News › Q&a
I’m writing the first draft of this article about a week after the CP+ 2023 show in Yokohama Japan, sitting happily in a hotel room in northern Japan (Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima prefecture). Aizu is a small city surrounded by mountains, with cheaper hotels and fewer distractions than Tokyo has to offer; I chose to spend...
There’s been a lot of activity in Sony’s lens lineup lately, with the second generation of some of their classic designs appearing recently, and some entirely new models as well. Just before the start of CP+, they announced a frankly amazing update to the well-regarded 50mm F1.4 Zeiss first released 6 years ago.
...
I’m writing this a few days after the CP+ 2023 photo trade show in Yokohama, Japan, sitting happily in a hotel room in northern Japan (Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima prefecture). It’s just the first of eight interviews with photo-industry executives that I’ll be publishing in the coming weeks. This piece should go up shortly...
It's that time of year again, and for the first time since 2019, there'll be a CP+ show in Yokohama, Japan, starting February 23!
I'll be attending the show for IR, with my main focus being my usual in-depth interviews with industry executives and engineers.
Do you have any questions you'd like me to ask the...
This is the final article about the series of interviews I had with photo-industry leaders on my last trip to Japan in July of 2022, and I've saved the best for last :-)
SIGMA's Kazuto Yamaki is my favorite interview subject because of his unique position and unusual candor. As the CEO of SIGMA, he doesn't have to...
When I interviewed Fujifilm executives at their headquarters in Omiya, Japan back in July, there were a number of upcoming announcements that they couldn’t yet talk about, and they suggested I drop by their X-Summit/Fujikina event in New York City in early September.
I did just that, and it turned out to be a...
This is now the fifth in my series of articles about meetings and interviews I had with photo industry executives during my last visit to Japan in late July of 2022. A myriad of distractions have contributed to my taking a very long time to get them all out (I still have one more interview and a couple of other...
Regular readers will by now know that I finally managed to return to Japan in late July of this year (2022 for those reading this in the future), after a 2 1/2-year absence due to the COVID crisis. It was great to catch up with so many people I know in the photo industry, not to mention getting to once again visit the...
This is the second article I’m posting from meetings I had with photo-business executives and engineers when I was in Japan the second half of July, 2022. (My previous article covered my interview with Fujifilm in Omiya, Japan.) I was so happy to be able to return to Japan after a more than 2½ year forced absence due to...
After a nearly 2½ year absence due to COVID lockdowns, I finally got to return to Japan in late July of 2022. It was great to be back and reconnect with so many people I know in the photo business over there. One of the first meetings I had was with Fujifilm, at their Omiya headquarters north of Tokyo.
I had a...
A few months back, Panasonic unveiled not one but two successor models to the popular Lumix GH5 mirrorless camera, the GH5 Mark II and the GH6. The GH5 Mark II shares a lot of similarities with the original model, both on the outside and under the hood, including using the same 20.3-megapixel, albeit with some tweaks...
This is the fourth and final interview of a series I conducted while in Japan in early March of this year, a trip I barely managed to sneak in before the Coronavirus travel restrictions. (Here are links for my other interviews with Olympus, Panasonic and Fujifilm from that trip.) Between the COVID situation, the sale of...
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....
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...
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...