If you think the 5-megapixel sensor found on the iPhone 4 is good, wait till you see the camera found on the next iPhone — it’s reportedly going to be a 8-megapixel sensor made by Sony. The Street wrote back in 2010 that the next version of the iPhone to arrive in 2011 would pack an 8-megapixel Sony sensor rather than the 5-megapixel OmniVision one found in the current phone, and Sony’s CEO Howard Stringer seems to have confirmed that today in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Read more…
With its photography-related businesses struggling and no end in sight to its stock’s free fall, Kodak is turning to patent infringement lawsuits as a way to generate revenue. The company is currently in a patent dispute with Apple (iPhone) and RIM (Blackberry) over a patent it holds for previewing image on camera phones, and hopes to generate over $1 billion in royalty revenues if it comes out victorious. Previously Kodak had used this same patent to win nearly $1 billion from Samsung and LG.
Of the $7.2 billion in revenues Kodak generated in 2010, $838 million was from patent royalties. Somehow this doesn’t seem like a sustainable strategy for the company to stop being “Apple in reverse”.
(via Bloomberg)
Image credit: Fight Night Punch Test by djclear904
The blogosphere is abuzz today over a rumor that Canon and Apple may be planning to collaborate on an upcoming project. Craig over at Canon Rumors started it yesterday when he wrote,
I’ve received a few pieces of information about an upcoming collaboration between Apple and Canon. What that collaboration is hasn’t been spelled out to me. It could be with the upcoming Final Cut Pro 8, or maybe something more.
The story was soon picked up by blogs and magazines, with everyone trying to make guesses as to what the “secret project” might be (if there even is one). Hopefully it has to do with Aperture or something photography related, though the next version of Final Cut Pro is a likely candidate as well.
Image credit: Canon Laptop by Frank Kehren
When the iPad 2 was announced a week ago, many people were undoubtably excited that front and rear-facing cameras were added to the device. However, rather than endow the iPad with a rear-camera equal or superior to the iPhone 4′s, the geniuses at Apple decided to add a pretty lame one, giving it the (dis)honor of being the first “camera” to have a sensor resolution lower than the display resolution.
While the iPhone 4 packs a pretty sweet 5-megapixel sensor that allows it to suffice as a compact camera for many users, the iPad 2 was only given a paltry .7-megapixel one. This means it shoots 960×720 images while displaying them on a 1024×768 LCD screen, making it suitable for video chatting but horrible as a still camera.
iPad 2 Camera A World’s First? (via CrunchGear)
Apple just refreshed their line of MacBook Pro notebook computers, and one of the new features is a Thunderbolt I/O port, making the MacBook Pro the first notebook computer to have this blazing-fast interface developed by Intel (it was known as Light Peak during R&D). As the technology makes its way into more and more computers, camera makers will undoubtedly begin offering it in their cameras. Nikon Rumors recently received a rumor that the upcoming Nikon D4 will be the first DSLR camera to offer Thunderbolt.
Read more…
MarketWatch has an interesting article titled “Kodak Is Apple In Reverse” that compares Kodak’s meteoric fall with Apple’s meteoric rise. Back in 1997, Kodak was a $28 billion dollar company while Apple was worth a measly $2 billion. Now Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world (currently worth $330 billion), and earns enough profit every quarter ($6 billion) to buy Kodak… six times over!
Kodak also had a 100+ year head-start in selling cameras (they first started selling portable cameras 123 years ago), but only sold 10.5 million digital cameras last year compared to the 16 million sold by Apple via their iPhone. Oh how the mighty have fallen!
Kodak Is Apple In Reverse (via Photo Rumors)
Image credit: by hundrednorth
Apple launched its new Mac App Store yesterday, along with an App Store version of their popular photo editing program Aperture. The program costs $199 in a retail box and $159 through Amazon, but through the new App Store the price has been cut to a mere $80! It’s no wonder that it’s currently the top grossing app in the entire store. If you’ve wanted to start using Aperture but have always been deterred by the price, now’s a good time to jump in.
You can start using the Mac App Store by updating your Mac OS X to version 10.6.6.
(via Canon 5D tips)
When Apple designed the iPad, they opted for simplicity and omitted things like a USB port or memory card slots. This made it more tedious for photographers to transfer a large number of photographs onto their iPads, since the Camera Connection Kit needed for USB and SD Card support comes in two separate dongles. Luckily, there’s a made-in-China knockoff that can ease a little of the pain — the 3-in-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit combines the two dongles into one nicely designed apparatus. Available in both black and white, it comes with a USB port, a SD Card slot, and a Micro SD Card slot. Pick one up over at the M.I.C Gadget store for $29.90.
3-in-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit (via Engadget)
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4, they also showed off a white version that would be available alongside the black one. Since then, however, the company repeatedly pushed back the launch date for the white version, claiming that the white one was, “more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected”. Now, Cult of Mac is reporting that the problem has to do with the camera design, with the white semi-translucent glass causing light leaks and washing out photographs taken with the phone.
The white iPhone 4 can’t take accurate photographs. The handset’s semi-translucent glass case leaks light in, ruining pictures taken with the internal camera, especially when the built-in flash is used.
“You don’t get accurate pictures on the white iPhone because of the color of the glass back. It washes out the pictures,” said a source with connections to Apple who asked to remain anonymous.
Too bad — they should have released the “broken” ones as a special edition for photo enthusiasts who like low-fi photography.
Thanks for the tip Udi!
Image credit: light leak by brainware3000
There was a rumor circulating today that Sony was potentially an acquisition target of Apple, which has $51 billion in cash lying around waiting to be used. Shares of Sony were up nearly 3 percent at one point before the rumors were quashed by analysts. If Apple did somehow acquire Sony in the future, it would bring the company back into the digital camera market that the company explored and then abandoned back in the 90s. However, it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll see an Apple Alpha DSLR anytime soon.
Another photo-related company that’s being mentioned as an acquisition target: Adobe.
(via Reuters)
