Establishment of the Optical Engineering Division, aggregating all optical engineering functions to create new value

Nikon Corporation (Kazuo Ushida, President, Tokyo) announced today that the establishment of the Optical Engineering Division on April 1, 2017. Aggregating all the optical engineering functions distributed in each division is intended to create a synergistic effect and enhance multifunctionality, as well as enabling flexible deployment of resources to the area as necessary so as not to miss any business opportunity.

This new Optical Engineering Division is an organization that aggregates lens, mechanical and system engineering functions related to optical equipment and optical solutions. Superior technology and knowledge with respect to optical engineering maintained in each division will now be accumulated and evolved in the Optical Engineering Division to develop optical products that create new value.

In our restructuring plan, announced in November 2016, we decided to restructure our group companies to enhance manufacturing technology of optical components that are our core competence and a differentiator from our competitors. All the functions related to the manufacturing technology of optical components, which were previously owned by Nikon Corporation and our group companies, have now been brought together at Tochigi Nikon Corporation, our consolidated subsidiary, which started operation on February 1, 2017.

In addition to these advances for manufacturing technology of optical components, the newly established Optical Engineering Division will further improve our greatest strength, optical technology, by aggregating optical engineering functions, thereby helping to maximize our products' competitiveness.

Via http://www.sony-semicon.co.jp/products_en/news/detail/170301.pdf

ANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ambarella, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMBA) a leading developer of low-power, HD and Ultra HD video processing semiconductors, today introduced the S5L and S5LM SoC (System on Chip) families to enable a new generation of 4K IP security cameras. The S5L is designed for professional IP cameras and includes 4K High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing, multi-streaming, on-chip lens distortion correction, and dual video inputs. The S5LM targets the home monitoring market, including battery-powered IP cameras and video doorbell cameras, and uses a single 16-bit DDR memory for low-power operation. Both chip families feature a quad-core ARM® Cortex®-A53 for advanced analytics, and are fabricated in low-power 14nm process.

“S5L and S5LM address the full range of IP security cameras, spanning high-end professional models down to consumer home monitoring cameras,” said Chris Day, VP of marketing and business development at Ambarella. “With full 4Kp30 SmartHEVCTM video, HDR, advanced low light processing and a quad-core CPU, the S5L is an ideal IP Camera platform as the market moves from HD to 4K resolution. Additionally, the S5LM’s low power, advanced video analytics and excellent low light processing will enable doorbell and battery-powered cameras with the industry’s highest image quality and longest battery life.”

Both SoC families support Ambarella’s SmartHEVCTM (H.265) and SmartAVCTM (H.264) algorithms to deliver 4Kp30 video with bitrates as low as 512 Kbits/second, while maintaining excellent video quality. The HDR processing at full 4K resolution provides detailed video images even under high-contrast lighting conditions. Powerful quad-core ARM® Cortex®-A53 CPUs support smart analytics, including object and person detection, to reduce false alarms and maximize battery life in battery-powered designs. The S5L’s on-chip lens distortion correction engine supports wide angle lenses up to 180-degrees, while the dual independent video inputs facilitate seamless dual-lens designs. Both SoC families achieve extremely low-power operation and can deliver 4Kp30 video at under 1.5 Watts or full HD at under 0.5 Watts, making them ideal for small form factor and battery-powered designs.

Ambarella will demonstrate the new SoCs at a private, invitation-only event held during the ISC West Show in Las Vegas, April 5 – 8, 2017.

Datacolor today announced that they will be partnering with Adobe to offer customers who purchase a qualifying Spyder product beginning November 14, 2016, the opportunity to receive a ninety-day Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan trial.

In conjunction with Adobe’s Affinity Partner program, Datacolor customers will receive promotion redemption instructions upon purchase and activation of qualifying Spyder color calibration tools, which include Datacolor’s Spyder5EXPRESS, Spyder5PRO, Spyder5ELITE, Spyder5STUDIO, Spyder5CAPTURE PRO and SpyderPRINT, as well as with other promotional opportunities in the future.

Designed with photographers and imaging professionals of all skill levels in mind, Datacolor Spyder calibration tools provide customers with the essential tools needed to manage color from image capture to print. Through this special ninety-day trial offer, Datacolor is able to improve the post production experience by providing their customers with an overall enhanced photography workflow.

Adobe tools available to Datacolor customers with this Creative Cloud Photography plan trial include:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC and Adobe Photoshop CC, the world’s best photo editing tools
• Mobile applications made readily available on your tablet, iPhone and Android phone to organize, edit and share on-the-go
• Storytelling apps Adobe Spark and Adobe Portfolio, expertly designed to share content on social networks or create a custom website to present photography
• Overarching Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan training and updates

“We are always looking for innovative ways to provide our customers with the optimal photography workflow, from capture to print.” said Stefan Zrenner, Director Global Sales & Marketing Imaging, Datacolor. “We’re excited to announce this partner promotion with Adobe, as the seamless integration between our industry-leading color calibration products and Adobe’s world-renowned photography tools will allow our customers to exercise total creative control over their images.”

For more information about this offer visit http://datacolor.com/adobe-pr

If you ask me - better get X-Rite tools, they are not so greedy.

( I have my GH4 workhorse and all my lenses so this isnt life or death - just wondering why the delay and excited to start unleashing the Gh5 on commercial work)

"Panasonic will make further restructuring for six unprofitable projects. In addition to considering the liquid crystal panel production line and the sale of shares of the semiconductor business company in the fiscal year ending March 2018, we will reduce the number of staff by dismantling three business divisions such as digital cameras this spring.

Three business divisions handling digital cameras, telephone exchanges and optical discs are demolished. Reduce the number of staff by transferring it under the umbrella of other business divisions to reduce the scale of the project."

This is an effort to reduce personal and costs. What’s also interesting is that they plan to quite from the semiconductor business.

The original article here: http://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXLASDC23H1G_T20C17A3MM8000/

Also check useful info below.

Miguel

The company will on April 1st start collecting sales in the states of Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, and New Mexico, according to a report from CNBC. That means Amazon will collect sales tax in all 45 states that require it, ending one of the company’s more drawn-out regulatory fights that the e-commerce giant had resigned itself to losing years ago.

Given the Helium 8K’s very impressive noise scores, we wanted to see if it is applying noise reduction before outputting the “RAW” files. The first kind we tested for is the most typical, spatial noise reduction. This is usually a sophisticated form of smoothing areas that appear to have noise, while retaining edges to minimize the loss of sharpness. This approach typically results in a spreading out of the frequency response of the image, and therefore can be detected through careful analysis.
Just as when we tested the RED Dragon for spatial noise reduction, we didn’t see any evidence of this type of smoothing, as there is no correlation between neighbor pixels.

The high frame rate possible with RED’s sensors, including the Helium, mean that they are especially well-suited for noise reduction based on sampling multiple sequential image frames. This technique, called temporal noise reduction (TNR), is most commonly used in video, since there are many successive frames to work with . However, temporal correlations across a time axis are not relevant when analyzing the image quality of a single RAW image, as they do not impact any RAW converters.

Whatever noise reduction system RED employs creating the RAW images from the Helium sensor, its presence means that we aren’t measuring just the RED sensor, so its results aren’t directly comparable to those from camera sensors we have tested from other vendors, whose RAW results come straight from the sensor with no prior noise reduction processing.

Some people do not like to read things before blaming someone :-)

Of course DXOMark carefully avoided mention of known fact that some companies also do noise processing of raw files.

• High-Quality 360° Viewing: Upload 360° videos in up to 8K resolution; online and offline playback up to 4K
• Powerful and Customizable Settings: Add metadata for both monoscopic and stereoscopic video, customize player embed settings, capture email leads, and insert calls-to-action directly in the embedded player. Set field of view, pitch, yaw (essentially latitude/longitude) and choose the exact point in space where the video begins. A compass in the player orients viewers and encourage interaction
• 360 Video School: Educational resources and tutorials on 360° cameras, pre-production, shooting, and editing.
• Open Marketplace to Sell 360° Videos: Sell your 360° content direct-to-audience worldwide through Vimeo On Demand (Vimeo PRO and Business members). Select rent, buy, or subscription options, set price and distribution region, and take home 90% of the revenue after transaction costs
• Compatible with desktop, mobile, and VR headsets: iOS and Android support. Also compatible with the following VR headsets: Zeiss VR One, Samsung Gear VR, and Google Daydream, with support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive coming soon.

Price via Nikonrumors

Increase starts since February.

According to my own sources camera companies can add another increase later. Especially considering that EU can go to parity with dollar.

Optical solution is absolutely same as used in slip compacts with 3x-5x zooms.

http://www.cpplus.jp/en/

Make sure to post here if you have plant to attend!

This newly developed sensor with DRAM delivers fast data readout speeds, making it possible to capture still images of fast-moving subjects with minimal focal plane distortion as well as super slow motion movies at up to 1,000 frames per second (approximately 8x faster than conventional products in full HD (1920x1080 pixels).

The high-speed readout capability makes it possible to record up to 1,000 fps (approximately 8x faster than conventional products*3) super slow motion movies in full HD (1920x1080 pixels). Normal speed shooting data and maximum 1,000 fps high-speed shooting data stored on the DRAM are exported from the image sensor for signal processing on an external image signal processor (hereafter referred to as ISP), making it possible to record vibrant movies on a smartphone that seamlessly combine normal speed movies and super slow motion movies. To ensure that users don't miss split-second moments in super slow motion movies, it is possible to adjust settings so that sudden subject movement is automatically detected and high-speed shooting begins. Because high-speed shooting data is stored on the DRAM and output at a normal speed, a conventional ISP can be used

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201702/17-013E/index.html

Picture Height: the measure of viewing distance

When the standard definition television system was first launched in North America, engineers assumed that viewers would want to sit at a sufficient distance for the individual scanning lines that comprise the picture to blend into a visually seamless whole. In the days before pixels, these engineers figured on 60 horizontal scanning lines per degree. From this, they derived a standard viewing distance of 7.15 Picture Heights (PH). Studies by Bernard Lechner of RCA in the US and Richard Jackson at Philips Laboratories in Europe determined that actual viewing distance for standard definition TV is around 10 feet (3 meters).8 The screen size that corresponds to 7.15 Picture Heights at this distance is 28 inches diagonal. This roughly matches the larger CRT sizes of the standard definition era.

Movie theater design has been influenced by similar calculations. In the 1940s, the Society of Motion-Picture Engineers (SMPE) made a recommendation called the 2-6 rule.9 It proposed that theater auditoriums be designed with the nearest seats at two times picture width and the farthest at six times picture width. Using the Academy Aperture screen shape of the time, that translates to a minimum viewing distance of 2.67 Picture Heights.

When high definition television was first proposed, the design goal was to equal the performance of movie theaters. This dictated an increase in TV resolution sufficient to create the illusion of a seamless image at roughly three Picture Heights.10 (The actual figure is 3.16 Picture Heights.) This similarity to the 2.67 specification of old movie theaters is not a coincidence. It is by design.

Since the 1940s, just about everything in movie theaters has been transformed, including auditorium design. Through the 1990s, new theater designs moved to progressively wider-angle projection lenses, which suggests that seats became progressively closer to the screen.11 By 1994, viewing distances that had once been considered the minimum were now close to the maximum. The renamed Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) issued Engineering Guideline EG 18- 1994, which recommended that the screen subtend a minimum horizontal angle of 30 degrees for viewers in the back of the room. This corresponds to a distance of 3.45 Picture Heights (using the5 contemporary picture proportions of 1.85:1). EG 18-1994 proved to be a snapshot of best practices at the end of the era of sloped-floor auditoriums.

It was withdrawn in 2003 as inappropriate for the new era of stadium seating auditoriums, which bring the audience even closer. In stadium seating, the back of the house is about three Picture Heights from the screen while the closest seats are less than one Picture Height away.

From Sony - Does 4K really make a difference? http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/static/files/mkt/digitalcinema/Why_4K_WP_Final.pdf

http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/

Here's a short video that shows some interesting views of this data:

Full frame basically offers more choice or options which may or may not lead to better image quality or other benefits. It is necessary to look at each aspect in somewhat more detail. Therefore, I compiled a LumoLabs white paper listing the true reasons in favour of a full frame or APS-C camera:

• http://www.falklumo.com/lumolabs/articles/equivalence/ff.html
• http://falklumo.blogspot.de/2012/02/camera-equivalence.html

Read the blog post at: http://falklumo.blogspot.com/2012/06/true-reasons-full-frame.html

Falk is one of the smartest guys I know. :-)

Well, seems that Google just claimed to have invented such technology.

But don't let the images fool you: "Deep neural networks" have already been shown to be easily fooled when classifying pictures, and I dont's see why a tool like the great Ostrichinator could not just as easily fool Google's "guessing zoom" to derive the picture of some arbitrary person from just any seemingly innocent 8x8 pixel sample.

“As of January 1, 2017, any product that is not imported by the Sigma Corporation of America or purchased from an unauthorized Sigma USA Dealer will not be serviced under warranty regardless of the service required,” writes Sigma. “The Sigma Corporation of America Service department will service these products for a minimum $250 charge in addition to the required parts and labor charges at the owner’s expense.”

Controls of price levels becoming tighter and tighter. In 2016 we already saw major brands declaring their own products sold cheaper compared to their dealer as counterfeit.

With quite horrible picture, shame for such company.

Microsoft is doing all according to plans.

This year all cheap devices (read - tablets, cheap notes) start shipping with preinstalled Windows 10 Cloud.

You can see main feature - Microsoft will protect you from horrible virus full applications that are not sold in Windows Store.

ARRI publishes an explanation of image sensor technology used in its cameras:

"Although the science behind the breakthrough performance of ALEXA's custom designed CMOS sensor is complex, the use of large photosites and a Dual Gain Architecture are its two main principles.

By employing unusually large photosites (in today's world of tiny cell phone sensors), ALEXA's sensor exhibits high dynamic range, high sensitivity and low crosstalk. The larger a photosite is, the more light it can capture and the lower the noise.

The Dual Gain Architecture simultaneously provides two separate read-out paths from each pixel with different amplification. The first path contains the regular, highly amplified signal. The second path contains a signal with lower amplification, to capture the information that is clipped in the first path. Both paths feed into the camera's A/D converters, delivering a 14 bit image for each path. These images are then combined into a single 16 bit high dynamic range image."

FY2016 imaging results

FY2017 predictions

DSLRs sales in units will drop around 7%, compacts around 13%. Note that usually reality is much worse.
main idea is to compensate it all with price hikes.

Via http://www.canon.com/ir/conference/pdf/conf2016e.pdf

LG and Sony, the last two major TV makers to support the 3D feature in their TVs, will stop doing so in 2017. None of their sets, not even high-end models such as their new OLED TVs, will be able to show 3D movies and TV shows

Sharp, TCL and Hisense, also did not announce any 3D-capable TVs at CES 2017.

I have only one word for them. Motherfuckers.

Note that passive 3D fall is closely related to HDR, as polarization film take off brightness and also add costs. At same time quantum dots and HDR are very cheap to make.

For all active 3D television with removal of 3D Samsung changed panels to cheaper and slower ones, adding good profit.

Remember to buy 4K OLED with passive 3D, looks amazing.

Parrot is therefore envisaging a plan that could reduce its workforce by around 290 people out of a total of 840 staff currently working in the Group’s Drone activities. These reductions would concern employees both in France and internationally.

Via https://corporate.parrot.com/en/pressrelease/preliminaryresultsforthefourthquarterof2016-reorganizationofconsumerdroneoperations