Struggling FujiFilm Jumps Into Medicine

Above, FujiFilm Square (background) down the street from Roppongi Crossing. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

There was once a day when one of the great debates was who made the better photographic film (grain, saturation, color balance, speed, sharpness, etc.), Kodak or Fujifilm.

Since the advent of digital photography, one doesn't hear about photographic film anymore. Both Kodak and Fujifilm suffered major losses of revenue as people tossed their film cameras in favor of digital ones. Both companies, in order to survive, branched out into other kinds of business, many of which are totally unrelated to film or photography.

The Japan Times has an article on the manufacturing of medicine to fight the deadly Ebola virus through their subsidiary company, Toyama Chemical.

They wrote:

When Japan announced it was ready to supply a new drug to help combat the deadly Ebola virus, one unusual detail emerged — it would be made by Fujifilm. 

The company synonymous with cameras and photo booths said it could start producing Avigan, which Japan has already approved to treat the flu but which scientists think also could crimp the vicious illness. 

Fujifilm’s expansion from pictures to pills through health care subsidiary Toyama Chemical is a business move being echoed by other manufacturing giants, including Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba, as fierce competition, a shrinking domestic market and their fall from global dominance in electronics nudges them into new spheres.

The article also shows that diversifying into other areas of manufacturing isn't just confined to photographic and electronics companies.

FujiFilm has a big facility, FujiFilm Square, in the Roppongi section of Tokyo with museum exhibits, galleries and Touch FujiFilm where visitors can try out new photographic products.

To read the full article, go here.

Kodak About To Emerge From Bankruptcy

It is a sad thing to see a great company to have to file bankruptcy because they were slow to adapt to new innovations and trends.

Such was the case of the Eastman Kodak Company.

According to an article posted by The Japan Times:

Many of its products and services are gone, including the camera-making business that made it famous more than a century ago. Also gone are scores of workers, manufacturing facilities, supply contracts and millions of dollars in investments.

The article begins with the statement that the company doesn't look a whole lot like it did when it entered into bankruptcy. In order to get its financial house in order, Kodak had to slim down and close down a lot of its product divisions.

The company hopes to emerge from bankruptcy as early as September 3.

The advent of digital cameras have made emulsion film nearly obsolete. Kodak was slow to get in on the digital bandwagon, with disastrous results. I remember the news of the day was the constant competition between Kodak and Fuji Film of Japan and who made the better film.

As the article pointed out:

Founded by George Eastman in 1880, Eastman Kodak Co. is credited with popularizing photography at the start of the 20th century and was known all over the world for its Brownie and Instamatic cameras and its yellow-and-red film boxes. It was first brought down by Japanese competition and then an inability to keep pace with the shift from film to digital technology.

I personally owned two Kodak camera. One was a Kodak Instamatic 104 in the mid-1960s (it was stolen from my high school photography classroom) and the other was a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 20 in the 1970s. I gave that one to my parents when I switched to 35mm.

Above, a Kodak Instamatic 104 camera set.  

The new Kodak will concentrate on the "commercial imaging industry, providing professional services such as commercial printing, packaging and film for motion pictures."  (It'll be interesting to see how the motion picture film division will fare since digital technology has been replacing motion picture film.)