“The systems we used for photo storage a few years ago did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time even though they were immediately removed from the site,” Facebook spokesperson Frederic Wolens told Ars via e-mail.
[...] “We have been working hard to move our photo storage to newer systems which do ensure photos are fully deleted within 45 days of the removal request being received,” Wolens said. “This process is nearly complete and there is only a very small percentage of user photos still on the old system awaiting migration, the URL you provided was stored on this legacy system. We expect this process to be completed within the next month or two, at which point we will verify the migration is complete and we will disable all the old content.”
In our tests, a Flickr photo was removed from the servers about 10 minutes after it was “deleted” on the service. In other news, Facebook has rolled out a new lightbox that displays photos at a whopping 960×720 (see screenshot above), and the Facebook iPhone app that we saw leaked screenshots of is apparently dead in the water.
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle produced this interesting segment on photographer Yuri Arcurs and how he turned his microstock photography into a million-dollar photography empire. Here’s a mind-boggling statistic: on average, Arcurs sells one of his images every 8 seconds.
Canon’s president Tsuneji Uchida announced today that he will be stepping down to pave way for a younger management team as the company fell short of expectations for the second straight year. Canon’s stock price dropped 19% last year while Nikon’s grew 4%. The total number of Canon cameras sold dropped 4% last year, likely a result of both a shift away from consumer cameras and the shortages caused by Japan’s earthquake and Thailand’s flooding. However, DSLR sales are going strong:
Although Canon was affected by supply shortages caused by the quake and flooding, efforts to ramp up production and boost sales in response to robust demand resulted in significant increases in year-on-year sales volumes for such digital cameras as the competitively priced EOS Digital Rebel T3i/T2i/T3, along with the EOS 5D Mark II and the new EOS 60D advanced-amateur models.
Another big story in the camera world this past week was the passing of Sigma founder Michihiro Yamaki, who started the company in 1961 at the age of 27 by developing the first rear lens converter. He went on to lead the company for over 50 years, turning it into the largest third-party lens maker in the world. Yamaki passed away on January 18 at the age of 78 after a battle with liver cancer.
Wells Fargo Advisors is becoming a pretty reliable source for news regarding cameras before they’re actually announced. Just weeks after the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and Nikon D4 were announced early by the service, the soon-to-be-announced Olympus OM-D camera is now semi-official as well. The wire confirms that Olympus will be reviving its old OM brand for SLR cameras through a new line of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, and that the camera will sell for over ¥100000 (~$1300) in Japan. It also states that the new camera will resemble the Olympus OM-1 film SLR camera — originally launched in 1973 — and be equipped with high-speed autofocus (rumored to be the fastest of all mirrorless cameras) and image stabilization.
Update: To clear up any confusion: Wells Fargo Advisors doesn’t write the news, but simply publishes press releases received from a third party. In this case, the press release wasn’t published before it was supposed to — it’s simply a Japanese news source confirming that it had also heard about the new camera and upcoming announcement.
Hope you guys had a good holiday season. Welcome to 2012! As is our tradition, here’s our annual “state of the blog” post, in which we’ll briefly share on how this blog grew in the past year and where it is now. Read the rest of this entry »
The New York Times has sent an angry letter to the New York Police Department after video emerged showing photojournalist Robert Stolarik being pushed around and then blocked while trying to photograph officers arresting Occupy Wall Street protestors. The memo itself hasn’t be published, but NYT VP and assistant general counsel George Freeman is quoted as saying,
It seemed pretty clear from the video that the Times freelance photographer was being intentionally blocked by the police officer who was kind of bobbing and weaving to keep him from taking photographs
The department has acknowledged receiving the note from the NYT, but has not issued a formal response yet. This incident comes just weeks after Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered officers to avoid unreasonably interfering with media access during news coverage. Read the rest of this entry »
Roughly 50 staffers at CNN were given pink slips today, including nearly a dozen photojournalists. In an email to the staff, Senior VP Jack Womack cited the accessibility of cameras and the growth of citizen journalism as reasons for the terminations:
We also spent a great deal of time analyzing how we utilize and deploy photojournalists across all of our locations in the U.S. [...] We looked at the impact of user-generated content and social media, CNN iReporters and of course our affiliate contributions in breaking news. Consumer and pro-sumer technologies are simpler and more accessible. Small cameras are now high broadcast quality. More of this technology is in the hands of more people. After completing this analysis, CNN determined that some photojournalists will be departing the company.
CNN’s citizen journalism initiative, iReport, has proved extremely valuable as a source of imagery during things like disasters and protests. However, it has also received criticism for not paying for submitted photos — even those that are subsequently broadcast worldwide.
Steve Jobs may have had ideas beyond the iPhone when it came to transforming the landscape of photography. In a New York Times interview published today, Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson said,
[Jobs] had three things that he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks and photography. He really wanted to take these on. I didn’t go into details about these products in the book because it was implicitly Apple’s creations and it’s not fair to the company to reveal these details.
Apple dipped its toes in the digital camera market back in 1994, but pulled out a couple years later after Jobs returned to the company and focused it on computers. Of the three product categories, televisions, not photography, is the one that’s being mentioned the most right now — Apple is expected to announce a Siri-powered TV by 2013.
If you enjoyed the beautiful 360-degree helicopter ride video we shared earlier today, then Condition One is an iPad app for you. It uses immersive video as a way to pull viewers into news stories — viewers control the camera by simply moving their iPad around!
The Condition ONE app gives users the ability to look in any direction while viewing footage. By pivoting and tilting the iPad, one literally manipulates the corresponding field of view. The highly sensitive motion controls produce the illusion of looking through a window into another reality, giving a visceral sense of ‘being there’.
Condition ONE will offer highly engaging storytelling with a focus on visual content conducive to being experienced firsthand.
It’s available as a free app through the iTunes store (with an Android version coming next year), so what are you waiting for?
More news from the ongoing Olympus scandal: despite an official explanation issued by Olympus last week, the company’s stock has continued to plummet. It closed today at ¥1,099, down from around ¥2,500 before the crisis began. Investors are apparently spooked after a major Japanese newspaper suggested that the payments at the center of the controversy could have links to the criminal underworld (something the company has denied). The New York Times is reporting that the FBI is now involved in the investigation.
Bloomberg writes that Olympus’ stock price makes it an attractive option for a potential acquisition: the current price pegs Olympus’ market value at $3.85 billion, even though its medical-equipment business alone is worth $7.8 billion.
