Kodak Lagging in Digital World

mattmcal writes "Wired reports on the Kodak's struggle to survive and Mark Glaser comments on their demise at The Industry Standard saying that Kodak failed to take digital photography seriously, or at least failed to find a way to successfully transform their business. The Photo Marketing Association reported that in 2003, digital cameras outsold analog. Kodak's stock has been hovering near its 20-year low. Finally, today, the Asian Business Times reports that billionaire Carl Icahn sold all his shares saying the current business model there doesn't work."

They had this coming

[shione]

charging exhorbient prices for a camera dock which didnt work on different model kodak cameras when you upgraded. Compared to the others which charged a much more fairer rate for accessories which reflected their value/build quality, it comes as no surprise their marketshare is so low.

full text of article sans advertisements

[nil5]

Film Firms Fight to Stay Afloat

By Kari L. Dean
02:00 AM Feb. 19, 2004 PT

Traditional film is moving swiftly toward antiquity, about to be shelved as quaintly as Selectric typewriter ribbon. But with more than half of amateur and professional photographers still attached to 35-mm cameras, the film industry isn't ready to pronounce the medium dead.

Instead, amid layoffs and slipping sales, film companies are struggling to keep the ailing industry alive.

Symptoms of illness abound. Two weeks ago, Eastman Kodak said it will lay off 15,000 workers employed in its core film business. A few months earlier, Kodak's chief executive unveiled, perhaps belatedly, a digitally oriented strategy to spur growth. No. 2 film manufacturer Fujifilm did the same.

Underscoring the urgency behind such announcements, last month the Photography Marketing Association, or PMA, reported that in 2003, digital cameras outsold traditional cameras for the first time. In addition, the group said film sales and processing revenue declined from the prior year.

But industry leaders aren't giving up on film. In a surprising turn this week, Kodak announced plans for new film-processing retail kiosks to sit beside their digital counterparts. Eliminating the in-about-an-hour middleman, customers can process and print their own photos from 35-mm film in about seven minutes. The kiosks also enable customers to select and print only the photos they want, in whichever sizes they want, much like a digital camera.

"Let the consumer decide what the consumer wants," said Kodak spokesman Gerard Meuchner. "If they want to use film, let them use film."

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas this week, attendees at the PMA's annual convention saw Fujifilm introduce three new 35-mm cameras alongside four new digital cameras. The company also announced that it is "defying current trends in the photography industry by announcing significant investment in film camera technology in 2004."

In truth, although the PMA projects digital-camera penetration to surpass 42 percent of households in 2004, that still leaves 58 percent without one. Kodak's Meuchner attributes the ratio to the slow acceptance of digital by the biggest picture-takers of all: moms.

"Mothers with children take the most pictures and have the least amount of time," Meuchner said. "But they aren't early adopters."

But even among this group, film consumption is on the wane. The PMA reports that mothers with young children are quickly becoming the most common owners of digital cameras. So while the lone bright spot for traditional film might have been the increasing sales of the mom-friendly disposable camera -- up by 7 percent in 2003 and projected to rise another 5 percent in 2004 -- even that light is dimming.

As shutter-happy parents go digital, an array of other film users -- health-imaging specialists, professional photographers, artists -- are left to keep the industry alive.

According to a 2003 survey by the Professional Photographers of America, or PPA, just 52 percent of the group's members used digital as their primary means of capturing images. But 86 percent of PPA members were using at least partial digital technology in creating finished photographs.

oth Kodak and Fujifilm are positioning their film-focused entries around convenience and ease of use -- the same benefits used to lure consumers to digital. That choice of strategy might be the only one left as the long-debated quality issue between film and digital becomes increasingly moot: Some professional photographers now claim that large photographic prints from 20-megapixel cameras or camera backs -- attachments that let film cameras take digital images -- are virtually indistinguishable from images captured on 35-mm film.

"Newer cameras and digital backs have the higher quality, resolution and pixel count that have allowed portrait and wedding photographers to switch over," said PPA chairman Steve Best, who says he is a completely digital

Re:Film

[October_30th]

If you want to store digital media right you've basically got one option: digital tape (DLT), a tape drive and a computer that can be used to access the data.

CD-R(W)s are a joke. I have had Plextor CD-Rs become unreadable in a couple of years they spent in a dark closet in my house. I suspect DVD-+R(W)s are even worse due to the higher data density.

Hard drives aren't much better either.

Same thing happened to Polaroid

[Kunt]

Any company that is large enough and is run by economists and overpaid suits long enough will inevitably run aground. This happened to Polaroid in the 1990s and IBM in the '80s, and indeed to Apple some ten years ago. It will probably happen to Microsoft one day soon. Today, the success or failure of a company is the focus it puts on technology, and the transformation of that technology into stuff they can sell. The masters at this right now are Apple, Canon and Sony, and yes, Microsoft. Many other major companies just don't have a clue.

Re:Interesting Considering Their Flagship

[Crypto Gnome]

Or their ProSumer version the DigitalRebel (EOS 300D) for (drumroll) ~$900.

Uses all the Canon Lenses and flashes, just some features 'dumbed down' slightly.

Nonsense - that's why we invented *backups*

[blorg]

With the ever increasing use of digital photography, I've become wary of the same problem that plagues digital media in general: it's so volatile.

Properly stored original film negatives last decades, whereas digital media is gone in a blink of an eye when your harddrive/memory card breaks down or you accidentally erase your media.

That's why we have this handy thing called *backups*, something that is impossible with analog media (you will always have generational loss).

I have documents sitting on my laptop from the mid-80s and due to this sterling innovation of lossless copying I have never in all that time suffered a serious data loss. Every time I get a new computer, anything of importance moves across, and is stored at a minimum on two seperate hard disks and optical media also.

It's also a great advantage to be able to manage all of my digital information easily, and in one place. By contrast, I have both lost and damaged many negatives from only the last few years. Through my negligence, I will grant, but this never would have happened if they had been digital.

There is nothing inherent in digital media that makes it more volatile than analog media, and indeed the fact that it is digital, and thus allows perfect copies, makes the media ultimately irrelevant.

Re:What a crock...

[Zakabog]

How can someone claim that the company with the largest CCD on the market

Sure the CCD is large but the image quality blows compared to any decent Digital SLR, actually all of their cameras quality blows.

the company that holds all the patents on the display tech that you will have on your desk in the next five years

I didn't know they had patents on my CRT monitor, I should look into that but I'm too lazy right now.

has an ever increasing segment of the health imaging market and still sells more motion picture film (while quickly converting theatres to digital) than everyone else on the planet, combined, be lagging in the digital world.

Because the health imaging market and motion picture film markets aren't part of the digital world? And didn't Canon sell more digital cameras than anyone else? Don't they have 25% of the digital camera market or something like that? Kodak's digital cameras are overpriced and they blow, that's how I can see them lagging in the digital world.

Wired confirms it...

[nuckin futs]

Eastmann Kodak is dying.
They are following the footsteps of BSD and Apple.

doesn't one need like an 8MP digital camera just to get the equivalent quality of a good 35mm color film?
those high MP cameras are still expensive, and some people are satisfied with the quality of prints from those disposable cameras.

For GBP1000 you ain't gonna get "top notch" digita

[melted]

l. It's more like GBP8K, which pays for eight years of film and processing for this guy. And that's without lenses (add $5K more for some good ones covering the range from 14-16mm to 300-400mm, if you want to cover 500-600mm, add $7K more).

Re:Film

[ScottGant]

How long with DLT last though? What if a stray magnet (like in a speaker or something) comes around the DLT? And of course, in 100 years will there be any machines around to read the DLT?

But negatives last a VERY long time. You could pop in a negative that Ansel Adams made 80 years ago...no dupe but the original negative...into an enlarger and make a print. 80 years from now they may not have enlargers you say? OK, make a contact print from his 4x5 or 8x10 negs.

Digital Photography is SO much better in many regards and I know this is the future (hell, it's the present!) of photography, but I'm still wary of the long term storage of images.

I just hope someone in the industry is working on this problem.

Re:Film

[evilviper]

And that's easier and cheaper than storing the original film negatives rolled up in a plastic can which are then stored in a dark, cool basement?

YES! By far.

A single hard drive can hold MASSIVE numbers of pictures. Your basement would be full of "plastic can[s]" if you had the equivalent number of pictures on film negatives.

Re:Film

[evilviper]

If you want to store digital media right you've basically got one option: digital tape (DLT)

You've got to be kidding...

CD-R(W)s are a joke. I have had Plextor CD-Rs become unreadable in a couple of years they spent in a dark closet in my house.

I can't comment on the quality of Plextor CD-Rs, but I haven't had experiences anything like that. In fact, I've never had a CD-R fall apart on it's own... only after being handled (never touch the top) and I've been archiving CD-Rs since the first (1x) CD-Recorders came out.

Use good quality media, put them in jewel cases. Don't double them up, don't even think about using soft cases (flexible plastic/rubber, or paper). Be careful to handle them properly. Go easy on the labeling, etc.

I suspect DVD-+R(W)s are even worse due to the higher data density.

You can suspect, assume, and theorize all you want, but they don't have anything to do with the facts.

Hard drives aren't much better either.

Umm, why not? I've never seen (nor heard of) a hard drive, unplugged, unused, going out. It's only after a very large number of hours of use that they finally die. No deathstars need apply.

Besides, you'd be crazy to have only one copy of anything. The chances of one stationary HDD failing is tiny, the chances of two failing are nominal.

Re:Film

[ashot]

Write-Once-Read-Many technology used in many applications for because of the integrity of the data and the accepted legal admissibility of files stored using the technology. In the case of ?Ablative" or "True" WORM, data written to a disk is actually etched into the surface of the platter creating a permanent record. Another form, CCW WORM is based on Magneto/Optical technology. CCW achieves the WORM characteristic through special MO media that signals the optical drive not to rewrite media sectors. An advantage of CCW media is that it conforms to ISO standards, allowing it to be read with drives from any manufacturer adhering to the standard. WORM records are unalterable with the exception of destroying the platter. Legal documents, research information, historical records, etc., are all examples of information that require permanent storage.

-www.pegasus-ofs.com/glossary.htm

Re:Some marketshare numbers...

[koshimetsu]

Kodak seems to target the consumer/non-professional market to a higher degree than the others named. So cheaper product and quality is more merited. Most people don't need an 8 megapixel SLR to take pics of the kids or automated image splicing, and wouldn't know what to do with it if they did have one.

This does not excuse silly products like trying to pass off useless base station for disproportionate price compared to cheap low-end digicam. IMO the only reason they made base station sales was because of it being rather unclear that the part was completely unnecessary. When I bought a Kodak a year or so ago (again, it was cheap) the box did not clearly state that it could connect using a standard USB cable and that power was up to 2xAA batteries. The labeling (and the salesperson's knowledge, though you can't blame that entirely on Kodak) made it appear that you HAD to have the base station to power the camera and to transfer files to computer without having a card reader to take the files directly off the flash media.

Not saying it was intentionally misrepresented...but if a techie can't tell for sure from the packaging/flyers/grilling the salesperson, and then opening the sealed box and consulting the manual, whether or not the base station is required then I seriously doubt that your average layperson would be on much better footing. There was however an enclosed USB cable which cleared that question up for me. Then again if I hadn't unsealed the box in the store, I would have had no way to know.

At the time the base station was priced for roughly 1/3rd the price of the camera. Might just be bad technical writing, but I'm going to keep my tin foil hat handy for now. FUD FUD and more FUD.

Oh yeah, and the image quality isn't too great either. But whee.

Subscription is here!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Sweden, Kodak and FotoQuick have a service where you pay 9usd a month and they will give you 25 prints + a CD each month. The camera, a 2mpixel Kodak is free.... /b

Re:Film

[fifedrum]

kodak USED to sell CDR media with a 99 year guarantee. That is, as long as the media wasn't damaged by scratches or other overt physical problems, it would last quite a while.

Of course, the key phrase is "used to sell". They dumped the CD media business a few years ago. I have some of these "Info-Guard" cd media and they are fantasic, still viable after 8 years, and recently burned one I discovered was blank, worked fine.

Canon Digital Rebel / 300D

[SIGBUS]

I recently picked one up, and the image quality is astounding, even with the cheapie kit lens. If you already have Canon EOS lenses, you can use them as well. In the DSLR market, this camera is truly a ground-breaker. A few years ago, a 6.3 MP DSLR was a professional product with a $12000 price tag; now you can get one for $1000. Still more than most film SLRs, but worth every penny. Even when shooting at ISO 800, there's very little noise, and at ISO 1600, the noise level is less than you'd see at 400 with a compact digicam.

For more on this camera, there's an exhaustive review [dpreview.com] at Digital Photography Review.

If you have a collection of Nikon lenses, wait for the Nikon D70, which is on the edge of being rolled out. It will be in the same price range.

Late on the uptake

[FeltTip]

I'm a former Kodak employee. Kodak will be facing hard times for a number of years, but I think what people forget is that most of the bad press they are getting is because they cut their divident by 3/4 so they can reinvent themselves. All of the people who owned stock are incredibly pissed, and every analyst will never give a positive review of a company who does this, probably because they are heavily into that stock.

Kodak will probably turn it around, because 5 years too late they realized what digital will mean. Executives at Kodak were so far behind that all employees were laughing when they were still talking about film not going away.

That said, Kodak is finally realizing that it needs to turn things around. The company will be much different in 5 years, but they are so far behind with their organizational structure drastic measures need to be taken.

Anyway, so what does Kodak do when it is trying to evolve into a technology services company rather than a manufacturing company? It lays off hundreds of young, agressive, future-minded people like me who are steeped in technology and keeps the slew of white-haired oldsters incapable of realizing what real change is about.

So the old time corporate culture of the good old boy's club still exists, and the company won't move on until the morons at the top realize this. Dan Carp (CEO), you better get your crap together.

Re:Film

[gnu-generation-one]

A single hard drive can hold MASSIVE numbers of pictures. Your basement would be full of "plastic can[s]" if you had the equivalent number of pictures on film negatives.

Pick a resolution for colour negative film? 10000 x 8000 sound reasonable? That's about 2.4E+8 bytes per picture, or 8.6E+9 bytes per roll of film, equivalent.

With a nice environmentally-sealed box to keep your hard-drive and caddy in, it might take the same space 100 rolls of film. Maybe the hard-drive is in your computer rather than in storage, but 100 film rolls will hardly "fill an entire basement". More like a shoebox or two.

So... even with very rounded numbers, a hundred rolls of film stores 800GB of data, which works out as about $1000 worth of hard disk at the moment. But if you'd bought the hard-disk at the same time as I bought my first roll of film, you'd have lots of 250MB/$200 hard drives filling the room, rather than one of the nice modern ones.

Of course, you can fit more than 36*100 pictures on a much smaller hard disk, because (a) you can't obtain the same resolution as with film*, and (b) you use lossy compression by default. However, that doesn't help if a magazine comes along in a year and asks to make a full-page print from one of the negatives.

* not without a digital camera costing more than a very nice sports car, at least.

Digital- not quite ready for the enthusiast

[SillyKing]

I bought a cheap Polaroid digital camera just to see if I would use one. This was about 6 years ago. I used it a lot of documenting things at work (wiring closets, server locations, wire runs in walls before they were finished so you knew where they are and the like). I have since bought a slightly better one, again, not very expensive, but there are a lot of things I can't use it for. So I find myself wandering around with my Pentax 35mm and all it's lenses and adapters, as well as the digital camera and a bunch of batteries. The digital just is not very good at indoor distance shots, such as weddings or museums. And I can't adapt it to my telescope like my 35mm, or take good distance shots as the optics just are not as good as the 35mm ones I have yet. It's good for small room shots, and close by outdoor pictures, and I use it much more than the 35mm for those situations, as it's simply more convienent. Someday, I hope Pentax (or some other company) will make a digital camera body that allows me to use my existing Pentax lenses, filters, and assorted adapters. Nikon already has this exact item (around $1500 USD if I recall) that allows you to use all your existing 35mm optics on digital format. Well worth the $1500 if the photographer has a considerable investment in his 35mm gear. When this arrives more for the masses allowing other brands to do the same, then digital camera will be the king of my home. I do agree, digital cameras are very convienent (as long as you like rechargable AA's), and I can easily share pictures with any family member with a computer and a ISP, or simply mail a CD. SillyKing

Re:Film

[XO]

I had a huge load of Sony CD-R's that I had not recorded on, turn to useless disks after sitting in a closet for about 4 years. I have no idea if I had written to them, they would have become useless as well. It looked like there was some knid of crystallized pattern growing on the side of the disk that takes the writing.

Also, the hard drives from my first two PC compatible computers failed miserably, while sitting there doing nothing. (granted, we're talking about a 20MB and a 30MB RLL hard drives) I attempted to recover the data on them when I got a 486 (so these two drives had probably sat for 4 or 5 years), and the drives would not spin up. Apparently the moving parts had sat idle for so long that they would no longer move. At a suggestion from a computer repairing friend, who's been in the business for as long as I've been alive, I whacked the back end of the drives,to try and get the platters to spin in the right direction.. that worked with one, the other one remained locked, forever..

Kodak's Gotten It for a while now

[jht]

Back in late 1991, I was working for a now-defunct Mac reseller, and I specialized in imaging sales/support. At that time, digital cameras were something everyone said were coming, but hadn't hit the market yet (with a few extremely high-end exceptions). I spoke on the state of the market at an ASMP [asmp.org] regional meeting that fall about it, and a guy from Kodak was there. He brought their (then) brand-new Kodak DCS for us to see. It used a Nikon 8008 body with a digital back, attached by cable to a box with the hard drive, battery, and all the electronics. It cost around $10k and was just hitting the market then.

Later, in 1992, I went to work for an ad agency. We did a lot of food and product photography, and the cost/time lost to conventional film was really difficult. The nearest pro lab was about 10 miles up the highway, so we had a minimum of 2-3 hours for turnaround.

Then Kodak came out with the DCS 200 - all the features of the DCS in a single device - no tether. Sure, it was kind of flakey - the SCSI connection was prone to problems, the color balancing wasn't great, and the Photoshop plugin was awful, but I bought one. It cost nearly $10k as well.

Over the next year or so, we bought four more. And the speed difference helped us get so much business that all those cameras were occupied 10+ hours per day. We exploded in size and revenue, driven by what digital cameras could do even then. Later, we bought a couple of Leaf medium-format models for high-end work, but the Kodaks were the bread and butter of the company even a couple of years ago - years after I left.

The company that built those cameras - if you didn't catch it before, was Kodak. They saw the promise of digital photography in the media and pro markets way ahead of virtually everyone. You still see tons of their pro gear at any sporting or news event. The thing that Kodak is struggling with is the consumer market transition, but I think everyone in the film business is struggling with it as well. It's happening much faster than most people (myself included) ever expected.

I certainly wouldn't bet against Kodak succeeding, though. They may not look like quite the same company when it's over, but they'll still probably be the same relative to the new market that they were in the old one. In the digital world, you still need to print and archive your work, and that's where a lot of the profit can lie. There's also still a film market out there that can be milked for years to come, and a graphic arts business that they can keep servicing, too.

Of course, I believe anything that the Standard has to say. Didn't they go out of business a while back, too?

Re:DCS Pro 14n Digital Camera: 14 Megapixels

[ManxStef]

Kodak's become a bit of a joke in the pro 35mm digital community with this one I'm afraid - originally posting up some very poor (in both technique and image-quality) images in this sample page, then getting someone to hastily redo them a week or so later after,. There've been numerous firmware updates to try and fix the noise problems (as the other reply to your post pointed out) but all this's done really is weaken Kodak's reputation of not being able to get it right first time, as well as highlight *the myth that megapixels = image quality* (which is certainly not the case).

It's worth mentioning of course that the logistics of using a 3rd-party sensor that you must integrate into a camera body with the associated electronics in a very short timescale (before sensor technology advances again) is an incredibly difficult and expensive task - so much so that if you get it wrong you'll have an obsolete product that doesn't even cover the development and production costs, and this may well be the situation Kodak have ended up with on this one - esp. giving competition with Nikon due to them using the Nikon mount.

The current king of 35mm full-frame sensor digital is Canon with the 1Ds (the studio version of the 1D, which is now in it's second iteration: the 1Ds mk.II). It was more than twice the price of the Kodak when it was first announced, but pros really don't care if it allows them to do their jobs better, which it very much does. Check out the following links:

http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/EOS1DS
http://we b.canon.jp/Imaging/eos1dm2/index.html

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos1ds/
ht tp://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/ 1ds/1ds-field.shtml
http://www.fredmiranda.com/1D s_review/

Still, I'll be sticking with my EOS-3's, L lenses and Minolta DiMage 5400 filmscanner for a little while longer... until a more reasonably priced full-frame Canon-mount digi comes out, anyway :)

Re:DCS Pro 14n Digital Camera: 14 Megapixels

[ManxStef]

Oops, that should be:

(the studio version of the 1D, which is now in it's second iteration: the 1D mk.II)

This one's of more use to sports-shooters as it'll do 8.5FPS for a burst of 40 images (or 20 RAW). There are some more details of the 1D mk.II here:

http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/eos1dm2/html/menu.ht ml

requiem for the DC20

[kisrael]

The Kodak DC20 was my first digital camera.

Oddball (and small) max resolution (493 * 373), other artifacting issues, no preview or display screen, only like 8 pictures at 'high' resolution (16 at 320*240), no flash...

Still, it had some great qualities: tiny, durable, lightweight, battery lasted forever. It was the camera of choice for certain model rocket hobbyists I think. Not til Canon started making small cameras was there something smaller, and that's like a tiny little brick. (There are some interesting "novelty" microcameras out now though, and some even make tiny movies!)

It took some ok pictures [kisrael.com]...every gallery above the double line, though some of those were from its DC25 brother, which added a flash and viewscreen (no digital viewfinder though) and doubled the memory at the cost of size, weight, and battery life...overall less cool.

Oh, and it came with Kai's Power Goo, which was hella fun. (Too bad that software doesn't work w/ recent versions of Windows :-( )

Re:They had this coming

[DukeLinux]

I just bought a digital camera. Of course it had to work with Linux! Kodak uses a "proprietary" jpeg format, requires you to use their "proprietary" docking station and thier "proprietary" software on a certain flakey "proprietary" operating system. Hence, I bought a Sony. I plug it into my Linux machine and transfer my photos right over. No problem and no hassle. Kodak still needs to "get it" if they want a future.

Re:Film

[timeOday]

Pick a resolution for colour negative film? 10000 x 8000 sound reasonable? That's about 2.4E+8 bytes per picture, or 8.6E+9 bytes per roll of film, equivalent.

I don't think so. At that resolution you're capturing every grain in the film, at least if it's 35 mm film. That grain is not really part of the image, it's an artifact. Kodak states [kodak.com] "(2048 x 3072 pixels) captures all the image data 35 mm film has to offer." There, we reduced file size by a factor of 12. Now, I hope you're not storing uncompressed tiffs? They'd be around half the size (depending on image) as compressed .png. That brings us to a 96% reduction from your figure. And that's without touching lossy compression - which I doubt you would touch, even though you don't mind scanning and storing away all the grain of film.

There's no objective way to exactly compare film/digital resolutions, but your estimate is certainly biased towards film.

Re:But remember...

[mblase]

I wouldn't say they are finished. Their most recent cameras are pretty nice quality.

Perhaps, but I was reading the reviews of different cameras before I settled on my digital Canon. The consensus was that Kodak's digital cameras, at least as of last year, aren't quite on par with Canon's or Nikon's where picture quality is concerned.

Kodak was founded on the premise of easy-to-use photography, and they tried to continue this trend with camera docks that download your photos and charge the camera at the same time. But they can't compete with the major camera makers on price/features ratio anymore, and I think that will be their undoing.

Re:That's a load of nonsense, you troll.

[hexhacker]

Might I take the time to point out that just being mount-compatible means absolutely nothing?

Or, are you saying you plan on doing TTL metering with an AIS lens on a Nikon N80? It's mount compatible, but that doesn't mean a thing. The N80 doesn't support TTL metering with old glass.

Again, I revert back to the point I made in a previous post, that canon's glass is garbage, and the fact that they have specific digital-optimized glass is a testament to this fact.

Sure, you can use the other 90% of Canon's glass on the digital rebel, but you will have issues with image quality, with the exception of their high-end glass.

From DPreview.com [dpreview.com] EF-S lenses are designed to be used with digital SLR's (although Canon don't stretch to calling them 'digital lenses'), the rear element of these lenses protrudes further into the shutter box (space behind the lens mount) as can be clearly seen from the third image below (beside the EF 28-135 mm). Interestingly this protrusion has a hard rubber ring which appears to seal against the shutter box when the lens is attached to the camera. Remember that the EF-S lens can only be used on the EOS 300D (as no other EOS cameras are compatible with the EF-S lens mount).

Need more verification? [eos-magazine.com]

Did you catch that? Tamron's Di glass is compatible with normal 35mm bodies... Canon's OWN EF-S line which they say is "specifically designed for the Digital Rebel" is only usable on the Digital Rebel.