Kodak to discontinue black-and-white paper - Boston.com - Business.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. --Ending a century-old tradition, Eastman Kodak Co. will soon stop making black-and-white photographic paper, a niche product for fine-art photographers and hobbyists that is rapidly being supplanted by digital-imaging systems.
Kodak said Wednesday it will discontinue production of the paper, specially designed for black-and-white film, at the end of this year. But the world's biggest film manufacturer will continue to make black-and-white film and chemicals for processing.
"It's a shame to see it go," said Bill Schiffner, editor of Imaging Business magazine in Melville, N.Y. "Digital has done a lot of good things for the industry but it's done some bad things too. It's making a lot of these processes obsolete."
The paper is manufactured at a plant in Brazil. (HOLY SHIT BRAZIL AGAIN, Christ they are everywhere!) Kodak declined to specify how many employees would be affected by the production shutdown, which is part of a three-year overhaul to eliminate 12,000 to 15,000 jobs by 2007 and shrink the company's work force to around 50,000.
As the industry shifts rapidly from chemical-based to digital imaging, demand for black-and-white paper is declining about 25 percent annually, Kodak spokesman David Lanzillo said. "If I'm printing digital photos on any kind of printer, whether it's inkjet or thermal transfer or dye sublimation, the kind of paper I use is color agnostic," he said. "I can print black and white with great gray gradients and use the same system to print regular color. There's much more versatility with today's print solutions." "More photographers and consumers that shoot black-and-white are shooting digital, they're processing it on regular inkjet paper, and ... the quality is pretty good," Schiffner said.
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