Digital Camera Sales

For the past couple of years, the digital camera market was on a downward slope in both sales and revenue generated. This could mainly be attributed to the rising use of smartphones and consequent drop in sales of compact cameras, but also partially to a saturation of the market in general. We reported multiple times on this topic, and in 2014 we've seen a partial rise in sales and revenue for the first time in years.

The most recent good news came from Olympus, and now it's Fujifilm and Sony who report that in the past fiscal year, both sales and earnings generated by their imaging businesses have risen. Again, it's pretty evident what this can be attributed to, namely both companies' orientation away from compact cameras and towards premium models, especially interchangeable-lens cameras.

ATC Strike

Today is August 3rd, the 33rd anniversary of the Air Traffic Controller strike of 1981. The greatest President of the 20th Century, Ronald Reagen, was forced to fire over 12,000 controllers when their union, PATCO, forced his hand. I was a controller then and saw many, many of my close friends fired.

Olympus Photo Contest

Calling photographers from all over the world! Submit your best photos to our global photo contest for the chance to win brand new Olympus gear. olym.ps/80H1O7

MSFT Loses Another One

In a decision that could have broad privacy implications, a federal court in New York Thursday ordered Microsoft to comply with a U.S. government demand for a customer's emails stored on a company server in Dublin, Ireland. The decision upholds an earlier magistrate court decision.

In an oral ruling, District Court Judge Loretta Preska rejected Microsoft's argument that a U.S search warrant does not extend beyond the country's borders.

"The production of that information is not an intrusion on the foreign sovereign," Courthouse News reported Judge Preska as saying. "It is incidental at best," Preska noted, adding that the magistrate court order was not an extra territorial application of U.S. law.

The judge however stayed the ruling to give Microsoft time to appeal.

Zorin OS 9 Educational

Zorin Group has announced the release of Zorin OS 9 Educational.

Zorin OS 9 Educational brings the latest and greatest software into the hands of students and teachers. Updated software and bug fixes ensure that your computer runs better than ever while improved hardware support and entirely new software ensures that you’re getting the best experience you can, no matter which computer you use it on.

All Zorin OS 9 editions are Long Term Support (LTS) releases which means that you’ll continue to get software updates and security fixes until 2019, making it the ideal choice for large-scale deployments. More information about Zorin OS 9 changes can be found here.

You can get Zorin OS 9 Educational from here.

We hope that you will enjoy using it.

Smartphone Market Still Surging

The global smartphone market shows no signs of slowing down, based on the latest pulse check conducted by IDC.

The market research firm estimated 295.3 million units shipped worldwide during the second quarter of 2014, representing annual growth of 23.1 percent.

On a quarterly basis, growth was only 2.6 percent, but IDC program director Ryan Reigh reflected in the report that the "record second quarter" points toward "plenty of opportunity and momentum."

China continues to be a focal point for all mobile OEMs — to the point where even homegrown Lenovo is facing increasing pressure but still hanging on with record shipments of its own.

In fact, Chinese mobile OEMs are putting more pressure on other hardware brands outside of China, especially in emerging markets as the featurephone continues to find itself on the way out amid the rise of cheaper smartphones.

"The offer of smartphones at a much better value than the top global players but with a stronger build quality and larger scale than local competitors gives these vendors a precarious competitive advantage," explained Melissa Chau, a senior research manager for on IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker team.

Our World Tour book review

By Chuck Hajdú

One World Tour is an interesting book to review. It is all about a really selfish photographer taking advantage of an opportunity. The author/photographer, Mario Dirks, makes it very clear that he applied for, and won, this job based on his desire to travel on somebody else’s dime. I have no problem with that at all!

The added benefit was someone else paid for him, and a companion, to travel the world (as defined by “someone” apparently at SIGMA) with free camera equipment.  Duh…. I’d take it too.

O’Reilly books describes the journey like this: Sigma sent Mario on a yearlong adventure to photograph the most beautiful places on earth. As Sigma's World Scout, he spent 50 weeks visiting a total of 77 cities, 48 countries, and 6 continents. He took 101 flights and traveled 2,500 miles on foot.

I can’t make a knowledgeable comment on the choice of equipment because I’ve used very few of their products. I have used a few of their lenses over the years but none of their dSLRs. The only Sigma lens I currently use regularly is a 50-200mm f/4-5.6 DC OS HSM zoom lens in Pentax mount. It is extremely well built and takes excellent pictures.

The photographic equipment provided to the author for this adventure included two Sigma SD 1 Merrill dSLRs and a selection of Sigma lenses. The 70–200mm 2.8, 24–70mm 2.8, 17–50mm 2.8, 85mm 1.4, 105mm macro 2.8, 10–20mm 3.5, 8–16mm 2, fisheye, 2x converter and 18–250mm travel lens. That’s quite an arsenal! He also carried all of the extra equipment any fully equipped photographer would have. I don’t know how much his equipment was worth but the MSRP of each camera body alone was over $3,000.00 at the time. Now down to a more reasonable $2,000. To me that’s a heck of a lot of money to pay for an APS-C camera, albeit one with a 46MP sensor.

Before I talk about the quality of the photographs I’d like to comment on the choice of locations in the “world”. I’m sure that everyone has a different opinion on what the “must see” sites on Earth and mine are definitely different than the ones chosen. Many of the locations were clearly picked because they are in travel brochures or are famous sites. My choices would have included quite a few places that are wonderfully scenic and deserve to be included in any book: the Maine coastline of the USA, the Greek islands, Budapest, Hungary, the south of France and rural Japan all come to mind instantly. None are included in this book.

The author includes pleasantly written commentaries about each of his stops and that helps the reader to understand the photographs better. His anecdotes are nicely done and make the book an enjoyable “trip”.

Many of the photographs are taken of commonly photographed places and don’t really seem to capture the spirit of a place. I was particularly disappointed in the photos of Washington, DC, Las Vegas and New York City. They were all common and uninspired. Perhaps that was because it was the start of the trip.

The pictures taken at the Grand Canyon were, however, spectacular! There are also quite a few excellent pictures included. Most of them, in my opinion, are of outdoor scenery. The author seems to have an excellent eye for capturing the beauty of nature.

www.oreilly.com/product/9781937538361.do#

MSRP for the eBook (PDF, MOBI and ePub) is $19.95, print is $44.95 and price for both is $49.95