Fast-Film Coup

A colorful marvel from Kodak

One reason the Eastman Kodak Co. of Rochester, N.Y., controls 70% of the U.S. amateur photographic film market is the firm's remarkable ability to create new products that make taking pictures a snap. First there was the boxlike Brownie in 1900. Then after World War II came the Brownie Hawkeye (1949), the Instamatic (1963), the pocket Instamatic (1972) and, earlier this year, the highly successful Kodak Disc camera. Between its introduction in May and year's end, the company expects to sell 8 million of the devices, making it by far the hottest new camera in history.

Last week the firm unveiled its newest offering to the point-and-shoot crowd: a super-high-speed color print film-that promises to reduce greatly the need for flash attachments and light meters even in relatively dim settings.

In technical terms, Kodak's new film carries an ISO rating of 1,000, which means that it is 2 1/2 times as sensitive to light as any other color print film now on the market. (ISO is a new international film-speed measuring standard, whose ratings are similar to the previously used American one, ASA.) The company's most popular color print film, Kodacolor II, has a rating of 100. Kodak and several rivals, including Europe's Agfa-Gevaert Group, the Japanese Fuji Photo Film Co. and Minnesota's 3M Co., produce less popular, and more expensive, print films with 400 ratings.

Kodak has not yet announced the retail price for its new film, which will go on sale some time in 1983. But most industry experts expect a strong demand for the product even if it costs 25% more than Kodacolor 400, which retails for $3.50 per 24-shot roll.

Wall Street investors, who have been smitten by Kodak stock for the past two years, last week bid its price up to a six-year high of 93 5/8 a share on the basis of an expected surge in the company's earnings from the full range of Kodak products. Said Brenda Landry, a photographic industry analyst for the Morgan Stanley & Co. investment banking firm: "Kodak is one great company. It is the one company that under a single corporate umbrella combines chemistry, optics and electronics."

Kodak's strength lies not just in its dominant market position but in its technical and research prowess as well. The firm is currently spending 6% of gross revenues, or nearly $2 million a day, on research and development. That rate is about three times the average for large U.S. firms.

The company's new film represents an important technological breakthrough. For years researchers seeking to devise high-speed color print films have been stymied by the difficulties involved in increasing the light sensitivity of photographic film without producing grainy or fuzzy pictures. Kodak scientists overcame this problem by in effect redesigning the physical structure of the silver halide crystals that form the light-sensitive coating of unexposed film. In their changed shape the crystals now are flatter, with more of their surface area being exposed to light on the film itself. This lets less light do more work, thereby making the film faster. Says Stanley Morten, an industry analyst with the investment firm of Wertheim & Co.: "This is not something that could have come out of a basement or a garage. The product re-establishes Kodak's superiority in all types of emulsion film after a decade in which the Japanese and other foreign competitors had started producing some film as good as Kodak's."

Kodak officials last week unveiled yet another feat of imaging wizardry: a prototype video display unit that allows Disc photos to be electronically displayed on home television screens. Sony Corp. of Japan is planning to sell an all-electronic camera, the Mavica, that also displays images on TV screens. Kodak's products will probably have the market advantage of lower cost. Sony's Mavica is expected to retail for $650, and a shutterbug will have to spend an additional $220 for a viewing device. On the other hand, industry analysts expect that a complete Kodak package of Disc camera plus video display unit would sell for no more than $300.

* The stock market picture on page 88 is believed to be the first journalistic use of Kodak's new film. It was shot under available light at l/30th sec. and f/4.

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