ARCH rivals Eastman Kodak, Fuji and three other industry leaders have announced a "revolutionary" new line of photographic film and cameras that they believe will change the way people take photographs. The, new film, which combines traditional chemical photography with digital technology, is designed to aid clumsy, impatient and disorganised amateur photographers.
Kodak, Fuji, Minolta, Canon and Nikon put aside their differences to develop the common standard designed to replace the current 35 millimetre standard. Each company will market its own line of products using the standard, called "Advanced Photo System", or APS.
If APS takes off it would generate extra film sales and more reprint orders and camera users would be more reluctant to switch to fully digital cameras.
Another sign of APS's importance to the industry is that five tenacious rivals put aside differences to hammer out the common standards underlying APS and share the $1 billion cost of developing the system.
Some industry executives believe APS could be as big a boon to traditional photography as throw away, single use cameras, introduced less than a decade ago and now the most popular camera purchased in North America.
Don Franz of US trade paper Photo finishing News says photo finishers, ranging from mini labs at city corner newsstands to giant wholesale processors, will face large capital outlays to switch to APS equipment. Current automated equipment cannot process APS film.
Photofinishers want APS to boost reprint buying, a high margin business seldom used by Americans. Just one to two per cent of all photos taken each year are brought back for custom prints after initial processing.
Fuji's Smartfilm and Kodak's Advantix film will be launched next April in Europe, Japan and the US. They will come in a variety of speeds and will work in a number of APS cameras, including disposable cameras. David Biehn, Kodak's senior vice president, says the new film will cost 15 20 per cent more, and their line of Advantix cameras will range from "under $100" to $400.
Advantix was announced last Thursday, 96 years to the day that founder George Eastman launched the Kodak Brownie camera. Kodak's chairman George Fisher estimates that 10 20 per cent of all cameras sold by the end of the year will be APS models, and predicts that 80 per cent of cameras sold in Asia by the year 2000 will be APS.