Kodachrome, the storied camera film that has documented historic events and everyday lives since the Great Depression, is about to fade into oblivion.
Amid a long-running shift to digital photography, Eastman Kodak Co. said Monday that because of plunging sales, it is ending production of the film it first introduced in 1935. The company said the final batch of the slide film, known for its rich colors and clarity, is being manufactured now in Mexico and that supplies should probably last until the fall.
The Rochester, N.Y., company said the film accounted for less than 1% of its traditional film business, whose sales totaled $503 million in the first quarter. Kodak has been cutting back its film business in a wrenching transformation to digital products that has wiped out tens of thousands of jobs and resulted in billions of dollars in losses.
Kodachrome, the first successful color film, was used to document many historic events of the last century, including the 1937 crash of the Hindenberg and the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the 1950s, climber Edmund Hillary used Kodachrome to take photographs atop Mount Everest.
Mary Jane Hellyar, president of Kodak’s film, photofinishing and entertainment group, said in a statement that it was a difficult decision to "retire" Kodachrome because of its history. "However," she added, "the majority of today’s photographers have voiced their preference to capture images with newer technology — both film and digital."
I am a photographer with over 80 magazine and book cover credits. I switched from Kodachrome to Fuji Velvia at inception, almost two decades ago. Indeed Velvia quickly displaced Kodachrome as THE film of choice among professionals. However, Kodachrome hung on and on and on. It should have died many years ago.
All film is headed for the ash heap of history, even my favorite Velvia.
Velvia is a brand of daylight-balanced color reversal film produced by the Japanese company Fujifilm. The name is a contraction of "Velvet Media", a reference to its smooth image structure. The original incarnation of the film was called "Velvia for Professionals", known as RVP,
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High Yield ETFs JNK & HYG have formed bearish rising wedges. Two-thirds of the time, prices end up lower in the future after forming this type of pattern. The support lines of the rising wedges are being tested very hard and appear to be giving way right now.
Bernanke managed to shoot global markets in the head the day before yesterday, and then, as has become typical when investors throw brickbats at what the Fed has said, various mouthpieces go about talking the markets back up (this case, in the form of San Francisco Fed president John Williams pointing out that the central bank could ease off or reverse its QE exit if the economy faltered).
I welcome readers telling me I’ve missed something, but looking at the Fed’s problem from 50,000 feet, it appears that the the monetary authority appears to have set boundary conditions for its QE exit that it can’t meet.
In what may be the most important story of the day, or maybe year, for a world in which there already is an $11 trillion shortfall in high-quality collateral (and declining every day courtesy of Ben's monetization of Treasury paper) so needed to support the deposit-free liability structures of the shadow banking system (as most recently explained here), Bloomberg has just reported that Europe may begin a crackdown on tha...
While the S&P 500 has had quite a year already the Nikkei has been the story of the globe as they are performing acts of central banking that even put the U.S. Fed to shame. And Japan's central bank can buy ETFs and REITs directly per their charter versus the U.S. bank. Combined with a yen in free fall it's been a heck of a move for the Nikkei since last November. I noted last week we were seeing extremely rare weekly and monthly type overbought readings on bo...
Few stocks have attracted more news over the last six months than nutritional supplement maker Herbalife (NYSE: HLF).
Even casual market observers are aware of the circumstances surrounding the the initial bout of extreme volatility in the name back in December 2012. The shares went into free-fall at the end of the year after hedge fund manager Bill Ackman revealed in typical sanctimonious fashion that his firm Pershing Square Capital Management was short around $1 billion worth of the stock.
Amid much pomp and circumstance, Ackman laid out his short thesis at a New York investment conference and...
HD - Home Depot – Shares in the home improvement retailer are trading lower on Thursday, off the lowest levels of the session but still down 1.25% at $78.69 as of 11:50 a.m. ET, amid a down day for U.S. stocks. Trading traffic in newly issued weekly options on Home Depot suggests some traders are taking advantage of the dip today and positioning for shares in the name to resume hitting record highs next week. The stock yesterday rallied as much as 3.6% to touch an all-time high of $81.56 after the company reported better-than-expected first...
To learn more, sign up for David's free newsletter and receive the free report from All About Trends - "How To Outperform 90% Of Wall Street With Just $500 A Week." Tell David PSW sent you. - Ilene...
The market went through some gyrations on Wednesday in reaction to Fed Chairman Bernanke’s testimony before the Joint Economic Committee. He first defended continued quant easing by warning, “A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but also would carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery.” Stocks dutifully rallied and all major indexes hit new intraday highs.
But alas, consensus is apparently not a given over the longer term. The minutes hinted that a tapering off could start sooner, “A number of participants expressed willingness to adjust the flow of purchases downward as early as the June meeting if the economic information received by that time showed evidence of sufficiently strong and sustained growth.” So …...
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By Craigzooka
I am going to share with you how I manage my IRA and the power of reducing your cost basis. My goal each year is a 20% return in my IRA. Sometimes I make it and sometimes I don't, but I believe that all of my success is due to reducing my cost basis. To illustrate the power of reducing your cost basis here are some trades we did last year. These trades are taken from an educational portfolio we ran in a paper-trading account for a little more than a year.
We bought RIG on 5/15/2012 for $44.13, sold it on 1/18/2013 for $46 but booked a profit of $1,154.
We bought MT on 1/4/2012 for $19.24, sold it on 12/21/2012 for $15 but booked a profit of $454.
We bought CHK on 1/27/2012 for $21.93, sold it on 10/19/2012 for $18 b...
Stock market posts another record setting week, but the big news came after Friday’s close.
Courtesy of NASA
The stock market put on another record setting show with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) closing at a record high 15,118 and the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) closing at 1633.70, another all time closing high.
For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSEARCA:DIA) gained 1%, the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) climbed 1.2%, the Nasdaq Composite (NYSEARCA:...
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Well, well, well....it is good to know that there are others in the scientific arena who believed that YMI Bioscience's data (cough - Gilead) is a better drug than Incyte's Jakafi. Now, the definitive data are still unknown, but there was enough evidence from a Phase 2 trial to take a small risk for a huge reward. So, let's forget about Apple (AAPL), and do nothing but biotechs from now until Congress passes universal health care coverage for prescriptions....and drive the prices down so that research and development is no longer feasible to conduct in the US. Even Seattle Genetics (SGEN) has been on a tear as of late...
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Kodachrome, the first successful color film, was used to document many historic events of the last century, including the 1937 crash of the Hindenberg and the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the 1950s, climber Edmund Hillary used Kodachrome to take photographs atop Mount Everest.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(
