burst 250 was the one we had.
My parents got it as a gift for attending a timeshare presentation in Florida. When they lost the case Kodiac had to recall all of them. I was young but my dad put me in charge of dealing with it so I called the number, and they sent out a recall package. It was a shipping bag with their address on it. You filled out your address and what you wanted as a replacement. We choose a Disk Camera.
You wrote everything right on the bag, put the camera in and dropped it off in a mail box (it was all pre paid). I have vivid memories of dropping that bag in to the box wondering if I should have kept it…. About 6 weeks later a brand new Kodiac disk camera arrived in the mail.
All the memories….
My grandfather worked for Kodak at the time. He was a real follow-the-rules kind of guy so he did follow through on the recall and returned all my family's instant cameras
Someone in my family must have owned one of these for a brief time. I find it interesting that Kodak offered a matte finish instant film. I was recently given a picture from Kodak instant camera at first I thought it was just a really bad scan of a Polaroid Spectra picture until I turned it over in saw Kodak written on it and it had the typical pods you'd find in an instant film bulging out.
The Polaroid photo, after drying for several days, CAN be split by cutting around the edge. What you get is a "color slide" from the front & a chalk-white back. You can lay the front part of the photo face down & spray the back with flat white paint. After drying, you can trim it anyway you want. I used to take portrait photo & use the picture on a badge.
Old Polaroid photos will often delaminate & bulge like a pillow, only being held together around the edges.
I had The Handle as a young teen, and absolutely loved it. The prints were much nicer than the Polaroid prints from my brother's One Step, with a more pleasing rectangular image, and the prints seem to more resistent to fading.
I was deeply saddened when they were forced to discontinue the sale of the film....
That camera really helped cement my lifelong love of photography.
Would like to correct you that the first kodak instant film was ISO 160 not 150, as it says on the packaging. The later HS144 and trimprint was iso 320. The Fujifilm integral film (FI-10) was completely compatible with kodak cameras until the release of FI-800, which could be modified to fit. The Japanese lawsuit was not developed further because Polaroid did not have a significant market in Japan unlike in the US, they did however settle for r&d sharing with magnetic tape as you mentioned but also film technology. Later polaroid films used dyes Fujifilm developed. The whole story of Fotorama is quite interesting. It was arguably superior to polaroid in almost everyway. Another follow up video on Fotorama and instax would be amazing.
Polaroid integral film was ASA 150 but the newer film was ASA 600, a big improvement given the film size. Polaroid had done some work on integral film @ ASA 2000.
Gosh I'm so glad someone finally made a video on these things. I found my mom's old EK4 in its box while going through a closet and she let me keep it, such an interesting looking thing that I've never really seen much info on. And yet, this all makes sense, my mom's EK4 looks like it was barely ever used, I remember she would talk about how she was barely ever able to afford film for it which, yeah it makes sense now. A few little neat points about it specifically: The EK4 features the circular rangefinder mentioned at 11:00, which itself sits inside of a rectangular reticle like that of the EK2. It's almost a copper color and gathers light from a small window just above the viewfinder. The focusing system on it is also interesting in that it has 2 notches around the lens housing, and as the focus slider is adjusted the lens will rotate and the notches will line up with distances given in both meters and feet.
Honestly such a shame that there's no film for these things floating around, I remember tracking down the battery it used and hoping to find some film I could use before I realized it would be impossible. Part of me really hopes that one day It will get a similar treatment to Polaroid where a company starts reproducing film packs but, with how different it is from Polaroid film and how much more expensive it was the realist part of my head says that will never happen.
My parents had such a Kodak camera when I was a kid. The quality of these pictures were miles ahead of the Polaroid. It is a difference of an actual good-quality picture you'd get from a lab and the, well, crappy quality Polaroids with shiny surface and off-colors we all know.
The patent ruling meant that the Kodak-camera became useless and started my life-long opposition of the patent system: if such a clearly better and different product that out-innovated Polaroid can be sued out of existence then not only the other company looses but the customers. With the shield of the patent system, Polaroid continued to _not_ innovate and kept selling their low-quality product until the end.
These days, patents are written so vague so that they can be used to manifest non-innovating monopolies instead of what they were meant to be: stimulating innovation.
I would have hoped the two companies would have come to a technology sharing and cross licensing accommodation. It seemed that Polaroid managed to get a de facto monopoly on instant photography, and another American government might have frowned more deeply on this. But eventually digital photography came and both companies took a bath. In the end greed swallows itself.
@@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648 and now instant photography is more of a hobby.
I was part of a design team that got shut down by a patent troll. We had to gut all of the redeployability and standalone operation capability of our design. Said trolls never deployed a God damned thing. Our lobotomised design operated for the 5 years it was originally intended, but the longer term capabilities were removed entirely and all the units were scrapped at the end of the contract. That experience along with the massive rise in DIWAC patents around the same time also soured my view of the patent system
It seems crazy that Kodak went out of their way to not infringe on the Polaroid patents but they were still able to convince a court otherwise.
Kodak eliminated the mirror which is the reason the Polaroid cameras are shaped the way they are.
Just got home from work, time to sit down with a comfy new video
i am SO glad i found your channel, way better than simon rambling on about some random topic, you always put out pure gold!
Yes, I got $40, if I recall correctly, for the nameplate from a Handle that I picked up at a garage sale for almost free since the film was already unavailable.
There is a _"photo-finish"_ joke here somewhere, but I have not yet had enough coffee this morning to try to make one...😉
{Great video, Gilles...👍}
Winning the law suit for 909 million was probably a much better deal than having to sell cameras and film to earn the same amount.
Not really. Polaroid was already selling cameras and film anyway, so that would have been just more of the same. To win the lawsuit they instead had to have employees figure out how Kodak's cameras and film worked, determine what parts infringed their patents, hire lawyers, go through discovery, and so on, spending ten years at the whole job.
Hi there, Ginnes Messier! I love this channel, you’re one of the most knowledgeable and diligent people I’ve seen so far on TH-cam. This will be a channel I’m subscribed to going forward, very impressive stuff.
Great series so far! I was thinking of the Fujifilm products while watching this video, and seeing as you mentioned them in the end, hope you cover them in the next part. They had several instant camera and film lines nearly completely unknown to western consumers, and therefore not many people talk about them like Polaroid. They were the last ones to produce packfilm (up to 2016 or so) and singlehandedly kept the instant photography market alive with Instax while Polaroid and Kodak were going through their respective bankruptcies.
Fuji Instant Cameras are still Big in Japan as we saw when recently in Tokyo, but often referred to as Polaroids 😂
Polaroid even has customers there 😉
Kodak also had a darkroom version of this. In the early 80s, it was very difficult to do your own color prints from negative. Their system let you expose the paper with a simple enlarger and then you passed the paper into a tank of sodium hydroxide solution. I still have some of the prints I did in college.
I remember that, I worked in a camera shop in the late 80’s ilford also had a “system” cibachrom (sp) and there was the “day lab” i lusted after the day lab, I ended up getting a bunch of darkroom equipment from a relative, I just recently tossed the Bessler 23c duel dichro, enlarger, I still have prints I made off of it hanging in my home close to 30 years later
I had the crank one, when I was a kid, but the film was too expensive for me to buy when I was 12, ended up getting my check for $40
yes,a mini lab called ektaflex
Thanks for covering this aspect. What a terrific and interesting series this has been! I had a Colorburst and loved that camera. I was so sad when Polaroid screwed over Kodak.
My grandmother had one of those, I can remember her cranking the photos out.
I worked in a large, Boston based, camera store in the EK instant film era. We sold way (way) more Polaroid than EK film. In fact it wasn't until the film was no longer available that a demand appeared. People got mad at us because in their minds an instant camera was a Polaroid and they figured we were lying to them about the lawsuit (karens are not a new development).
I think that the EK film was superior, and more adaptable than Polaroid film because it was exposed from the back. I had a 4x5 camera back that was able to use the EK product directly, with Polaroid , adapting the sx70 style film was not possible without many compromises.
Also the trim prints could be cut after you removed the processing pack off the back.
One of the very few TH-camrs that actually puts the links in the description when they mention it in the video.
Thanks for a great video 💫
I cannot stop watching your channel. If you ever want to feature an electromechanical keyboard or keyboard instrument on your channel I would be more than happy to lend you something-I always get weird shit in the shop
I had one of those color burst cameras. Compared to the little instamatic I had before that, this thing was high tech. Had a nice case and stuff for it. Really bummed me out when I got the little card in the mail about a year later saying that they were discontinuing making film for it, it took pretty sharp pictures………
I had one of those Kodak instant cameras. The color reproduction was far superior to Polaroid’s, which always had a greenish cast.
My parents have a "Handle" camera in all black. I found it in a cupboard and assumed it was from the Nineties. I never would have guess it was this old. My Dad said that they never used it and that it was a "sales award gift" and he thought it was something special. Little did he know 😆
I don't want to libel Kodak, but I don't think they bothered with a recall/compensation scheme in Europe, or at any rate in the Rep. of Ireland. All's I know is my little sis got stiffed with her 'handle', which she'd only had for less than 6 months. Maybe it was for the best, the film was unfeasibly expensive for a working class schoolgirl in a country deep in recession. To be fair though, when you look at the insane complexity of the technology and the chemistry that went into it, you can hardly blame 'em for charging so much..!
Kodak seemed to be hoping people would pay more for the quality.
@@SeekingTheLoveThatGodMeans7648 Yeah, that would make -since- sense. If I'm being entirely honest, I don't think my sister cared whether she got a Polaroid or a Kodak, it was just the 'gimmick' factor of an 'Instant Camera'. Of course, Polaroid cameras had been around for a couple of decades by the mid~'80's, so 'gimmick' probably wasn't the most accurate term, but you get what I mean. For a little girl, the 'Wowee!' element was high!
That's really interesting and useful as I happened to pick up one of these Kodak cameras before I had any notion of what it was. Although it's not boxed, it does have the nameplate and the little indentations do indeed have someone's initials.
Would have been interesting if the Kodak film were allowed to survive-- I didn't know it was similar to FP-100 (RIP Fotorama). I do wish Fuji or the new Polaroid company would bring back peel-apart 100 Series film... I saw a full unopened case (20 packs) of FP-100C on eBay recently with a Buy It Now price of almost $3k... And it "only" expired in 2008! lol. Sadly, most of the late-date packs have long been snatched up or are still sitting in the back of somebody's film freezer, so most of the stuff for sale now has expiration dates from the early 2000s. I think the last batch produced bore expiration dates of 2018/2019.
When we were newly married my wife made 2 mistakes: The first was buying a Kodak instant camera. While the image quality may have been slightly better than Polaroid, the images still faded pretty quickly (seems to me they weren't quite as bad as my friend's Polaroid) and with no negative there was no option to have them re-printed. Or to get copies for friends & family.
The second mistake was accepting the voucher from Kodak instead of the cash and choosing the Disc camera instead of the coupon book or (my preference) the share of stock. I think we still have the camera around here somewhere but we only used it a few times because it was terrible.
Simply put: corporate greed, once again, prevented humanity from having something that worked.
,,this is why we can't have nice things"...
That was cool 😎 Thanks Gilles 👍
Great video. I had the handle, took nice photos and good colors. Fun camera, but alas, thanks Polaroid.
I owned them both. The Kodak pictures were FAR SUPERIOR to the Polaroid and had more dynamic colors!!
Hopefully you can do a follow up video on the latest line of Fujifilm instant camera systems, and maybe compare them to the Polaroid Originals reissued One Step cameras.
I remember these, and remember how much better the photos turned out than Polaroid. Thanks!
Sorry to say that the 600 series Polaroid cameras with the built in electronic flash took far superior photos than any Kodak camera.
I remember my father owned a Colorburst 50, but maybe in Mexico was sold under another model name, I'm not sure. The camera was huge and clumsy but the photos passed the proof of time. 40+ years after and they still look well. As a kid, It always amazed me the odd sensation of the slider shutter in this camera 😂.
Well I think they look neat, hmph! I have one of those handle-types, though it's not labeled as such, just Kodak EK-2. Been wondering about, retrofitting a small digital camera inside. Plenty of room.
Note: Am Eastman Kodak Kodamatic 940 is used by a kid to photograph Sarah Connor at the end of "The Terminator" (1984).
I happen to also have a ek kodak camera type. Honestly it looks pretty cool, it's sad i may never take any images with it. The adjustable focus is in my opinion a pretty good design (although hard to say that the ultra sound focus of Polaroid was less better, but the adjustable focus is pretty nice).
Used to own the Kodak EK6 and exchanged it for a Kodak ColorDisc camera in the mail back in mid-1980s.
“The Handle” might make a fun band name. 😊 I think Kodak was trying to tap into the CB craze with the that name? 😅
A lot of Kodak cameras have those indentations for initials on them even outside of instant photography. I occasionally shoot 110 film and I have a Kodak extralight 10 that has those three indentations on the back of it.
When I was a kid in the 70's we took the extra letter stickers and spelled inappropriate things on the back of the closet door!!!
Polaroid type 300 black and white film , specificly 331, also shot though the back of the film and the manual for my microcams warn that the images will be mirrored.
You are incorrect about camera size. Polaroid cameras with their single mirror allow the light path to be folded while Kodak cameras needed either a full straight path or required two mirrors to fold the light path.
Polaroid did develop both systems and chose the advantages of the single mirror system.
What really sank Kodak was film processing. Spreading the reagent required some key things to be done to spread evenly with no bubbles and Polaroid had that patented. Kodak knew this all along and wrote tons of cover your ass memos about violating Polaroid patents. Those memos helped sink Kodak.
So that is what happened to Kodak great video learning something from all these video's
Something you may find interesting...
When Kodak was forced to stop selling their instant cameras they offered owners a "buy back" of sorts. If you mailed your camera back to Kodak you would receive your choice of a $25 gift certificate for any Kodak products, a free disc camera, or one share of Kodak stock. I had 2 different models. And I still think they produced much better photos than Polaroid ever did.
I had the later Kodak with the electronic flash. It took very good pictures. It was very annoying to have to return it.
I really wanna know how that Colorburst camera works... the lens is not directly in line at all with the film plane! I can't find anything online about it. Is there a reflector in the hump on the back? It's truly puzzling me.
Sad when a superior product gets stopped being offered for sale to the public, but patents and copyrights are necessary for the orderly business and legal functions of society. And a hint: Some recalled products become high-value collectors item's later on but know the legal ramifications of what you're doing because it may have a cost to ignore the recall even years later.
Please don't take my Kodachrome away.
If memory serves me well I remember the Keystone camera company also manufacturing an instant camera. Not sure which film format it utilized. Thank you
2 keystone both whit integated electronic flash:one use peel apart rectangular film like 669 and one other model used sx 70 film;both very uncommon at time but relatively easy to find on line used
Hello, my friend gave me a Kodak handle instant camera as a gift. Is there any other filmstock compatible that I can find?
In addition to a check or gift certificate, in the US at least, you could choose to receive one share of Kodak stock. At the time it was worth about $60 if I recall correctly.
I like being told stuff by people wearing bow ties...
The design of these is an excellent example of high Kitch.
My dad had a Handle camera. He bought it while we were stationed in Germany. He must have taken 1000s of pictures with it
Any old camera is a collectors item to me. It doesn't have to be worth much. I just live old camera and computer tech.
Do Fuji next
Polaroid riding those patents into the dirt. I am fine with patents but this is a good example of winning the battle and losing the war.
How did the lost?
Oh Yea!
Would be neat if Polaroid started making film for Kodaks wee beasties too.
I recently acquired a Kodak handle to use its rollers with an Instax box camera project. It is ... hideous.
there are adapters for this camera.
Ironically, Instax is primarily Kodak technology and is going strong, while Polaroid is much less popular.
Oh how giants have fallen… today, you can pick up 20 exposures of Instax Mini (which I use in my RB67) for $10-15. Or, you can get 8 exposures of Polaroid for… $18-20… no contest.
This victory didn't save Polaroid from collapsing into bankruptcy in 2001. Kodak followed it in 2012, but it emerged in 2013 again and still exixts today, a shadow of its former self. Polaroid film materials are now produced by another company that bought the rights.
The moral of this story is that ten year patent battles are ruinous for both sides.
I prefer your old intro
It's too bad Kodak didn't just make a deal to pay royalties, license fees, or enter a technology sharing agreement with Polaroid. Kodak's color reproduction and quality of the finished image was always superior to Polaroid.
I was raised by Kodak 😊
That unused film u have likely costs as much as the camera, today of course 😊
Couldn't make a better product so they had to play dirty.
You know Dick Van Dyke is old when he had gray hair back then.
I don’t see a patent infringement there was more than 10% difference as to how the film worked. The camera portion was irrelevant to the lawsuit. Polaroid quite obviously paid off key people in the courts. Look what happened to them, karma hit Polaroid. From what I have seen on YT there is a group of individuals who have purchased a Polaroid factory in Europe. They had no info as to the chemistry used in the original films. They have a group of chemists working on developing more films. Film from them runs at one dollar per photo. Quite expensive by todays standards.
Clearly, you don’t understand the lawsuit or the patents. Polaroid showed it had developed the equivalent Kodak system first, patented key elements, and decided the single mirror system was better. Polaroid demonstrated their version of the through the back system in court. The big key was in spreading the reagent. There are special things you must do to make that work with no defects or bubbles. Polaroid had that protected by patents. Kodak could not get around that and tons of internal memos were written indicating that Kodak was violating Polaroid patents. Those memos, all recorded and cataloged by Kodak, caused them to lose the lawsuit!
Gilles-
Do a deep dive on the the midline and DEW line radar systems.
hoping the company you stole the design from doesnt get mad when you rip them off...........
never liked the polaroid quality...its horrible
Monopoly no, showing a different way to create the same thing that the patent shows no that's not acceptable, competition on your market no we don't want innovation. I actually think the separate battery is the better approach. Oh yeah let's not forget they had a better method.
Similar to what zackscom is doing now.
First!
Its ISO not I.S.O.
Its not an acronym, its short for the greek work "Isos", meaning "equal".
My photography professor hates when people say it like an acronym
Polaroid? Kodak? Aren't these cheap android phones?🤣🤣🤣
I see your collection has gotten so large that you're having to use inventory control stickers :) TR 944369. That's be building 94, isle 43, bay 69, correct?