Kodak's fall from grace is an interesting case study that modern day companies can learn from. Even though the world's first digital camera was invented by one of its engineers, the company was unwilling to cannibalize its film business that, at the time, was making money hand over fist. By the time digital cameras started catching on, Kodak had missed the boat.
Fox News is reporting that HP is in talks with potential buyers of its webOS mobile operating system, which it obtained back in April 2010 after acquiring Palm for $1.2 billion. One of the potential buyers is surprising though: …
Jake Adelstein at the Japanese Subculture Research Center has written up an interesting article regarding the ongoing Olympus scandal, focusing on the organized crime allegations that have been brought against the company: …
Olympus Chairman and President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa resigned today under pressure from the company's ongoing financial scandal. The 70-year-old was a 45-year veteran of the company and was the president in the late 2000s when the dubious payments took place. Former president Michael Woodford -- the man whose accusations put Olympus in the spotlight -- has stated in interviews that the entire board of directors at the company is "toxic", "contaminated", and needs to resign. However, a member of …
Here's a photograph by the The Bangkok Post showing Sony's sensor manufacturing plant in Thailand submerged under flood waters roughly 3 meters (~10ft) high. The shutdown of the 502,000 square foot, 3,300 employee plant doesn't just affect Sony, as other companies -- including Nikon and Apple (in the iPhone 4S) -- rely on Sony image sensors as well.
More news from the ongoing Olympus scandal: despite an official explanation issued by Olympus last week, the company's stock has continued to plummet. It closed today at ¥1,099, down from around ¥2,500 before the crisis began. Investors are apparently spooked after a major Japanese newspaper suggested that the payments at the center of the controversy could have links to the criminal underworld (something the company has denied). The New York Times is reporting that the FBI is now involved in …
Japanese camera site digicame-info is reporting that an upcoming announcement of a D700 successor (possibly the D800) has been cancelled due to the ongoing flooding in Thailand, and that Nikon's product supply has nearly come to a standstill -- affecting existing products in addition to upcoming ones. Even if the D800 is being manufactured in Japan like the D700 is, some components may be produced in Nikon's flood-damaged factory.
We've shared before that the Canon 5D Mark II was used for scenes in Captain America and Iron Man 2, but if you think that's crazy, get this: the upcoming movie 'The Avengers', which features an entire team of Marvel superheros, contains scenes shot with the iPhone 4. The movie's cinematographer Seamus McGarvey tells IFTN, …
Photographer Zack Arias has an interesting piece on why he doesn't think photographers should feel threatened by others who offer their services for absurdly low prices: …
After being spurned back in early 2008, Microsoft is supposedly on the hunt to acquire Yahoo once again. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is working on putting a bid together with Silver Lake Partners, the company that Microsoft recently purchased Skype from. If the buyout succeeds this time, Microsoft will also become the owner of Flickr, which Yahoo purchased six years ago.
Leica Camera is now nearly half American-owned: the company announced yesterday that it has agreed to sell a 44% minority stake to US-based private equity firm Blackstone Group. Leica Chairman Andreas Kaufmann says the purpose is international expansion: …
A week ago we shared a photo showing Nikon's factory in Thailand submerged due to the catastrophic flooding happening there. The latest news is that both Nikon and Sony have had their camera factories severely damaged, which may have cause delays of at least 1-2 months. 90% of Nikon's SLR cameras -- the low to mid-range ones -- are produced at the company's Thailand plant, while 100% of Sony DSLRs are made at its now-damaged factory.
Update: Olympus has released an official response to the allegations.
Last Friday, we reported that Olympus had fired CEO Michael Woodford, claiming that he clashed with the company's 92-year-old management style. Woodford is now coming out with different story: he believes that he was dismissed after raising questions about $1+ billion in payments the company made in acquisitions between 2006 and 2008. The Financial Times writes, …
Over the past year, major movie camera manufacturers ARRI, Panavision and Aaton have all quietly stopped manufacturing film cameras -- a tough blow to film, and grim news for film photographers. Debra Kaufman over at Creative COW writes, …
Olympus fired CEO and President Michael Woodford today, causing the company's stock price to take a 17% dive. The 51-year-old Briton was accused by the board of ignoring the management culture that the firm has had in place for 92 years. Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa (who replaces Woodford) says, …
Thailand is experiencing the worst flooding it has seen in more than 50 years, and Nikon is also getting hit hard. A statement released by the company today (and photos emerging from the area) reveals that the company's entry-level DSLR factory there is now swamped with water: …
If you think about it, there are many parallels between Apple and Polaroid: both companies introduced innovative products that redefined markets in their time, both were founded by college dropouts, and both emphasized design and usability in their products. What you might not know is that it's not a coincidence. Christopher Bonanos wrote a fascinating article for the New York Times on how Steve Jobs idolized Polaroid founder Edwin Land and modeled his career after Land's: …
According to Nikon Rumors, Nikon has introduced a new Unilateral Pricing Policy on DSLR gear sold in the US that will take effect on October 16th. Saying that the policy is "designed to allow customers to make purchasing decisions based on service provided and not have to worry about hunting for a better price", Nikon plans to withhold sales to any store caught pricing equipment below "national prices" that the company will set for each product.
Back in July, we reported that Hoya had agreed to sell the Pentax camera business to Ricoh for roughly $124 million. The deal was completed over this past weekend, and now the business is officially called the "Pentax Ricoh Imaging Company". Ricoh wanted Pentax -- currently the 10th largest digicam brand -- for its SLR technologies, so we might be seeing some increased activity from Ricoh and Pentax in the DSLR market very soon.
Kodak's stock plummeted again today, losing nearly 50% of its value and closing at $0.78 per share. The company was worth over $30 billion back in 1997, but todays stock price pegs the value at just $200 million. Prominent investors in the company are calling for its sale, but apparently there's been hurdles in selling off its patent portfolio, and now bankruptcy might be on the horizon. A quote by a company spokesperson a couple days ago caught my eye: when asked why Kodak was struggling in …
Yesterday Kodak's stock fell 64 cents, or 26.9%, to close at $1.74 -- the lowest the stock price has been in 38 years. Investors were reacting to news that the company (which hasn't netted a profit since 2007) had taken out a new $160 million loan. The plummeting value of the company is bad news for the photography pioneer but good news for companies that might be interested in buying it -- a list that is rumored to include Google and Microsoft.
Microstock did a lot of damage by turning traditional stock photography on its head, but now a company called Stipple is trying to give microstock a taste of its own medicine. The company, which offers technology for tagging people and objects in photos, has launched its new Image Marketplace website for publishers who want to use photographs without having to pay for them. Instead of publishers paying the photographers or agencies for licenses, brands step into the equation by paying money to …
What has the world come to? Apparently the prestigious Magnum Photos has partnered with Nintendo to promote the Nintendo 3DS as a camera. Photographers Martin Parr, Thomas Dworzak and Gueorgui Pinkhassov used the handheld gaming device to shoot a series of 3D photos that were then put on display in an exhibition held at the Magnum Gallery in Paris.
Turns out the giant hand sculptures that popped up all over the world over the past few days were indeed part of a marketing stunt for Nikon's new mirrorless cameras. thebighands.com is now an "I AM Nikon 1" website. Our guess yesterday turned out to be true as well: the hands are now holding giant Nikon mirrorless cameras!
Last Friday, Olympus partnered with JetBlue for an Oprah-style giveaway: each of the 1000+ passengers traveling on Flight #001 from New York to Fort Lauderdale was given a newly-announced PEN E-PM1 Micro Four Thirds camera. The company documented the event using its own PEN cameras, and simply asked that everyone upload 20 of their favorite images captured to this website.
Since photography emerged in the early 1800s, the number of photographs created every year has grown exponentially. A dramatic shift occurred around the year 2000 though: …
Here are the recordings of all the "Is Photography Over?" panel sessions hosted by SFMOMA that we referred to earlier today: …
Canon sends out an email containing a customer survey once or twice a year, and yesterday's survey included a few questions regarding mirrorless cameras. Looks like the company is looking into entering the mirrorless game. About time too -- mirrorless cameras are chipping away at Canon's market share, and Nikon is rumored to have a mirrorless camera announcement just around the corner on September 21st.
Last week Toshiba announced "FlashAir" SD card with built-in LAN functionality, and today SanDisk is launching a counterattack. Rather than develop its own wireless cards, the company is partnering with Eye-Fi to sell co-branded wireless SD cards to European customers. The cards, which allow photos to be transfered to a computer over Wi-Fi, will be available in 4GB and 8GB sizes, and are basically Eye-Fi cards with a SanDisk logo slapped onto them. No word on price or release date as of yet.
Everpix is a new company that wants to make your entire photo collection -- both online and offline -- accessible from anywhere through the cloud. Introduced yesterday at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 conference, the service will come as a desktop client that monitors folders on your computer and photo sharing accounts on the Internet. Whenever you add new photographs, they're automatically beamed to the cloud (i.e. Everpix servers), allowing images created using many different devices and stored …
We all knew it wasn't a question of if, but of when: a major camera review site (Imaging Resource) has published a review of a cell phone (Apple's iPhone 4) as a digital camera. The review's conclusion is positive news for camera-makers though: …
The rise of microstock and the fact that anyone with a camera can sell cheap photos has done a lot to devalue stock photography, but is the same thing happening to the photojournalism industry? Paul Melcher says that the industry is headed in that direction: …
Japanese business newspaper Nikkei reported yesterday that Nikon is on the cusp of announcing its entry into the mirrorless camera market. What's more, the paper stated that the camera would cost between ¥70,000-¥100,000 ($900-$1,300), a pretty common price point for this type of camera (though it may be somewhat high if the camera only packs a 2.7x sensor). In response, Nikon put out a strange press release titled "Comments on Media Reports about Nikon's imaging product": …
Things aren't look very bright in the world of film. Citing plummeting consumer demand for silver halide films, Fujifilm has announced that they're cutting a number of films in the lineup in order to ensure that production of films -- presumably the more popular ones -- will continue. They've already stopped producing the discontinued films, so you might want to grab some rolls and freeze them before they become extinct...
Bloomberg reports that Canon and Nikon's failure thus far to enter the mirrorless camera market has allowed Sony to eat into their combined market share -- at least in Japan: …
Last friday, Dayton Daily News photo editor Larry Price received instructions to lay off half of his photo staff. Rather than follow through with the order, Price -- a 35-year veteran photojournalist and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes in photography -- decided to sacrifice his own job instead, resigning from the post this past Monday. Ginger Christ of the Dayton BizBlog writes, …
As technology improves, features that were once limited to expensive professional models often become available to the masses, but will this ever be true for full-frame sensors? Nikon's Senior VP David Lee was recently asked this question in an interview with TWICE, and here's what he said: …
Talk about a Kodak acquisition seems to be heating up as giant tech companies -- including Google, Microsoft, and Apple -- continue to engage in a patent-hoarding war. Just two days ago, Google agreed to acquire Motorola for $12.5 billion in order to snatch up the roughly 25,000 patents owned by the handset maker. Bloomberg writes that the patents held by Kodak may be worth five times more than the company itself, making it a prime acquisition target: …
Poke around on Craigslist, and you'll find that it's filled with ads selling professional services at dirt-cheap prices, including photographers offering to shoot weddings for just a few hundred dollars. Does this spell doom for the wedding photography business? Probably not.
Japanese electronics giant Pioneer is dipping its toes in the digital camera industry. It has partnered with camera maker Asia Optical to make Pioneer branded cameras in Brazil to sell in the Chinese market. The company aims to have sales of half a million units by 2015. Up to this point, the company had focused on things like car audio systems, television, and DVD players. It'll be interesting to see if Pioneer can find a foothold and steal some market share from the big players.
We reported yesterday that Kodak has taken defensive measures to prevent a hostile takeover for its extensive collection of digital imaging patents. One of these patents is an image previewing invention that has earned Kodak nearly $1 billion from Samsung and LG, and that's at the center of an ongoing legal battle with Apple. With the income generated by patent lawsuits dwindling, the company is now considering the sale of 1,100 patents (about 10% of its portfolio), including the valuable image …
If you look at the price of Kodak's stock, you'll see that the company is currently worth about $600 million -- a figure that may be significantly lower than what its digital imaging patents could sell for. With the risk looming that a buyer might try to acquire the patents by simply taking over the company, Kodak is taking evasive maneuvers.
Alexa's traffic reports seem to show that photo sharing service 500px is growing like a weed. The site has received quite a bit of coverage as of late.
People seem to be having a hard time swallowing the idea that Nikon could do well if their upcoming mirrorless camera only packs a 2.7x crop sensor, but Thom Hogan argues that there's a logical "hole" in the market that Nikon could be the first to fill: …
Remember the strange boxy cameras that were spotted on Samsung's website a couple months ago? Turns out they were in fact digital medium format cameras, but were developed for "internal purposes" only.
Here's another nail in the fail coffin for the much-hyped but not-very-popular photo-sharing app Color: TechCrunch reports that Color received a staggering $200 million acquisition offer before it had even launched, but the company turned it down and raised $41 million in venture funding instead. Things haven't been going so hot for Color since then, while Google saved itself $200 million and has a couple photo-sharing apps in development that are generating some buzz.
If you look at the Top 100 Movies chart in the iTunes Store, you might not notice anything out of the ordinary, but one of the movies (#43) is actually a no budget film shot using a single Canon 5D Mark II. For Lovers Only" is a romance filmed by Mark Polish and Michael Polish -- known as the Polish brothers -- over the course of just 12 days with a single actress (Mark himself played the male lead). The film has already generated over $200,000 in profits after being spread through word of …
For the first time ever, an Adobe program is available through the Mac App Store. Yesterday, Adobe began selling Photoshop Elements 9 there for $80, a generous 20% off the regular $100 price for the boxed version. It's a pretty big deal, because Adobe -- along with Microsoft -- is a company that would love to keep its software out of Apple's App Store. It generates significant profits by selling its popular programs in the traditional boxed format, while businesses that sell through the Mac App …
Update on 12/18/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
