Archive for February 20th, 2006
Digital camera users snap up Kodaks
Florida Today
Maker leads U.S. market for second year
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Eastman Kodak Co. captured the No. 1 slot in the ballooning U.S. digital-camera market for a second straight year, extending its lead over Japanese rivals Canon Inc. and Sony Corp.
Domestic sales of digital cameras surged 21 percent to 28 million in 2005, and Kodak’s market share leaped to 24.9 percent from 21 percent in 2004, according to data released Thursday by IDC, a research firm in Framingham, Mass.
Kodak shipped 7.05 million digital cameras to U.S. retailers last year, 43 percent more than in 2004. Tokyo-based Canon moved ahead of Sony into the No. 2 spot with 5 million shipments, a 16 percent increase, but its market slice still shrunk from 18.3 percent to 17.7 percent, IDC said.
Japan’s Sony, which lost its front-runner position in the U.S. market to Kodak for the first time in 2004, was third in 2005. It shipped 4.78 million cameras, up 10 percent from 2004, but its share of the U.S. market slumped to 16.9 percent from 18.5 percent, IDC said.
Canon benefited from robust sales of digital single-lens reflex cameras, IDC said, and Kodak is increasingly shifting its focus toward boosting sales of higher-end models.
Digital cameras began outselling film cameras in the United States in 2003. And in 2005, Kodak generated more annual sales from digital imaging than from film-based photography for the first time.
In the global digital-camera race, Kodak was third in 2004 with an 11.8 percent market share to Canon’s 17.1 percent and Sony’s 16.7 percent. While the 2005 rankings are still a few weeks away, “we don’t expect any big changes” but Kodak will likely make up some ground, said IDC analyst Christopher Chute.
February 20th, 2006
Instructors reveal their studios’ secrets
Part-time professors feel the full-time attention of the Nash Gallery’s newest exhibit
By Katie Wilber
Minnesota Daily
n a converted dance studio on the second floor of a downtown building, Jeff Millikan creates photography.
He fills his studio with an enormous camera, sizable photos of beeswax and a darkroom.
In a very different space, Millikan teaches photography.
As an adjunct faculty member of the University’s art department Millikan splits his time between his studio and the University’s art classrooms. His work, in and out of the University, makes his contributions to each space more meaningful.
He’ll reveal a bit of what goes on in his work space in “Diverse Connections,†an exhibit that features almost 40 adjunct faculty members like him.
The exhibit is self-curated, so each artist decides what works he or she wants to expose. The result: an impressive hodgepodge of paintings, photography, prints, book art, ceramic works, sculptures and electronic art.
“This is a special exhibit,†said Nicholas Shank, director of Katherine E. Nash Gallery. “We had one a while back, but we thought it was time to do it again.â€
Every department hires adjunct faculty members to teach courses. The partnership gives students the chance to work with community artists and provides the department of art instructors.
Millikan has taught photography as an adjunct faculty member for 25 years. Although he’s a photographer, he steers away from digital cameras.
His work focuses on the relationship people have with nature and the environment. One of his projects centers on the structures bees make in honeycombs. He carves into their workmanship. The bees try to fix those carvings, and he tries to direct them.
“It’s starting to seem kind of hopeless, though,†he said.
But the works are incredibly crisp and detailed. Millikan works with a camera about the size of a dorm room. The floors and walls and desks of his studio are covered with photographs of beeswax in various stages of development. The photographs are large, some as big as 30-inches by 30-inches. The bees are just as big.
Over in a corner a series of four shadow-box style photographs have birds or butterflies perched on baseball gloves. It looks like the bird and the glove are inside the box, but a second, closer glance reveals that it’s only a photograph.
James Burpee is a painter and works with oils on canvas. He is creating a series that celebrates nature. He takes photographs and uses Photoshop to crop the photos and adjust the colors.
I like to take the anomalies and surprises of nature and meld that with what a painting should look like,†he said.
Burpee taught at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for almost 30 years but applied at the University after being “downsized.†He’s been here since 1997 and teaches one or two classes a semester.
“I love teaching, and they just let me come in and do my job,†he said. “I teach at all different levels, and it’s great.â€
Millikan and Burpee are only part of the vast array of local artists who share their talents with University students. “Diverse Connections†gives them the opportunity to showcase their own work rather than grading others’. Perhaps now their students will grade them.
February 20th, 2006
Photo finish in the digital world
By MELISSA LEE/For the Lincoln Journal Star
Not too long ago, customers would walk into Rockbrook Camera & Video and ask sales associate John Keller whether it was possible to develop film without a darkroom.
Today, the question takes a new form:Â Can digital film be developed and printed without a computer?
The answer is still yes, but to Keller, this new query is a sign of an evolving photographic market.
“Film photography is finding a smaller and smaller niche,†he said. “Everything’s better and quicker with digital.â€
Customers clearly agree. Drawn by the convenience and speed that digital cameras offer, they’ve seen to it that films and darkrooms are nearly things of the past.
For many photography businesses, it’s digital or bust.
Photo giant Kodak announced in 2004 that it would stop selling its film camera; Nikon has followed a similar path.
In Lincoln, too, business owners say they’ve had to adapt to digital or risk closing their doors as the film market dwindles.
“If you don’t embrace digital, you’re going to go out of business,†said Jeff White, general manager of The Photo Shoppe, which has locations at 301 N. Cotner Blvd. and 40th Street and Old Cheney Road.
White estimates he develops only half as much film as he did just a few years ago. Customers now demand digital prints, a demand he’s accommodated to keep thriving.
At Rockbrook, 70th Street and Pioneers Blvd., digital cameras now outsell film cameras by a 300-to-1 margin, Keller said.
Rockbrook still offers professional film developing and printing but in the decade the store has been in Lincoln, it’s had to adapt to digital to stay afloat, he said.
Now, the business even offers a digital photography class, taught by Keller, that offers customers the chance to learn how to use high-tech digital equipment.
“We’re still successful,†he said.
Not all photography businesses have been so fortunate. Harman’s Camera Center, for example, closed in January 2004 after 30 years selling and processing film in downtown Lincoln.
At the time, owner Jim Harman blamed the closing partially on the rapid rise of digital photography.
It’s a trend that hasn’t always been friendly, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln photojournalism lecturer Luis Peon-Casanova.
“We’re seeing a brutal change of technology,†he said. “It’s an amazing shift. Companies are re-inventing the way they do business.â€
Today’s customers seek instant gratification, Peon-Casanova said, and digital photography offers them just that: They can shoot and re-shoot until they like the results, then get their prints the same afternoon.
In the past couple of years, the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at UNL has switched almost entirely to digital, Peon-Casanova said, and photographers at the student newspaper no longer need a darkroom.
Art students, though, continue to work with film.
White worries they may have increasing difficulty finding suppliers and developers.
“There’s so much competition. The small labs are closing up,†he said. “Digital has made the difference.â€
February 20th, 2006
Powering up digital cameras
Los Angeles Times
I would like to take issue with a reader’s comment recommending against lithium-ion batteries for digital cameras ["Quit Fixating on Those Megapixels," Letters, Feb. 5]. In my experience, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have the highest shooting capacity and longest shelf-life when your camera is in the closet.
That said, the various batteries used in digital cameras are all satisfactory. Proprietary batteries suffer from the disadvantage that they can’t be replaced if they run out while you are shooting, so always have two. I have had no problem recharging batteries on trips; almost all chargers are universal and work at all voltages; all you need to use them in foreign countries is a cheap adapter plug.
February 20th, 2006