Whew . . . Long Bob Maxey post... doesn't he ever shut up?
A few of you do not think America is capable of greatness. At least that is what I read in and among the posts. Some of you think nothing we make here is as good as the stuff we import from over there, wherever there might be. I agree and I disagree. I am old enough to remember when we did almost everything with an eye towards high quality and the words, “Made in Japan” was something entirely different. I also know we have lost a little something, so we are in a decline.
So go ahead and assume that America no longer makes good products and assume that Americans are indeed fat and lazy. I do not buy it because I know just how much we can kick ass when it comes to manufacturing consumer electronics when we have a good team manufacturing products with pride. So feel free to say it, but please consider how it once was.
If we are given a chance, if we are not hampered by asinine environmental laws (or silly lawsuits lacking merit), if we are not taxed to death, if we raise people to love America, if we kick the government out of our business, if we instill a desire to make great products, if we stop hiring incompetent workers, if we teach those worthy of training that they could one day become CEO, if we dump those that are here illegally or could not give a rat’s ass about American pride, if we decide that we can no longer afford screw around anymore, if we decide as a country that the bad quality crap must stop, and if we just get off our collective buts and get it done, no country on planet earth could stop us or compete with us in any meaningful way.
I do not buy only things made in America. For years, my cameras of choice have been Leica, Hasselblad, and for large format work, Linhoff or an Eastman Kodak wood view camera. The reason is simple: superior fit, finish, and optics. These manufacturers made some of the most amazing products available on the market and they still do. Well, except for Eastman Kodak. I used them because I wanted great results and there were no American cameras to speak of. Well, except for the handmade wood view cameras currently manufactured here in America that are every bit the equal of a Japanese view camera.
But . . .
I am equally familiar with the optics once made in Rochester New York, by the Eastman Kodak Company. 100 percent American and bloody fine quality by any standard you want to apply. Razor sharp images, accurate color, and dependable. From Eastman's view cameras to their small format roll film cameras, they were generally incredible cameras and made with perfection. By today's standards, some cameras made by Eastman --discontinued decades after most of you were born-- are still superior to those made by any Japanese manufacturer today.
I can use a vintage Kodak roll film camera and easily equal or in some cases, surpass the final print quality of anything offered by any current Japanese camera maker.
When the world was a different place and Eastman was at its best, their variety of sensitized goods (and their manufacturing capabilities and workmanship) was overwhelming and hard to believe. When I was in the retail photographic business, we routinely stocked 100+ kinds of Eastman Kodak film on a 40-50 foot long wood rack. if we needed one roll of some special film, EKCO was happy to ship it.
You are hard pressed to find a decent photography dealer with anything that could be called knowledge these days unless it is digital. We stocked a ton of film and we took pride in what we could offer.
Kodak manufactured high quality projectors for slides and movies (16mm) and the perhaps 200+ different lenses they made for dozens and dozens of different camera models they also made in Rochester. While other film and paper makers sold paper and film in the United States, the variety was limited. Agfa offered variety, buy not even close to what Eastman once offered.
Kodak also offered photographic filters numbering more than 400 different types. They published more than 2000 books and other publications they once sold or gave away. Have an unusual problem? Well, there was once a publication to help you. Not many books would be sold detailing how to make your own emulsion or binding gelatin filters in glass, but that was not what was important to Kodak. They were great at supporting customers with unique needs that by no means would significantly enhance the bottom line. Why did they bother? Well, a few people need help so Kodak bent over to help.
Kodak once manufactured a special camera for making XOGRAPHS. These were stereo prints (3D) that were great back in the day and vastly superior to any 3D printing process available today. They stocked tens of thousands of dyes and specialty chemicals, too.
Kodak offered more than a thousand chemicals devoted to photographic processing. Perhaps 200+ developers, not to mention, stop baths, a multitude of fixers and other chemicals. And that is just for black and white work; their dedication to color printing and printers was equally great and the product range equally large.
They offered hardware like tanks, reels, clips, lighting equipment, copy equipment, automated roll film printers made before most of you were born and before integrated circuits. Imagine that, consistent print quality with a completely analog system.
Kodak once offered literally hundreds of different films in hundreds of sizes. From 8mm roll stock for movie cameras, to 35mm and roll sizes, to 10 inch film in long lengths for special cameras like Cirkit and Banquet Cameras. Imagine creating a negative that measures 8 inches by 6 feet.
They offered a variety of sheet film and more than a few dozen different aerial films in many different sizes; 5 to 10 inch wide and in long lengths. They offered dozens of different glass plates and sheet films numbering more than 300 different types and sizes (2-1/4x3-1/4, 4x5, 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, 16x20, and beyond) not to mention hundreds of different motion picture film stocks.
Much of these products were kept current even though the cameras required to use the film were discontinued decades ago. And remember that film has a shelf life, so you could not stockpile the stuff and guarantee freshness unless you decided to keep manufacturing the stuff.
And that does not count the specialized films for industry, manufacturing, X-Ray use, astronomical applications; in glass plate and film, from small sizes to 11x14 and larger. Perhaps 300 materials and associated developers to address a sector of the industrial, medical, and astronomical market must professional photographers did not know existed.
They made hundreds of different papers, in dozens of different sizes, and many different surfaces. From cut paper for 3-1/2 x 5 inch prints to mural size roll stock, to packaged deckle edged paper for making greeting cards, and every size in between.
Some of these films and papers were kept available decades after the cameras that used them were long gone from the marketplace and interest in home darkrooms and small labs diminished. Kodak believed that if only a tiny number of people still used some obsolete format or material, Kodak had a responsibility to keep them supplied with film. Unthinkable to do otherwise then; unacceptable and too damaging to the bottom line today.
Kodachrome, the best color film ever made, was once available in large format sheet sizes. They also offered Kodachrome prints on poly stocks.
When you dropped off a roll of Kodachrome on a Monday (from Salt Lake City), it was picked up by Kodak, delivered to Palo Alto California, processed, and returned on Tuesday. This was not expedited service; a roll of Kodachrome cost $3.15 cents to process and that included shipping by air, next day, to and from the lab.
Only Kodak and a few independent labs could process the stuff. Kodak’s service was amazing to be sure. Offering shoddy service was unthinkable back then.
They offered the first wide-spread color printing process for prints called The Kodak Wash-Off Relief Process and later called the Dye Transfer Process. Too much of a bother today because for color prints, all you need to do is push a button to print those crappy images from a low quality digital camera (compared to film and depending upon how you define quality).
Kodak kept the film, matrix stock, transfer paper, and dyes in stock decades after the process lost favor. I never sold any DT materials.
Interesting that most photographers have never heard of the DT process and only a few die hard printers with supplies of no longer manufactured materials can navigate through the process. I am the only person in Utah capable of making images with the DT process. Certainly, not for everyone, but superior to every other color process.
There is version for motion picture printing called the Technicolor IB Process for theatrical films. The Technicolor process is amazing. I am sure everyone here has seen “Color by Technicolor” in various film credits. That was a special and extremely complicated process that required only black and white film and dyes to create extraordinary color images on the silver screen.
A gargantuan “Proudly Made in America” 35mm motion picture camera was loaded with three separate rolls of black and white film captured the scene with thousands of watts of light required because of the nature of the process. The cameras were called 3-strip cameras for a reason.
Each negative was individually processed and then, each negative was contact printed to an individual strip of matrix film. Then, each of the three strips of matrix film was dyed --one cyan, one magenta, and one yellow-- and printed in succession, in absolutely perfect register on one strip of release print stock. One huge friggin camera and six (sometimes seven) strips of film printed in perfect register to create one release print. The complicated process was the defacto standard color MP process and thousands of films were “Color by Technicolor.”
An American color process that remains to this day, the absolute best way to create color theatrical release prints if you demand ultra quality; terrible if cost is an issue and you can’t find workers that know the process. Technicolor Company learned this a few years ago when they wanted to release films made with the process and lacked the cameras required to shoot the film. Also, the technicians were dying off.
Today, Panavision is a brand that is synonymous with ultra quality motion picture cameras and it too is an American made product.
Kodak also was responsible for the huge Coloramas hanging in Grand Central Station; they are the largest photographs ever put on display on a continuous rotating basis. The smaller versions were also on actual film and sent to Kodak dealers for display. We were proud of what we could do and we proved it.
So WTF is Bob rambling on and on about cameras and film and color movies and Panavision Cameras for anyway? I mention Eastman Kodak because their view was once shared by countless other companies. Their customer’s were king and offering anything less than the company’s best was unthinkable. American pride and quality, demonstrated day after day after week after month after decade after decade. I happen to believe that it is still this way to some extent. We just do not hear success stories.
I also believe we can return to those days where made in America sends an unmistakable signal: buy this and you can be assured there is nothing finer. I long for the good old days and I am bothered when we are thought of as second or fifth rate when I know what we can do if we are cut loose and allowed to create and prosper. If you doubt it, simply read a few history books.
We can dominate, innovate, and prosper in ways many youngsters have never experienced. Someone on the list mentioned we are tops in software but lag behind in hardware. Perhaps this is so, but not in every case. If we wanted to, however, we could rule the hardware end as well. And we would do it cheaper and better, too. Again, history proves this is possible and my experience building Palm Pilots confirms it.
Eastman was but one company in the United States that did it big, and they were proud of what they offered. The important thing for some of you to take away is this: quality was the American standard and that is how it simply had to be. Not unusual, not out of the ordinary, just the way we did it. We can do it again.
When we decide that we want to do something and we have the will of the people, forget any other country and what they can do. We can do it far better, far cheaper, far faster, and we will offer hundreds of different versions of the product, whatever the product may be.
We need a John Kennedy style Moon Landing approach to manufacturing. He said we would put a man on the moon in ten years and by God, we did it. He did not say we should try, or perhaps it would be cool if we did it. He told us we would do it and we did it. I think Obama does not get it and the last thing he wants is more industry requiring competent workers with a blinding pride in America.
Merry Christmas everyone I hope your houses survived all of those cheap imported strings of lights. Mine were made in 1952 in Ohio and most of the heavy glass bulbs are still shiny and bright. American Made.
Bob Maxey
Exactly what do you mean by that? As in... America wasn't part of WWII? America didn't make a big statement in WWII? From what I know in history books, no book ever says someone "saved" another. History is all about facts, without inserting opinionated statements.
