The Photokina organization issued a press release to confirm the presence of over 600 companies at the show start in May 2020. They also shared the following statements from Canon, Panasonic and Sony

Panasonic manager Yosuke Yamane said:

“For many years, photokina has been the ideal platform for us to present our product innovations. The Imaging industry is facing big changes and challenges these days. In 2020, we will also be coming to Cologne with big expectations in the new photokina format and are looking forward to contributing with great innovations.

Canon manager Go Tokura said:

“As the imaging industry is at a significant turning point, we expect photokina to be a leading show of the worldwide photo and imaging industry. Canon is eager to introduce new products and concept products at photokina, thereby contributing to the industry’s success.”

Sony manager Yosuke Aoki said:

“Sony is very glad to be part of Photokina again next year. Photokina 2020 gives us the opportunity to present our latest innovations and to maintain a direct dialog with all Digital Imaging Lovers. Sony is looking forward to seeing you all in Cologne.” 

As a reminder: Leica, Nikon and Olympus will NOT be there.

via PetaPixel

Phase One has officially launched the new Capture One 20 software! Learn what’s new in Capture One 20 at this page: www.captureone.com/20.

Here is a quick roundup of the new features:

Noise Reduction
Improved noise reduction, start your editing with better quality images.

Basic Color Editor
Edit colors faster with a new Basic Color Editor that’s compact and easy to use. Click anywhere on the photo and drag to adjust the hue, saturation and lightness of any colors – or edit with intuitive sliders. For more control, the Advanced Color Editor and Skin Tone tools are as powerful as ever.

High Dynamic Range tool
Do more with contrast and tone thanks to the new High Dynamic Range tool. Recover photo – all in one tool.

Crop tool
Save up to 50% of your keystrokes when sorting images – enable “switch to next” to Easily visualize and transform your crops thanks to the visible handles in the new Crop tool. Instantly crop from the center, rotate the crop or lock the aspect ratio using modifier keys.

Image culling
automatically switch to the next photo when you rate or tag. Works with sets so you can easily review multiple images at the same time and manage big projects in a snap.

Scrolling tools
Work quickly and intuitively – scroll through all your tools with ease and pin your favorites to the top for instant access.

Copy Layers and Masks
Easily copy specific layers between photos – including photos with different formats and sizes – without replacing the existing layers on the destination photo.

Support for DNG files
Get the most accurate colors and sharpest details out of any camera model, drone or smartphone capturing DNG files.

Interface
Make a big difference to your workflow with small updates. We’ve added text to the icons so you can find tools instantly, made Masking tools easy to access and simplified the adjustments clipboard. Plus, get higher resolution thumbnails and adjust the viewer background color with one click

Keyboard shortcuts:
Edit faster with new default shortcuts for zoom, full screen, Focus Mask and much more. Plus, customize the shortcuts further to create your ideal workflow.

Learning material:

Getting started:
• Interface explained: https://youtu.be/yBew_NPfdmk
• Creating a catalog: https://youtu.be/KFwZmgqPhGo
• Essential adjustments: https://youtu.be/ta8O0OtoX-g
• Exporting photos: https://youtu.be/2CKbxnGkTWQ
• Capture One Express – explained in 7 Minutes: https://youtu.be/styRn2108AE
Editing in Capture One:
• Black & white edit: https://youtu.be/ZnBVKCouGcw
• Landscape edit: https://youtu.be/RULCAAsMcME
• Portrait edit: https://youtu.be/WlTlRNvoOBw
Tutorials:
• Color Editor: https://youtu.be/UxXFrphKFBo

New cameras supported:
• Olympus E-M5 III
• Canon EOS M6 II
• Canon EOS 90D
• Leica V-LUX 5
• Pentax K-1 II
• Ricoh GR III
• Panasonic Lumix DC-S1H
• Nikon Z 50
• Generic GoPro RAW support

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Get the new Capture one 20 here!

I shall wake you up once this downtrend stops…but it won’t be for another year I guess :(

Source: Cipa

No Nikon made it into the top of the list at National Geographic .

BCNranking reported the full year Japan sales stats of the tree big companies. And it’s a clear defeat fro Canon and Nikon!

The graph on top shows that Sony managed to increase unit and value sales in all areas. Canon and Nikon reported losses in all segments with the one single exception of the Canon FF unit sales that went up 6% (but value sales were down 7%).

Sony sales increased in all areas:

– Overall: 19% unit and +32% in value sales
– APSC: 19% unit and +44% in value sales
– Full Frame: 18% unit and +17% in value sales

As a result this year Sony managed to surpass Canon in the FF market:

What’s also interesting to see is this graph that shows how FF is still a small market compared to non-FF (APS-C and MFT) cameras:

Would have been nice to se what other companies like Olympus-Pentax-Panasonic are doing but BCN shared no data on them.

Well, if you ever hope to get the famous Panasonic-Fuji organic sensor that was announced years ago…well this is going to be a bad news :(

Panasonic announced it will sells it’s sensor business! Here is the press text from Reuters:

TOKYO, Nov 28 (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp said it would sell its loss-making semiconductor unit to Taiwan’s Nuvoton Technology Corp for $250 million as the Japanese electronics giant struggles to lift its profit amid a lack of growth drivers.

The sale is part of Panasonic’s plans to cut fixed costs by 100 billion yen ($920 million) by the year ending in March 2022 by consolidating production sites and overhauling loss-making businesses.

Panasonic has already divested most of its chip business as it lost to more nimble Korean and Taiwanese rivals, and has shut down or shifted its manufacturing facilities to its joint venture (JV) with Israel’s Tower Semiconductor.

Its semiconductor unit currently focuses on designing power-management chips and sensors for smartphones, cars and security cameras. It sold part of the power management chip business to Japan’s Rohm Co this month.

The latest deal includes the sale of the entire JV, which is owned 51% by Tower and 49% by the Panasonic chip unit. The JV operates three Japanese chipmaking facilities.

Panasonic said the sale will not have any significant impact on its earnings. The value of the deal that Panasonic has announced excludes the amount Nuvoton would pay for Tower Semiconductor’s stake in the joint venture.

Nuvoton said in a statement the all-cash transaction was expected to close by June 2020, and would “increase Nuvoton’s presence in the global semiconductor industry through greater scale and volume of semiconductor solutions”.

Nuvoton, which was spun off from Winbond Electronics Corp in 2008, supplies chips for electronic devices including computers and audio products.

Panasonic has turned its focus away from low-margin consumer electronics and bet on businesses that sell to automakers, as well as to corporations such as factory-owners and firms that automate processes.

But the shift has failed to lift profit at a time when the U.S.-China trade war has hit industrial purchases and output, and the global car market is contracting. (Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki in Tokyo; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei, Neha Malara in Bengaluru; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

it may be that Panasonic will still keep developing their organic sensor tech but now they will probably have to ask Sony or Samyang to eventually produce them…

It’s available for nearly all different mirrorlesss systems: