The camera maker we know as Leica, officially known as Leica Camera AG, is now 100% privately owned. The main shareholder, Lisa Germany Holding GmbH, announced earlier this week that it had successfully bought out the 2.44% of stock still in the hands of third-party shareholders, paying a set price of €30.18 (~$39) for each of the shares.
It is commonly said that a picture is worth a thousand words. It seems that US smartphone users agree, for Instagram has now passed Twitter in active user count. The legions of Instagrammers aren't just checking their beloved social network more than their Tweeting counterparts -- their eyeballs are glued on it longer as well.
Kodak divisions are falling left and right as the company struggles to claw its way out of bankruptcy protection. After killing off its camera business and selling off its film business earlier this year, Kodak announced today that it will shortly be pulling out of the consumer printing business in order to focus on commercial printing.
Samsung is doing one of the strangest promotional stunts we've seen in recent times. To celebrate the new NX1000 mirrorless camera announced back in April, they're giving away the camera to anyone in the UK named David Bailey.
Sony has agreed to pour $645 million into Olympus in exchange for 11.5 percent of the embattled company, becoming the single largest shareholder. While the companies announced that they are considering cooperating in the digital camera industry, the main motivation for Sony wasn't photographic imaging but body imaging. Olympus is one of the major players in the medical endoscope market, holding about 70% of sales, and Sony's investment allows it to dip its toes into this lucrative industry.
Behold: one of the rarest photobooks in the world. What you're looking at is an exceedingly rare complete set of American photographer Edward S. Curtis' book The North American Indian. It contains 772 large-format photogravures on Japanese tissue, 111 signed plates, and 20 extra text volumes that contain an additional 1,505 photogravures, 4 maps, and 2 diagrams.
Watts Martin of Coyote Tracks has an interesting piece titled "Iconic" that discusses the idea of trade dress -- the reason why Apple doesn't have any branding on the front face of the iPhone: …
If you're trying to make some side money by selling photographs as microstock -- or are trying to do it full-time -- it'd be wise to heed the advice of one of the most successful players in the industry: Yuri Arcurs. He has published an interesting "state of the industry" report with his thoughts on the types of photographs that are currently in demand with stock photo buyers.
Bankruptcy has not been friendly to Kodak. The once-important camera company -- now a printing company -- is worth less than 20 cents a share today, a completely different picture than its glory days in the mid-1990s, when the price briefly surged beyond $90. Now that the share price is so low, would it be wise to invest in the company in hopes that it emerges from bankruptcy protection? Matt Krantz over at USA Today says no, and writes, …
Regardless of how you feel about Hasselblad's idea of taking a $1,100 Sony NEX-7, souping it up, and selling it for $6,500 as a Hasselblad Lunar, I think we can all agree that there needs to be honesty in marketing the camera. Well, that's what a couple of sections over on the Lunar website seriously lack. Check out the page boasting about the camera's APS-C HD CMOS Sensor, which contains a side-by-side comparison showing the common APS-C sensor size next to other popular sizes. Does that look …
It looks like the Olympus financial scandal is finally coming to an end. It has been nearly a year since it came to light that there were massive cases of fraud and coverups going on in the upper echelons of Olympus management. What started as a CEO's firing quickly spiraled into one of the biggest scandals to ever hit corporate Japan -- the country's equivalent of the US' Enron fiasco.
It's not uncommon for camera manufacturers to launch their own online photo storage or sharing service, but Canon is looking to make a bigger splash than most. At Photokina last week, the company announced Project 1709, an upcoming cloud-based service that will allow photographers to store their entire library of photographs online. As with most cloud services, the images would then be available from anywhere in the world, accessible using any device (e.g. computer, tablet, smartphone, …
Good news, Flickr fans: new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is paying attention to your service, and is planning to make it a big part of her plans to turn the company around. Mayer will be holding her first "all hands" meeting tomorrow, during which she will reveal her plans on how to fix the beleaguered web pioneer. Among these plans are an emphasis on user experience over advertising revenue and special attention given to Flickr.
When Leica announced at Photokina last week that future M and S cameras won't have numbers attached to the model name (e.g. Leica M), I wrote that the company seemed to be taking a page from Apple's book by having generations rather than models. Turns out that's not the case. Leica doesn't want to be what Apple is to the gadget industry, but what Porsche is to the automobile industry.
When news of Google's acquisition of Nik Software emerged a week ago, most of the tech press (and this blog) focused on one particular offering: Snapseed. It's a highly-acclaimed mobile photo editing app that has been growing like a weed as of late, so it made sense that Google would want it to participate in the ongoing mobile photo sharing war, right? Well, maybe not.
Are we past the age of entry-level DSLRs? Dan Nosowitz over at Popular Science has written a piece titled "Don't Buy A DSLR", in which he argues that DSLRs are no longer the best option for aspiring amateur photographers.
Social photo aggregation service Pixable has been acquired by Singaporean telecommunications company SingTel for $26.5 million. The service helps in photo browsing and discovery by aggregating photographs from your various social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flicker) and using a special ranking system to only show you the interesting images. Billing itself as a "photo inbox", users can also keep up with their friends' photographs on-the-go using the company's popular iOS and …
Some weeks ago, I received an invitation from Leica for a special launch party they were planning to hold the day before Photokina 2012 opened. The event was titled LEICA - DAS WESENTLICHE, which translates to "The Essentials". Aside from stating that there would be product premieres and "photographic and musical highlights", the invitation did not reveal much else about the event, which went down this past Monday. Here's a first-hand account of what it's like to attend one of these Leica …
Nik Software announced today that it has been acquired by Google. The company is the maker of Snapseed, one of the most popular photo editing apps in the iTunes App Store and a competitor to Instagram.
As Olympus attempts to regain its footing after the devastating financial scandal that rocked it this past year, rumors are swirling that Sony might play knight in shining armor in the saga by swooping in with financial assistance. Reuters reports that a cash for stake agreement might happen before the end of this month: …
Less than a month after Kodak announced the sale of its photographic film business, Fujifilm has some downer news of its own: the end of its motion picture film business.
When the web first emerged, web design knowledge was a scarce commodity, and developers were able to charge ridiculous amounts of money to create simple websites. Now that everyone and their mother knows how to do simple HTML, you'll need to learn a lot more and offer something unique to stand a chance in the freelance market.
Zuckerberg's crazy $1 billion purchase of Instagram 6 months ago is now looking like a steal. BusinessInsider writes that the photo sharing app, which ended up costing just $735 million when the deal finally closed, has seen meteoric growth since the purchase agreement was made: …
Kodak has announced that it'll be shedding even more jobs in an effort to cut costs as it transitions into being a company solely focused on commercial printing and corporate services. Two weeks after announcing the sale of its photographic film business, the company is stating that another 1,000 pink slips will be issued by the end of this year as part of a $330 million cost cutting plan. This is on top of the 2,700 layoff notices already handed out this year, and the new round of cuts will …
Editors have always been wary of sending photographers into war zones since the practice began in the early 20th century, but the speed at which the Internet distributes photography is increasing both the danger to photojournalists and the reluctance of the backers. The British Journal of Photography has an interesting look at the costs of conflict photography: …
If you live in California and have been eyeing some camera gear on Amazon, you might want to bust out your wallet and make the purchase this week. On September 15th, 2012, Amazon will start collecting sales tax for purchases made from California. The tax rate ranges from 7.25% to 9.75% depending on where you live, so the cost difference could be quite significant depending on what you buy. For a $1,500 camera or lens, the tax could be as heavy as $150.
Is a college photography degree worth it? It depends on who you ask. There are plenty of successful photographers out there who have never set foot inside a university photography lecture, while others have done just as well after earning that diploma.
The Internet has won, and the United States' largest camera store chain will soon go the way of the Polaroid camera. We reported earlier tonight that the entire chain of Wolf Stores was slated to be liquidated, but it turns out the damage doesn't end there. A second source has now confirmed that the shutdowns go all the way up, and include Ritz Camera stores as well (Ritz Camera owns Wolf Camera).
Ritz Camera went under the hammer yesterday at a public auction, the latest chapter in the company's efforts to figure out a profitable business model in the increasingly Internet-driven business of selling camera gear. Among the things on the auction block yesterday was Wolf Camera, the competing chain of photo retail stores that Ritz acquired back in 2001. If you're a fan of Wolf Camera shops, here's some bad news: their days may be very numbered.
Back in March, a location-based mobile chat startup named Yobongo was acquired by DIY photobook publisher Mixbook. The target of the purchase was the talent of the team, not the app, and over the past half year, the programmers have been stealthily building a new photobook app. Although the launch might still be a little ways off, some details about the project are starting to emerge. Sarah Perez of TechCrunch writes, …
Nokia has already confessed and apologized for faking the optical image stabilization sample footage in a new promo video for its Lumia 920 phone. In case you weren't sure: yes, the sample still photographs in the video were faked as well.
The final hurdles have been cleared, and Instagram is now officially part of Facebook. The startup's 16 employees will be relocating from San Francisco to Facebook HQ in Menlo Park.
This promo video for Nokia's new "floating lens" image stabilization technology is causing a lot of discussion... and not for reasons Nokia should be proud about. After we included the video in a post today about the Lumia 920's PureView camera, commenters pointed us to a post over on The Verge revealing that the video was faked.
As we first reported back in June, Ritz Camera is putting itself on the auction block as it struggles to pull itself out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The public auction will be held tomorrow, and may mean the breakup of the largest camera store chain in the United States.
Love it or hate it, you have to admit that Instagram is making a huge impact on the world of photography, changing the way images are snapped and shared. Among the 80+ million users who have shared 4+ billion photos are many of the world's most renowned photojournalists. Olivier Laurent over at the British Journal of Photography recently chatted with some of them, asking them about their thoughts on how Instagram is transforming photography as we know it: …
Back in July of 2011, Netflix announced that it would be separating its movie streaming and DVD rental services into two separate subscriptions, increasing the cost for customers who wanted both by about 60%. The news was met with a massive customer backlash online, and over the next three months, more than 800,000 customers canceled their subscriptions and the stock price took a huge hit. The story became a lesson for corporate executives on how not to do price increases. Apparently SmugMug …
It's a sad day for film photographers: Kodak has announced that it will sell off its camera film business, one of the huge pillars of what made Kodak Kodak in the eyes of consumers around the world. It's yet another step in the company's effort to climb out of bankruptcy, which it hopes to do by next year, and transform itself into a commercial printing company.
Of the two images above, one of them is a computer render and one of them is an actual photograph. Can you tell which is which? If you can't, why should IKEA? …
Facebook agreed to buy Instagram for $1 billion back in April, but the deal has been in limbo over the past four months while the Federal Trade Commission gave the deal a long look-over. Both online companies got goods news today when the FTC announced that the investigation has been completed, and that the deal may "proceed as proposed."
Conflict minerals are minerals supplied by war-stricken parts of the world in which armed conflict and human rights abuses are prevalent -- minerals that are essential in the manufacture of consumer electronics. There has been a huge push recently to eradicate conflict minerals from the gadget industry, since the trade of these materials lines the pockets of unscrupulous folk and directly funds violence.
The number one reason for data loss is human error, and one of the other major reasons is the failure of storage mediums. When examining ways to store digital photos for a lifetime back in 2009, we noted that entrusting your data to the servers and engineers of major cloud companies (e.g. Amazon and its S3) was a better option than trying to back up your data yourself. Even though Amazon's S3 has long been an attractive option -- after all, many online photo sharing services use it for storing …
Here's something interesting that we spotted over at Nikon Rumors: Nikon has an F rating with the Better Business Bureau, suggesting that the company's customer support leaves something to be desired.
Businessmen around the world are watching Facebook's plummeting stock closely, but perhaps none more so than the folks over at Instagram. The world was shocked back in April when Facebook agreed to purchase the tiny startup for $1 billion, but one key fact is that the price was to be paid in a mixture of cash and stock. Due to the decline of FB stock, hundreds of millions of dollars have been wiped from the purchase price, which is currently valued at somewhere between $700 and $800 million.
Good news for film photography lovers: Kodak film may be okay for at least a few more years. The company has signed new contracts with four major Hollywood movie studios that will allow it to provide film for movies at least through 2015.
Remember Facebook's "zombie photo" problem? Photos that users deleted on the website actually remained very much alive on Facebook's servers, available to anyone who held on to the images' URLs. Earlier this year Facebook acknowledged the issue and promised changes that would ensure permanent deletion within 45 days.
Photobucket is quietly one of the 800-pound gorillas of photo sharing. First launched back in 2003, the nearly-10-year-old service boasts a staggering 100 million users, putting it in second place behind the picture sharing juggernaut, Facebook. As the demise of MySpace showed, however, the mantra for online services needs to constantly be "innovate or die".
Before Instagram, there was Hipstamatic. Hipstamatic was one of the pioneers and heavyweights in the retro filter photo app space, but when Instagram came along, the price advantage (free vs. $2), ease of use, filter selection, and built-in social network allowed Instagram to turn into the new 800 lb. gorilla of mobile photo sharing.
Remember that new Flickr account we reported on yesterday that appeared to be owned by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer? Turns out it actually wasn't her, and was quickly taken down after becoming a big story in the blogosphere.
Update: The account has mysteriously vanished from Flickr. This suggests that it was either fake, or something that wasn't meant to be as big of a news story as it was.
American private equity firm Carlyle Group announced today that it has agreed to drop $3.3 billion to acquire Getty Images from private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. H&F purchased Getty Images just four years ago for $2.4 billion, so it seems that the stock photo company is doing decently well.
