Facebook and Google have both sent cease-and-desist letters to Clearview AI demanding that the facial recognition startup stop scraping photos and videos to build up its face database.
Wacom tablets are popular among photographers who prefer using a pen to a mouse when retouching photos, and Wacom even bundles Photoshop and Lightroom with some of its models to sweeten the package. But if you use a Wacom tablet for your editing work, there's something you should know: your tablet may be quietly tracking all the apps you open on your computer without you knowing it.
Fujifilm found itself in the middle of a heated debate about ethics and street photography yesterday, when one of the promo videos it released for the Fuji X100V sparked outrage among a certain segment of the company's fans on YouTube. The video has since been taken down.
Fujifilm pulled an Apple at the end of the London 2020 X-Summit stream today with "one more thing." After revealing the X100V, teasing the much-anticipated XF 50mm f/1.0 lens, and more, the company announced that it would be unveiling the Fuji X-T4 on February 26th.
Photographer Usman Dawood recently published an article in defense of Adobe. Reading it was a lot like reading a Microsoft fanboy at the height of the Window Vista era -- sure, the product works, but at what level of financial cost and frustration?
Sony is warning investors that the Coronavirus outbreak in China could have a major impact on its image sensor business, saying that production of both image sensor and electronics "could be affected enormously" if the virus continues to progress.
Sony has been quietly developing and patenting a "flying camera" drone over the past few years. While not much is known about the project, the published patents (titled "Flying Camera and a System") reveal some interesting features of the device.
CIPA—the Camera & Imaging Products Association—has released their December 2019 sales breakdown, rounding out a devastating decade for the camera industry with the worst overall year for camera sales yet. But while there's plenty of doom and gloom to go around, there's reason to be optimistic, too.
Last week, Emerald Expositions, the owner of Photo District News (PDN), announced that PDN would no longer publish new content online or in print. The magazine had been a staple of the professional photography industry, particularly for advertising and commercial photography.
Creativity is, in some respects, intangible. It does not have a physical form. It cannot be distilled and sold in bottles. It cannot be summoned at will, and if it does happen to show its face, there is no guarantee that it will stick around.
Over the last few years, it seems like it’s become really cool to hate Adobe; kind of like how it’s cool to hate Coldplay. Except the main difference is that Coldplay really does suck.
Kodak has inked a new deal with five of the six major movie studios, re-upping an initial agreement made in 2015 and ensuring that we won't see celluloid completely replaced by digital in Hollywood any time soon.
Canon has released its financial results and presentation for the 2019 fiscal year, which included some interesting revelations about 2020. Despite believing the camera market will continue to shrink, Canon predicts 'stable demand' for professional cameras, and outright mentions plans to release an 'advanced' EOS R camera.
Photo District News (PDN), a 40-year-old photo publication and staple of the industry, is shutting down. The magazine's owner Emerald Expositions has confirmed that they will be shuttering both the print and digital sides of PDN in order to focus more of their efforts on PhotoPlus, WPPI, and Rangefinder.
Kodak Alaris has posted a detailed warning for film photographers, explaining that the new CT scanners being installed to check carry-on bags across the United States will almost certainly ruin your film, even after a single pass.
A survey posted by Xiaomi on the social media network Weibo has sparked a flurry of speculation that the Chinese smartphone maker is planning to collaborate with either Nikon, Canon or Hasselblad on a co-branded smartphone camera.
DynaLite Inc.—a trusted professional lighting brand that has been around for over 50 years—has shut down. In a statement posted to the company's website, CEO Peter Poremba announced that the company "has filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy and has closed it doors."
Flickr just sent an email to all of its members announcing that—as mentioned in CEO Don MacAskill's recent open letter—the price of Flickr Pro is officially going up. The price hike will help Flickr's parent company SmugMug keep the photo sharing platform alive as they continue to improve the service and (hopefully) add more paying members.
Canon just scored a major legal win in the battle against counterfeit products. A US District Court has issued a judgement in Canon's favor in a lawsuit against two eBay users who were selling counterfeit Canon batteries online.
BCN has revealed their awards for 2020, and the biggest news from this year's camera stats is that Sony has overtaken Olympus to claim the #2 spot in Mirrorless category while Canon has finally, for the first time ever, claimed the #1 spot in all three stills camera categories.
On December 19, 2019, Flickr (and SmugMug) CEO Don MacAskill posted a letter entitled “The world’s most-beloved, money-losing business needs your help.” MacAskill described how SmugMug saved Flickr from an imminent demise at the hands of Verizon, and how the company needed the photo community to step up to staunch the money-losing operation.
I wrote two articles about National Geographic Fine Art Galleries (NGFA) just over a year ago after they contacted me to sell one of my photos in their galleries. I discussed how the photographers are paid a mere 5% commission for works sold and that prints are signed with an autopen, a machine used to generate a signature.
After the Second World War, if you were a professional photographer, then you would have used cameras from companies like Hasselblad and Leica. Photojournalists tended to shoot predominantly with Leica cameras, and they were essentially the standard.
After launching its X-Series line of cameras with the X100 back in 2011, Fujifilm began developing a reputation for 'Kaizen' (literally "change good" in Japanese), or pushing out frequent major firmware upgrades that breathe new life into older cameras.
Manfrotto has jumped into the memory card market. Best known for its tripods, lighting supports, and accessories, the Italy-based brand just unveiled its new Pro Rugged line of memory cards. They're purportedly the strongest memory cards on the market.
Canon was an on announcement spree at CES. In addition to officially releasing the 1D X Mark III and debuting an AI Lightroom assistant, the camera brand also launched something called Image Connect: a 'photographer matching service' that could help photographers find work.
Canon is going all-in on mirrorless. The company has revealed that it has no plans to create any new EF lenses for DSLRs... unless photographers demand more.
After Canon shared the development information on the impending 1D X Mark III last year, we called out that its specs not only blow away any previous notions of what a camera with physical moving parts could do but also noted that it's got all the makings of a great mirrorless camera... with a mirror.
It’s been ten years since Instagram launched and not long after, the selfie. It has taken the same amount of time for visual recognition to understand how to read our faces. If anything, 2019 has been the year where faces have taken center stage of visual tech, for good and bad…
Sony semiconductor simply can't keep up with the soaring demand for its mobile image sensors. In a recent interview, head of Sony's semiconductor unit Terushi Shimizu revealed that the company is struggling to keep up, despite running its factories 24 hours per day over the holidays for the second year running.
Apple's Made-for-iPhone (MFi) licensing program may soon allow third parties to create dedicated strobes for current and future iPhones. According to sources who spoke with 9to5Mac, MFi partners were briefed on "new specs" that will allow them to manufacture strobes that connect and sync over the Lightning port instead of Bluetooth.
Photographers, beware: if you're ever contacted by a big brand on Instagram or any other social network with a request to "share your photo," make sure you read the fine print of any terms you're shown. If you don't, you could easily be agreeing to give away unlimited usage of your work.
Flickr users received an email a few days ago asking for help to save Flickr by subscribing to the Flickr Pro service. Don MacAskill, the CEO of both SmugMug and Flickr, explained that the platform is still losing money and needs our help to keep it alive.
Flickr is in trouble... again... or maybe still. In an open letter to Flickr users and fans published on the company's blog, SmugMug CEO and Co-Founder Don MacAskill admitted that his company has not yet managed to make Flickr profitable, and implored photographers to consider upgrading to Flickr Pro in order to "keep the Flickr dream alive."
If you're a 500px member who hasn't logged in to the photo sharing and selling service for a while, you may be asked to agree to an updated Terms of Service document upon logging in. The latest agreement is causing an uproar (and a new wave of account deletions) among many photographers, but it doesn't appear that anything has changed from a legal or rights standpoint.
Though we went into great detail recently into why the SD card isn't going anywhere anytime soon, the format's days are likely still numbered. Positioned as a response to CFexpress, the SD Association published an initiative about a year ago for the next generation SD card called SDexpress (SDx).
Last week, Fuji Rumors reported that Fujifilm would not be attending Photokina 2020, but the report cited no official sources and neither Photokina nor Fujifilm had made any such announcement. Over the past week, PetaPixel was able to confirm this information with official sources from both Photokina and Fujifilm.
Nikon has launched a new program called Yellow in the US that allows anyone to try the new Nikon Z 50 crop sensor mirrorless camera worry free for 30 days. If you don't want to keep the camera, you simply send it back for a free refund, and there's free shipping both ways.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about Apple's latest laptop and a wish list for things that weren't included in its design. One of those things was a return to the built-in SD card reader.
Adobe has released its Q4 financial results for the 2019 fiscal year, revealing that it has surpassed $11 billion in annual revenue for the first time in the company's history, and posting an incredible 24% growth year-over-year.
Kodak is discontinuing Kodakit, the on-demand photography service launched back in 2017 that aimed to be a sort of "Uber of photography," connecting photographers around the world with businesses that need photos.
Those Nikon-branded XQD cards that first cropped up in Japan back in August of 2018 are finally available in the United States. The timing of the release is odd given the recent arrival of CFExpress cards that use the same form factor, are faster, and have already started to ship.
Photography tours in Upper Antelope Canyon, one of the most popular and controversial photography attractions in the US, are shutting down in 2020. To confirm this news and find out the reasons behind it, we decided to call the Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation.
Photo and video editing brand VSCO has acquired action camera maker Rylo. The pairing, which might seem strange at first blush, promises to bring Rylo's innovative mobile video editing tools to the VSCO platform starting "next year."
In an early morning press release, Kodak Alaris has announced that the recently revived Kodak Ektachrome E100 film stock is now available in medium (120) and large (4x5) formats in addition to the 35mm format that launched last year.
Nikon is shutting down its authorized repair program at the end of March, 2020. According to an email sent to authorized repair shops, and confirmed by Nikon Inc. (see update), Nikon users in the United States will soon have to rely exclusively on Nikon itself for any repairs that require special parts, tools, or training—that is: almost all repairs.
Photographer and occasional PetaPixel guest author Robin Wong recently published a very interesting take on a question that most people thought was settled: why is the camera market shrinking? While most people would just blame the rise of smartphones and call it a day, Wong shares a more nuanced, and possibly more accurate, list of reasons.
The US Government is being sued by two documentary filmmaking organizations over new visa registration rules that require applicants to divulge any and all social media handles--including pseudonyms--that they've used over the past 5 years. The lawsuit claims that the new rules constitute "unconstitutional surveillance" and could even put foreign filmmakers in danger.
Photokina is keen to remind you that (1) it is still the industry's "leading trade fair," and (2) trade fairs are still relevant, even if Nikon, Leica, and Olympus dropped out of Photokina 2020. In a press release published last night, the show quotes Canon, Sony and Panasonic executives as they "confirmed their commitment" to the 2020 expo during conversations with Photokina organizers in Tokyo.
In a recent interview with DPReview, Olympus VP of Sales and Marketing Aki Murata laid out the company's market position quite eloquently, explaining why (and how) Olympus intends to compete in a camera market that is increasingly focused on full-frame.