Industry

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For Canon, Nikon, and Panasonic, 2018-2019 was the first year where they all truly "went for it" when it comes to full-frame mirrorless. All three released full-frame mirrorless cameras, and all three seemed to have different priorities with those releases. In this first of three segments, we're going to take a look at each of these companies in their first year and evaluate where each of them stands today in what is now a very competitive market.

After a Nikkei report (and, later, an official press release) revealed that Panasonic would officially be selling off its semiconductor business, many people wondered what would happen to the joint venture with TowerJazz that constituted Panasonic's image sensor business. Now we know.

Olympus has issued an official statement in hopes of putting to rest once and for all rumors that the company is considering selling or shutting down its sputtering camera business.

A few days after online speculation sent the Micro Four Thirds world into a panic, Olympus has come out to officially deny rumors that it's planning to shut down and/or sell its camera business within the next year... or ever.

Apple's recent attempt to invalidate one of RED's most important patents has failed. Earlier this week, a US court dismissed Apple's challenge to RED's main RAW video patent, allowing RED to maintain some control over Apple's ProRes RAW codec.

Over the weekend, an admin on the Personal View forum published the shocking claim that "closure is near" for Olympus' camera division, writing that the company's camera business was less than a year away from being shut down. The claim has sparked a firestorm of speculation and rebuttals.

Adobe generated considerable hype when it teased "full" Photoshop for iPad last year. The app officially launched to the public this week, and it hasn't exactly lived up to the hype. In fact, it's been quite the opposite: early reviews from users have been terrible.

Patrick Hall from Fstoppers and Pye Jirsa from SLR Lounge recently sat down for an in-depth conversation about how photography is changing in 2019. In a fascinating and insightful discussion that lasts almost 45 minutes, they ultimately try to tackle one question: is photography as we know it dying?

Fujifilm China "welcomed" Xiaomi into the 100MP club with a social media post that's almost certainly a tongue-in-cheek troll of the tiny 108MP image sensor found in the company's recent CC9 Pro/Mi Note 10 smartphone.

Kodak released its Q3 revenue report yesterday, and while the company is reporting a year-over-year loss of $5 million on total revenues of $315 million, there's a very interesting bright spot in the finances: revenues for Kodak's film business grew by 21 percent year-over-year for Q1 through Q3.

Adobe has launched Photoshop on the iPad, a fully rebuilt application on the real base of Photoshop that purportedly runs smoothly and efficiently despite being on the pseudo computer that is the Apple tablet. Normally, this achievement would be seen as a gigantic accomplishment, but multiple stories over the past year have put a damper on what would otherwise be a celebrated announcement.