Fans of the Fujifilm X100 who are hoping the company will release an interchangeable lens successor to the camera may soon get their wish. Camera division chief Takeshi Higuchi strongly hinted at their plans for an interchangeable lens camera in an interview with Reuters: …
Ricoh is purchasing the Pentax camera business from optical glass-maker Hoya for roughly 10 billion yen (~$124.2 million) in order to jump into the DSLR game. Hoya had purchased Pentax back in 2007 mainly for its medical technologies and was widely expected to sell off the camera division of the company. Ricoh already makes a number of quality compact cameras, but the market is slowly being eaten up by large-sensor interchangeable lens cameras and mobiles phones. The company is planning to …
It's estimated that 8 million people in the US struggle with an eating disorder, with 95% of them between the ages of 12 and 25, and one of the big reasons may be the aberrant use of Photoshop by the ad industry. The American Health Organization updated its policies earlier this week urging the ad industry to stop the "altering of photographs in a manner that could promote unrealistic expectations of appropriate body image." Board member Barbara L. McAneny states, …
Leica is reportedly working on a compact, large-sensor, interchangeable lens camera that will rival the "EVIL" cameras offered by Olympus/Panasonic (Micro Four Thirds), Sony (NEX), and Samsung (NX). In an interview today with Amateur Photographer, company boss Alfred Schopf stated that consumers "will see something at the next Photokina", and that the camera will have at least an APS-C sized sensor. Perhaps the new camera will be how Leica finds its way again after being late to the digital …
In March 2011 we reported that an iPhone photo sharing app called Color had raised a whopping $41 million in funding before it had even launched. Sequoia Capital, one of the most prominent VC firms in Silicon Valley, invested more money in Color than they had originally invested in Google. Now, just three short months later, Color is still struggling to find users while its less-funded competitors are leaving it in the dust.
Apple is looking to make an even bigger splash in the camera market with the photography-related features they've included in the upcoming iOS 5, with one of the huge ones being cloud connectivity. iPhones running iOS 5 will be connected to iCloud, Apple's online backup solution, and every photograph captured will be automatically and wirelessly copied to the cloud and into the user's "Photo Stream". The photos can then be accessed from other computers and devices, and are deleted after 30 days …
After sticking too long to film technology, it looks like Leica is finally getting the digital game figured out. Yesterday it announced a record profit of €248.9 million for the latest fiscal year, a significant increase from the €158.2 million it earned the previous year.
Twitter has just announced that they will be launching their own photo-sharing service that will let you attach photographs directly to Tweets, competing with services like TwitPic. Rather than host the images themselves using their own servers or Amazon's S3 storage, they've decided to partner with photo-sharing giant Photobucket. It'll be interesting to see whether photographers feel more comfortable sharing their images on Twitter now that the functionality will be baked into the service …
The AP published an article yesterday titled "How Much Longer Can Photographic Film Hold On?" that gives a pretty grim outlook for the future of film. About a decade ago, Americans were purchasing close to 1 billion rolls of film and 19.7 million film cameras every year. This year, only about 20 million rolls will be sold and film camera sales may fall below 100,000.
Things aren't going very well for Sigma these days -- just days after the world balked at the $9,700 price tag it's attaching to the upcoming SD1 DSLR, Nikon is announcing that it's suing Sigma for $150 million over the vibration reduction technology found in Sigma DSLR lenses. Furthermore, it's demanding that Sigma put a halt to the manufacturing and sale of lenses that infringe on the VR patents, which might be a large number of OS (Optical Stabilization) lenses.
Since we first covered its launch back in October 2010, Instagram has become one of the fastest growing photo-sharing companies and iPhone apps. This week founder Kevin Systrom announced that they now have 4.25 million registered users, and that users are posting 10 photos every second, or around 900,000 photos per day. Not bad for a seven month old service, eh? …
Photography lovers in Canada may soon be caught in the crossfire of the music industry's fight against piracy. The Canadian Private Copying Collective is pushing for a new tax on memory cards that would be based on the capacity of the cards -- $0.50 for 1GB or less, $1 for 1-8GB cards, and $3 for any card with over 8GBs. Law professor Michael Geist writes, …
Google Street View photos won't be limited to the exterior of buildings for much longer -- the company has just announced Google Business Photos, a service that will allow Google websites to show the interiors of local businesses. If you thought having vehicles equipped with Street View cameras driven up and down every street in every city was a tedious project, for Business Photos Google is planning to have photographers sent to businesses that apply for the service. Crowd-sourcing the imagery …
Production issues experienced by Canon and Nikon (caused by the earthquake and tsunami) may soon allow competitors to eat into their dominant DSLR market shares and, according to a story by USA TODAY, Sony is pegged as one of the main benefactors: …
On Nikon's question and answer Facebook app, a guy named Andrew Yu offered the idea of replacing the shutter button with two touch sensors and received the above response from Nikon. It's an interesting look at how Nikon, camera manufacturers, and big corporations in general usually respond to ideas and suggestions from the general public.
Slate magazine just published an interesting article on David Hobby and his popular blog Strobist, and shared this interesting example of how the photography industry is drastically changing due to low barriers of entry: …
Market research firm IDC released its findings about the worldwide digital camera market recently, with interesting details about the current market shares of camera manufacturers. From 2009 to 2010, Canon's share remained perfectly constant at 19%, while #2 player Sony increased its share from 16.9% to 17.9%. Nikon also grew from 11.1% to 12.6%. The worldwide market for digital cameras is also growing -- last year it increased 10% to 141 million cameras sold.
The stock prices of major camera equipment manufacturers took a major -- and expected -- dive after the earthquake on March 11, 2011. Though they made a brief recovery afterward, they're continuing to fall due to the risk that gear prices may soon skyrocket soar once decreased production isn't able to meet demand.
Goodbye Flip Video camera. Cisco announced today that they're killing off the camera line in an attempt to refocus their consumer electronics business. They purchased the company behind the camera, Pure Digital Technologies, back in 2009. Flip Video cameras have long held the bestselling spots for camcorders on websites like Amazon by offering both HD video recording and convenient transferring with a built-in USB connection, but competition from rival camcorders and the introduction of HD …
Nikon announced yesterday that the 60 milionth Nikkor lens came into existence sometime in March 2011, a month after Canon announced the 60 millionth Canon EF lens. Canon has had a faster growth rate though -- while the first Nikkor lens was made in 1959, Canon's EF mount didn't show up until 1987.
We may soon see an unexpected player enter the mirrorless camera market: CNET Asia is reporting that GE will be introducing a mirrorless camera by the end of this year: …
Matthew Rothenberg, the man who has led Flickr the past two years has Head of Product, announced today that he is leaving the service. In a message posted to his Twitter account, Rothenberg states, …
MarketWatch has an interesting article titled "Kodak Is Apple In Reverse" that compares Kodak's meteoric fall with Apple's meteoric rise. Back in 1997, Kodak was a $28 billion dollar company while Apple was worth a measly $2 billion. Now Apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world (currently worth $330 billion), and earns enough profit every quarter ($6 billion) to buy Kodak... six times over! …
A day after Carl Zeiss announced they would be joining the Micro Four Thirds format, Sony is striking back by announcing that they will be releasing specifications for its E-mount, allowing lens makers to develop third-party lenses for the NEX line of mirrorless cameras and camcorders. What's more, Carl Zeiss, Cosina, Sigma and Tamron have already committed to manufacturing lenses for the format.
What you see here is the history of Kodak stock starting from 1978. In the mid-1990s the stock peaked at over $90 per share, but has experienced a slow demise since then, and is currently at $3.70 a share. What's more, the company just announced yesterday that profits fell a staggering 95% in the fourth quarter of 2010. During that quarter the company earned just $22 million, compared to the $443 million it earned during the same period a year earlier.
The camera market may look vastly different in the future than the Canon and Nikon dominated one we see today if recent trends continue. Amateur Photographer is reporting that the combined share of Canon and Nikon dropped a whopping 11% in Japan through 2010, and is currently at 60.4%. What's more, Sony has increased its share to 15.2%, and has in fact overtaken Nikon in the UK, capturing 25% of interchangeable cameras sold compared to Nikon's 20%.
In case you're wondering whether Yahoo still cares about Flickr (acquired in 2005), the answer appears to be yes. Chief Product Officer Blake Irving recently tweeted a short message affirming the company's support for the popular photo sharing service, saying, …
Olympus is ditching the entry-level DSLR in favor of its Micro Four Thirds mount PEN line of EVIL cameras. In an interview with Fotopolis, Toshiyuki Terada -- the Product Manager of Olympus' SLR Planning Department -- is quoted as saying, …
The Internet was abuzz yesterday due to a secret meeting at Adobe's offices between the head honchos of Microsoft (Steve Ballmer) and Adobe (Shantanu Narayen). The New York Times reports: …
Photokina 2010 came and went without any bombshell EVIL announcements by Canon or Nikon, but murmurs about impending cameras persist. According to Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes, Nikon is ready to enter the "mirrorless DSLR-similar camera" market: …
Here's a fun bit of trivia: did you know that at one time Apple (then named Apple Computer) made compact digital cameras? Launched in 1994, the Apple QuickTake was actually one of the first digital cameras available to consumers. Three models were built by Kodak and Fujifilm, and the cameras boasted a whopping 0.3 megapixels and the ability to store eight photos at this resolution. The camera had a flash, but lacked zoom, focusing, image review, and file deletion (the entire contents had to be …
According to Hoya founder Shigeru Yamanaka's grandson, Yutaka Yamanaka, Hoya's acquisition of Pentax may not have been the best business move. The younger Yamanaka said the $1 billion acquisition in 2007 was made mostly to expand Hoya's involvement in medical optics, but turned out to be "overpriced." Yamanaka, a Hoya shareholder, went so far as to say it was one of Hoya's business "failures" which led to financial turbulence over the last three years until Pentax turned profitable.
Nikon's new president Makoto Kimura believes that the explosive growth of the digital camera market is ending, and that the market is near its saturation point.
Google has acquired UK-based mobile photo search startup Plink for an undisclosed amount.
If you've ever edited your Flickr photographs using the default image editor provided by Flickr, then you've used the web-based image editing software developed by Picnik.
Just as the Winter Olympics are heating up international competition in Vancouver this week, the U.S. has suffered a bit of a statistical loss to non-American companies on home turf: American-owned companies have captured far fewer U.S. patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2009. U.S. corporations hold about 49% of all U.S. utility patents in 2009, while non-U.S. firms hold the majority. In a repeat of last year's trend, major Asian companies, such as South Korea's Samsung, …
Billionaire Michael Dell's investment firm MSD Capital, L.P has purchased the entire New York print archive of renowned photo agency Magnum Photos, totaling nearly 200,000 images. The collection includes some of the most iconic images throughout history, including photos of world leaders, celebrities, and major events such as World War II. Though the price was not disclosed, the collection was previously insured for over $100 million.
Camera phones may soon offer more megapixels than some DSLR cameras. Imaging company OmniVision announced today that they have developed a 14.6-megapixel image sensor that will fit in cell phones. These sensors are capable of both high-resolution still photography and 1080p high-definition video recording.
A recent survey of 200 creative professionals in the UK found that 37% admit to illegally using images found on the Internet.
