Bad news if you’re a film shooter and Fujifilm is your brand of choice: the company has announced that it will be increasing the worldwide price of its entire line of photographic films starting in May 2012. In the announcement, the company blames demand and economics for the decision:

The demand for film products is continuously decreasing, yen’s appreciation and the cost of production, such as raw materials, oil and energy, continues to rise or stay at high level. Under such circumstances, despite our effort to maintain the production cost, Fujifilm is unable to absorb these costs during the production process and is forced to pass on price increases. To sustain its photo imaging business, Fujifilm has decided to increase the price of photographic films.

Fujifilm remains committed to photographic products and asserts that even with the new price. Its photographic products remain exceptionally good value compared with other system products.

While the announcement doesn’t mention how much prices will increase by — they state that it will vary depending on market — Fuji Rumors reports that it will be an increase of over 10%.

(via Fujifilm via Fuji Rumors via Mirrorless Rumors)

Image credit: Roll On by Looking Glass

When it was announced that Facebook would be acquiring Instagram back on Monday, the web balked at the $1 billion price tag and started shouting “bubble”. Is it really indicative of another tech bubble, or was it a smart move on Zuckerberg’s part? Andy Baio — the founder of Upcoming.org, which was purchased by Yahoo — has written up an interesting article over at Wired that takes a look at the numbers. For a billion bucks, Facebook snagged a startup with a whopping 35 million users and just 13 employees. This means that Instagram had a relatively cheap cost-per-user price and a ridiculously high cost-per-employee price.

Instagram’s Buyout: No Bubble to See Here [Wired]

Kodak’s film business just can’t seem to catch a break. One week the company announced the death of its entire slide film lineup, Kodak announced today that it is increasing the price of all the surviving films by 15%, stating,

We have to contend with further increases in energy and raw material costs, and higher costs associated with lower volumes.

Therefore, to remain a sustainable, viable business, the company is implementing a price increase for consumer and professional films.

(via Amateur Photographer via Photo Rumors)

Image credit: film by ka_tate

We’re unclear on whether this is a permanent price drop or a temporary sale, but Adorama is current selling Lightroom 3 for just $80. That’s $59 cheaper than Amazon’s price and cheaper than the student and teacher edition.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 [Adorama]

Update: Apparently the deal is for today (Valentine’s Day) only.

When Sigma released its SD1 DSLR with its fancy Foveon sensor last year, many photographers balked at the camera’s $9,700 price tag. Now, perhaps due to the launch of a new generation of Canon and Nikon DSLRs, Sigma is rethinking the camera’s price. In a press release put out today, the company announced that the camera will be re-launched the Sigma SD1 Merrill — named in honor of Foveon co-creator Richard “Dick” Merrill.

However, even with this revolutionary image sensor, we could not solve issues related to some of the manufacturing methods before the start of mass production, and the production cost ended up substantially exceeding our originally expected price. As a result, we had no choice but to set the price of the Sigma SD1 high. This caused great discouragement to all of you who looked forward to its release, and wished to experience the very unique image quality of the Sigma SD1 in person; this has become our biggest disappointment and pain.

Since then, overcoming this situation has become the first priority for us and Foveon, and we have together made improvements to reduce production cost substantially. Even though this effort took nearly a year, at last, we achieved a reduction target close to the price we originally planned. Therefore, we decided to release Sigma SD1 as a new product

The company has decided to lop off a whopping $6,400 from the MSRP, meaning the camera is now priced at $3,300. It was selling in stores for $6,899 before, so the new “street price” will likely be around $2,300.

(via BusinessWire via Photo Rumors)

Image credit: SIGMA SD1 front 01 by HAMACHI!

Adobe’s cloud-based subscription program, called Creative Cloud, now has a price tag: $50/month with a minimum one-year agreement. Subscribing will get you access to the latest version of Adobe’s popular programs (e.g. CS6 and Lightroom 4) without the pain of shelling out big bucks for buying the boxed version and subsequent upgrades. In addition to receiving updates to the programs as soon as they’re released, you’ll also be given 20GB of cloud storage that can be used for syncing your work.

(via VentureBeat)

We now know the price of the Fujifilm X-Pro1 for US residents: $1,700. One week after become available for preorders over on Amazon Japan for roughly $1,743, the camera is now listed on Amazon’s US site for the price of $1,699.95 for the body only. The system’s lenses are also available, and cost between $600 and $650 a pop.

Yesterday we shared that some impressive sample photos taken by the camera are now available for pixel-peepers to feast their eyes on.

A clearer picture is emerging of what the Fujifilm X-Pro1 will cost when it’s finally on store shelves. The camera is now available for preorder over on Amazon Japan for the price of ¥135,000 (~$1,743). This suggests that the US price will be in the range of $1,600-$1,700. The lenses will likely be in the range of $600-$700 each. A PDF version of the owner’s manual has also been released, and should be interesting to anyone who wants a closer look at how the camera works.

(via Photo Rumors)

Apparently there’s a camera shop in Houston, Texas called Houston Camera Exchange that’s taking preorders for the upcoming — but yet unannounced — Nikon D800 for $2,699.99. While photos and specs of the 36MP camera have been leaking for some time now, there hasn’t been much information about the camera’s price.

(via Nikonistas via Nikon Rumors)

Update: A commenter reports that the shop is currently taking a $500 deposit for what they expect will be a $3500-$4000 camera.

Adobe caused a stir last November after changing its upgrade policy to only cover one version back instead of three. This meant that only Photoshop CS5 owners would qualify for the upgrade price on CS6 when it’s launched, leaving CS3 and CS4 owners the not-so-nice option of buying the CS5 upgrade before buying the CS6 one. Perhaps in response to the angry customer response, Adobe announced a “special offer” for CS3 and CS4 owners today:

[...] we want to make sure our customers have plenty of time to determine which offering is best for them. Therefore, we’re pleased to announce that we will offer special introductory upgrade pricing on Creative Suite 6 to customers who own CS3 or CS4. This offer will be available from the time CS6 is released until December 31, 2012.

We’ll find out just how much of a discount those users will receive once CS6 is released. It also appears that Adobe isn’t planning to restore the old upgrade policy — today’s announcement is more of a one-time fix for angry customers.

(via Adobe via John Nack)

Image credit: Adobe Creative Sweet CS5 by pcfishhk