Five years ago the Kodak stock price was trading just below $30 a share. Today it is just 55c and the company has filed for bankruptcy protection in the USA. It now has 18 months to turn the business around or die.

Why is this? Well, they make cameras and film… but the market for film has been disappearing rapidly since digital photography began to take off. Certainly, not many digital cameras can rival the picture quality of a good film photo, not least because 35mm film is the equivalent of 25 megapixels which few digital cameras have. Also, there is probably some truth to the impression people have that analogue is somehow richer in tone than digital. This is much like the way that transistor-based radios never sounded as good as the old valve-driven sets of yesteryear – that and the fact that they stopped building them in wooden cabinets, perhaps. Plastic is versatile, but just not the same.

So who needs film? Professional photographers, certainly, and a few other artists perhaps. You and me? The mobile phone or a cheap digital camera is probably good enough for most. A few will want a better digital camera, certainly: the pictures you can take with a good camera certainly can show the difference.

And who needs to wait a week or two to see the results of our snaps anyway? Now I can upload a picture to Facebook directly from my phone the instant I’ve taken it, if the signal can get through – this is ideal for crappy party shots and the like, after all.

So Kodak certainly has their work cut out if they want to survive. They do printers as well, which they promote as having cheaper ink than their rivals, which is true – but the print quality is not yet up to standard. If they can get that sorted out as well in the next 18 months, there may be a future for them yet.