BRIEFS: May 3

Distributor changes in New Zealand…Samsung #1 in picture-taking?…iPhone goes Raw…

Distributor changes in New Zealand

HE Perry, long-time New Zealand distributor for Olympus and Tamron, has relinquished these roles, with Tamron lenses now handled by Lacklands Ltd.

Lacklands also handles SanDisk, Leica, Golla, Cisco, Crumpler, Joby and Marumi brands.

Servicing for Tamron lenses will continue to be provided by the former HE Perry service division, and Lacklands will honour all warranty repairs for products sold by HE Perry.

Olympus Australia is currently handling sales from its Australian headquarters, with camera repairs handled by A & E Electronics:  (03) 372-1213, service@aeelectronics.co.nz

Samsung #1 in picture-taking? 

While most of the smartphone buzz is currently around Apple, Samsung enjoys almost three times the market share of the world’s largest company, and has knocked Nokia off its perch as leading mobile phone company after an extraordinary 14 years at the top.

According to a report by Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped 93.5 million handsets worldwide in Q1, 2012. Global handset shipments grew a modest 3 percent annually to reach 368 million units in the first quarter of 2012. Nokia’s global handset shipments declined a dramatic 24 percent annually to 82.7 million units in Q1 2012.

Apple shipped 35.1 million handsets worldwide in Q1 2012, nearly doubling from 18.6 million units in Q1 2011.

‘Apple achieved its highest ever market share in the overall handset category, capturing 10 percent of global shipments during the first quarter of 2012,’ said Strategy Analytics.

Samsung captured 25 percent of the mobile phone market, making its the world’s number one handset vendor for the first time ever.

Given that Nokia used to make the provocative claim it was the leading digital camera vendor due to its sale of phones equipped with cameras, Samsung could easily make the same claim when its dedicated camera sales are combined with its smartphone sales.

IPhone goes Raw

A new iPhone app – 645 Pro – promises to turn the not-so-humble iPhone into a pro camera, with ‘unprecedented control and unparalleled image quality. Kind of. The 645 Pro ‘feels like a pro camera — because it is one,’ the developer, Jag.gr claims.

While it doesn’t create a genuine, unadulterated raw file, it generates a ‘developed RAW’ file – a TIFF file with no JPEG compression.

Among the other features of the app are: spot and multi-zone metering; seven film modes, ‘inspired by classic film stock as used by top photographers from the 1960s through to the present day’; switchable ‘backs’ emulating five medium-format ratios; auto-exposure and autofocus locks; night mode; even live histograms and an on-screen grid to aid composition.

All controls appear on the iPhone screen and are controlled by various tapping routines and what Apple calls ‘hand gestures’.