CIPA released the June unit shipment report. There is good and bad news:

The Good news is that in June 2017 we sold far more cameras than in 2016. But to be fair 2016 was very bad also because of the Kumamoto earthquake aftermath.
The Bad news is that June 2017 still sold far less than in 2015.

To sum up, there is no more decline in the camera unit sales. But a real recovery is not to be expected.

Ricoh published their quarterly financial report (PDF file here). As a whole the profits went up 74% compared to last year. But the camera business seems to not do so well. Ricoh doesn’t share exact numbers but they write this note:

“decrease in income and profit in the camera business due to the decreasein amounts of sales of digital cameras.”

One more news: The next camera to be announced by Ricoh will be the new Theta V camera.

The interchangeable-lens camera market continues to recover from the impact of last year’s earthquake, particularly in developed countries. As such, the pace of market contraction has been gradually slowing on a global basis. Within this business environment, we sold 1.43 million units in the second quarter, as we limited the decline to 5%. And for the half, we secured the same level of unit sales as in the first half of 2016.

In this quarter as well, sales remained strong, particularly for mirrorless cameras. Within this trend, we grew sales of the EOS M6, a new mirrorless camera that has been highly rated not only for its high image quality, but also for its compact and lightweight form factor. This camera was designed to capture demand from people who, for example, are considering a step up to a camera with more features and better performance. Including this factor, first half unit sales of mirrorless camera grew more than 70% compared to the same period last year, leading to overall sales growth for interchangeable-lens cameras.

As for compact cameras, we continue to alleviate the pent-up demand following the earthquake last year. Under these circumstances, although our second quarter sales declined 8% to 1.07 million units, we significantly expanded unit sales of our G-Series brand of premium models that have been well received by the market for their design and portability, which subsequently contributed to revenue growth.

hi-lows-note.blog.so-net.ne.jp spotted two new patenta from Nikon.

Patent 1:
It shows a 24-68mm f/2.8-4 lens for a Ful Frame Mirrorless system camera. Unlike the last week 35mm f/2.0 lens this new zoom is not designed for a mirrorless camera with curved sensor. Here are the sketches:

Patent 2:
This one shows a multifunctional Hot-shoe adapter

Adobe accidentally made a “nimbus” app download available to some Creative Cloud customers. French site MacG catched the leak and reports:

“This leak tells us something new: Nimbus users have 1TB of storage in the cloud. This is much more than the 20 GB usually offered to Creative Cloud subscribers.”

Nimbus is expected to be released as a Beta Version sometimes in late 2017.

A photograph is shaped more by the person behind the camera than by what’s in front of it.
To prove this we invited six photographers to a portrait session with a twist. ‘Decoy’ is one of six experiments from The Lab, designed to shift creative thinking behind the lens.

This is a guest article from Leonard Goh:

Remembering Samsung

The tides in the camera industry are shifting, with big boys such as Canon and Nikon taking a (slight) beating from previously smaller players such as Sony and Fujifilm. In the US, Sony cameras has already surpassed Nikon in the full frame category, and it won’t be unexpected that such a trend spreads.

Amidst all these chatter, let us remember that a Korean conglomerate once made some of the best and innovative cameras of the era then.

Yes, that’s Samsung.

I remember when I was writing for the now-defunct CNET Asia and Samsung announced its first mirrorless camera, the NX10. Bear in mind that in 2010, mirrorless cameras had just taken off, with Olympus and Panasonic spearheading this category with their own Micro FourThirds cameras. It was only a matter of time before the big boys caught on to the trend of “small cameras, large sensor”. But what was unexpected was that it wasn’t a big player who came out with it first. It was actually Samsung.

With an APS-C-sized sensor, the NX10 was effectively the world’s first mirrorless camera with a sensor used in dSLRs.

Just a year earlier, in 2009, Samsung showcased the ST550, a compact camera with a dual LCD; one on the rear and a smaller one on the front so you can see and frame yourself before taking a selfie. Remember, in 2009, selfie wasn’t even that big a deal yet.

Samsung has never officially announced that it was out of the imaging circuit, but multiple news outlets have reported that the company has ceased sales and service in various countries. Draw your own conclusion on this.

So what happened to Samsung’s cameras? Some might argue that the Korean company predominantly makes home appliances such as fridges, washing machines and TVs, so people never took them seriously. But if you look at Sony and Panasonic, they fall into the same category as well.

No one knows, really. Samsung invested heavily in the marketing of its cameras, no less than the big boys, so there’s really no reason why the public wouldn’t be aware of their cameras.

One reason I can think of, is perhaps that, during the same period when Samsung was trying to build up its imaging reputation and portfolio, the company was also targeting the mobile industry aggressively, more so than the imaging side. Hence, the public were exposed to more of Samsung’s mobile phones and its cameras were somewhat sidelined in their minds.

Samsung, however, didn’t leave quietly. Its last mirrorless camera, the NX1, received rave reviews and accolades from professionals. I know of one photographer who owns 2 NX1s and several of the lenses, and he claims that the video quality is superb.

We’ll never know if Samsung will make a comeback in the imaging sphere. But here’s hoping that if, and when they do, they can shake up the industry again.

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Link to the original post: leonardgoh.com/post/163123213420/remembering-samsung