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This is the third in a series of interviews I conducted while in Japan in early March of this year, a trip I barely managed to sneak in before the Coronavirus travel restrictions. Between the COVID situation, the sale of IR, and a number of other lingering content projects I needed to finish, I'm only just now managing...
This is another in a series of interviews I conducted in Japan in early March of this year, a trip I managed to sneak in just before the Coronavirus travel restrictions. Between the COVID situation, the sale of IR, and a number of other lingering content projects I needed to finish, I'm only just now managing to post it....
Any photographer with an internet connection will be aware of the coming sale of Olympus' Imaging Division to private equity firm Japan Industrial Partners. There's been rampant speculation as to what this might mean for the Olympus line of cameras and lenses, and there is still quite a bit of uncertainty, even after the...
I visited Olympus' corporate headquarters on my last trip to Japan, back in early March 2020. It's taken me until now to finally publish my interview with Masanori Sako (Senior Manager of Global Marketing Strategy for Olympus Imaging Division) that I recorded back then. The sale of the Imaging Resource business and...
Last week, Panasonic figuratively blew the doors off its competition in the pro video space with the introduction of the Lumix S1H. It offers truly high-end video capability for pro videographers and cinematographers at an unprecedented price point. (US$4,000 is still a chunk of change, but there isn't anything on...
While the A7R IV is still be reviewed by our team, we decided to take some of the internet's loudest complaints about the new camera directly to Sony for an exclusive on-camera interview. Sony's latest full-frame mirrorless camera has many new features over its predecessor, but some critics have complained many...
As I usually do, I stayed on in Japan after this year's CP+ trade show, and while there had a chance to visit Olympus' research and development headquarters in Hachioji where I sat down with some of their engineers. My interview at CP+ itself with Shigemi Sugimoto-san, Head of Olympus' Imaging Business Unit, was...
Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with executives from Ricoh -- the company behind the Pentax brand -- alongside the CP+ tradeshow in Tokyo. Speaking on behalf of both brands were Ricoh Co. Ltd.'s Takashi Arai of the Product Planning Department, Product Development Center, Smart Vision Business Group; Hiroki...
Recently, I had the chance to speak with Sigma's CEO, Kazuto Yamaki, alongside the CP+ tradeshow in Tokyo. Yamaki-san is always a favorite interview subject of mine, because as the head of a family-owned company, its his hand on the tiller, and so his decisions that dictate the company's future products and...
We had a chance recently to speak with four top executives from Canon's Image Communication Business Operations group, the division responsible for all of Canon's photographic products. I probed into Canon's focus on photography in the face of its expansion into many related businesses. Does their significant...
I had a chance to sit down with a group of top Nikon executives and engineering managers last month, as part of my yearly pilgrimage to Yokohama, Japan for the annual CP+ trade show. We talked about lens design and how it's impacted by the new Z-mount -- we're frankly amazed by their new 14-30mm f/4 lens, both for...
I had a chance to sit down with Kenji Tanaka from Sony, as part of my usual round of interviews at this year's CP+ 2019 trade show in Yokohama. Tanaka-san is the Senior General Manager of Business Unit 1 of Sony Imaging Products and Solutions Inc's Digital Imaging Group. That's a typically Japanese-business-card...
I had a chance to sit down with two top Fujifilm execs (Toshihisa Iida and Makoto Oishi) at the recent CP+ 2019 show in Yokohama, Japan, to ask them about everything from the state of the industry to my usual tech-geeky questions about underlying technology. I've been wanting to write about some of the details of...
A lot of readers (and our own staff!) have been wondering what's up with Olympus' E-M5 line, given how long it's been since its last update. We got to talk with senior Olympus management at the CP+ 2019 show in Yokohama, Japan yesterday, and not only learned the likely reason for this, but also that the company is ...
We had a chance to sit down with some high-level Canon engineering execs at the recent launch event for the EOS RP, to answer our usual round of technical questions about the product. I was particularly interested to see this model, after having learned that an entry-level EOS-R would be the next model to be...
As we've described elsewhere, Olympus held a limited press-only briefing and shooting experience with its flagship Olympus E-M1X back in early December, subject to a non-disclosure agreement. During that time, we were able to ask questions of senior technical staff, who attended from Olympus' Hachioji R&D...
Ever since Canon launched their EOS R series of camera and lenses with the eponymous EOS R body back in September of 2018, speculation about the line has run rampant. Why did they introduce the series with what's obviously positioned as a mid-level model, while the initial lenses were all clearly higher-end designs?...
When Panasonic announced the development of their full-frame mirrorless system at Photokina 2018 back in September, it left a lot of people wondering what that meant for the future of the Micro Four Thirds system, with understandable cause for alarm.
The Micro Four Thirds system was jointly developed by Olympus and...
I had a chance to catch up with Sony's Kenji Tanaka at the Photokina trade show in Cologne, Germany back at the end of September, and have finally managed to get the transcript of that interview into shape to share with our readers. (Huge thanks to IR Senior Reviews Editor Mike Tomkins, for his help with the...
The last 6 weeks or so have been pretty hectic, given the blistering pace of new-product announcements and the Photokina show, so I'm only now managing to share an in-depth conversation I had with Kazuto (Kevin) Ogawa, named as Canon USA's President and COO back in April. I spoke with him on the day of Canon's...