July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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If you can’t get enough of Instagram and retro-style photography, Fujifilm clearly wants to lure you with the new Instax Mini 8 camera with rainbow-colored instant film.

The new film has 10 exposures with rainbow frames and sized at 2-by-3 inches, with a blank strip at the bottom for writing messages. And because rainbow-colored instant film isn’t cheesy enough, the Instax Mini 8 will come in new pink, blue, and yellow colors on top of the previously available black and white options on older Instax Mini models. We’re sure this camera and film would be a hit at a wedding. It will be available in “early 2013.”

Fujifilm announced the Instax Mini 8 today at CES 2013 in Las Vegas, along with many other products including the slick and powerful X100S and X20 cameras. The X100S is the successor to the well-regarded X100, which has sold 130,000 units worldwide since its launch.

The X100S promises the crazy-fast autofocus speed of .08 seconds, a pretty impressive spec. It features a 16.3-megapixel APS-C X-Trans CMOS II sensor and a faster EXR Processor II, both of which should ensure better noise reduction and all-around crisper photos.

On top of the X100S, Fujifilm talked about the X20, the successor to the X10. The X20 has a 12-megapixel 2/3-inch X-Trans CMOS II sensor. The X20 claims an autofocus speed of up to 0.06 seconds.

The X100S and X20 will be available in stores in late March. The X100S will run $1,300, while the X20 will cost $600.

Photo illustration via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat
Photos via Fujifilm

With a $5.7 billion loss in 2011, Sony is coming off its worst year ever. Blame the Thailand floods or its collapsing TV business, but either way the result is the same: Sony needs more income.

It may have a plan to make that happen. The company is making a $997 million investment in the production of stacked CMOS sensors. That’s a major gamble, as $997 million represents nearly half of Sony’s projected revenue for its fiscal 2012.

With the cash, Sony plans to boost production of sensor wafers to up to 60,000 a month by September of next year. Some of the output will be used in Sony’s own products, but the more important segment will be sold to other smartphone and tablet makers.

A CMOS sensor is a camera sensor equipped with its own integrated circuit. This circuit in turn features an array of pixel sensors, which detect the light used to process photos. Stacked sensors shrink the real estate needed to do the job, allowing for greater performance in less space. Sony announced the new sensors in January, promising faster speeds and lower energy consumption.

The appeal of this should be clear: As the recent nanoSIM ordeal has shown, space is a prime consideration for smartphone manufacturers. With limited space in increasingly small phones, making individual components as small as possible has now become a key mission.

With the investment, Sony is making a big play to have its sensors in just about every mobile device with a camera. Sony’s sensor technology is already in the iPhone 4S, and the company clearly wants that relationship to continue for a long time to come.

Apple is being sued by Kodak, the camera company that recently filed for bankruptcy, for a number of patents, which Apple says Kodak doesn’t have the right to sell.

According to Reuters, the Cupertino-based company is standing in the way of Kodak auctioning off its patents as part of its bankruptcy deal. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in January and must liquidate its assets, including its patent portfolio, in order to pay back a nearly billion-dollar loan the company borrowed to stay afloat. But Apple says Kodak cannot sell certain patents pertaining to technology that allows people to preview digital photos on a camera’s LCD screen. The two companies worked on the technology together in the 1990s, and now it seems ownership is in the grey area.

Apple isn’t the only company laying claim, either. FlashPoint Technology Inc., which was once a part of Apple in the 1990s and later became its own entity, is also claiming ownership. Kodak holds the rights to around 10,700 patents, 700 of which are included in the lawsuit against Apple and Flashpoint.

The camera company says it hopes to hold an auction for these patents and others in August and would like to announce a buyer a couple of weeks following the start of the auction. Potential buyers are currently kept under wraps.

via Reuters

In an effort to be more nimble with its decision-making (and less of a lumbering corporate giant), Sony today has announced a new business structure, which it’s calling “Sony One.”

The initiative is Spearheaded by the company’s new CEO Kazuo Hirai, who has been vocal about his plans to revamp the company, and will also position digital imaging, gaming, and mobile as Sony’s new core business. Sony announced massive loss of $2 billion in February (the day after it appointed Hirai, no less), so the company clearly needs to shake up its management process somehow.

The new One Sony structure will begin on April 1, 2012 (perhaps not the best day to convince the public your business isn’t a joke). After missing out completely on the iPod era of portable music devices, now Sony is aiming to make up for lost time with a stronger lineup of smartphones, which it announced at the Mobile World Congress in February. Gaming is still a cash cow for the company, and it remains one of the better digital camera companies (I love my Sony NEX-5N), so the choice to emphasize its business around the company’s three hottest product categories seems wise.

As part of the changes, Sony EVP Shoji Nemoto will now oversee the overall technology strategy and R&D operations, while EVP Kunimasa Suzuki will oversee product strategy (including mobile), as well as take charge of guiding Sony’s user experience moving forward. Hirai, meanwhile, is tasking himself with overseeing Sony’s home entertainment business, because the company desperately needs to find a way to save its ailing TV division.

Photo Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

When you’re skiing down a mountain, you can actually share the viewing experience with your friends these days by attaching a high-definition wireless camera to your goggles. One of the companies making that possible is Ambarella, a camera chip maker that is announcing a new wireless camera developer kit today to make it easier to create a new generation of these sports cameras.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has helped usher in the revolution in high-definition video and still cameras that use very little power and so can fit into smaller packages than older digital cameras and camcorders. And by adding wireless capability from Qualcomm Atheros, Ambarella makes it easy to create mini cameras that can fit on your head and pass images to a smartphone, which can then be used to either control the direction of the camera or stream the images over the air to your friends. This kind of technology shows that a smartphone can work as a complement to a camera, rather than eliminate the need for a camera. Ambarella will display the A7L  Android-based technology next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Ambarella enables a new class of wireless HD cameras with smartphone control, viewing and social network video sharing. Camera makers can create rugged packages around these components so they can be strapped on when someone is skiing, riding a motorcycle, or even diving under water.

“The solution in these cases is to move the controls to the smartphone,” said Chris Day (pictured), vice president of marketing and business development at Ambarella, in an interview. “The camera is no longer going to be a stand-alone device.”

While Ambarella makes the chips for such devices, camera makers such as Contour create the actual video and still cameras for targeted consumers. With the new Ambarella technology, users will be able to get much better control of their cameras using a touchscreen on a smartphone or tablet. Ambarella focused on the imaging technology, while Qualcomm Atheros provided wireless expertise.

Today’s popular sports cameras have to perform in rugged outdoor conditions and require a camera to be mounted where it’s impractical to view a preview screen.

In an improvement on that, Ambarella enables cameras that can stream the video from the camera to the smartphone, where the display shows the view from the camera and lets a user adjust the camera direction. For still cameras, users can use a smartphone to adjust a camera for a family portrait while remaining in the shot. Or they can use a camera and a wireless remote smartphone to do stealth wildlife photography, without scaring away animals.

The smartphone can also be used to playback the recorded video, stream live video action to popular Internet broadcast websites, such as Qik and Ustream, or upload photos or video files to Facebook and YouTube. The software development kit is available for Ambarella’s A7L SoC chip family, providing full 1080p HD video at 60 frames per second and very low power consumption.

Ambarella filed to go public in June 2011 but hasn’t taken any action on that filing. The company has more than 400 employees now, including 200 in Taiwan. It was recently voted the most-respected private semiconductor company of 2011 in a vote by peers. Aside from camcorders and digital cameras, Ambarella’s chips are used in broadcast infrastructure, video networking, and surveillance. Since 2006, the company has delivered five generations of imaging chips.

The latest A7L chips run Android and support a variety of features, from cloud services to full HD playback. They use there ARM microprocessor cores in a single chip. Multiple products using these chips and the wireless technology are expected to debut in 2012, Day said.

Lytro’s breakthrough new camera hinges on a new kind of sensor that captures the entire light field around a picture, rather than only a single light field like current cameras capture. Capturing an entire light field gives photographers a new set of controls and lets them refocus the shot after they’ve taken it. It also allows photographers to show off the pictures in 3D.

The camera works by having many small lenses between the main lens and the image sensor, with the tiny lenses measuring the amount and direction of light coming in.

Lytro has a neat photo gallery on its site that lets a prospective customer see how its refocusing works. When you click on different spots in a Lytro picture, you see a different focus—meaning every picture you take has tons of possibilities.

Not only is Lytro distinguishing itself by making big promises, it’s also taking a major leap by trying to be a hardware company. Instead of licensing out its new technology, it hopes to sell a point-and-shoot camera to consumers later this year.

We fully expect Lytro to raise more buzz as it raises more capital. So far, the company has raised $50 million from the likes of NEA, K9 Ventures, Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz.

Are you intrigued by Lytro’s new camera technology? Will you consider buying a Lytro camera later this year?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Ambarella, a maker of chips that power the coolest video cameras, filed its registration papers to go public today.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company filed its S-1 document for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The number of shares to be offered and the price range have yet to be determined. The filing shows that the hot stock market continues to attract tech companies that want to take advantage of the IPO window, which is open wider than it has been for tech companies in years. If companies such as Ambarella, which isn’t well known, can go out on the IPO market, then the support for tech IPOs is indeed pretty strong.

Ambarella joins a number of other technology companies that have filed for IPOs, including Groupon, Pandora, and others. The tech companies that have already gone public include Yandex, LinkedIn and Fusion-io. Zynga is rumored to be preparing a filing as well.

Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank Securities are the joint book-running managers for the offering. Co-managers include Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., and Needham & Co.

Back in December, the company is announced a new generation of iOne camera chips that will become the brains of cool cameras and video recorders. And thanks to the triple-core processors that Ambarella is cooking up for Android devices, those new gadgets will have the ability to wirelessly transfer videos and photos to photo-sharing sites on the internet. By making imagery easier to share, Ambarella could make those photos and videos far more useful to people.

The iOne is a system-on-a-chip (SoC), or a master chip that integrates all sorts of functions. It is aimed at being the best image processor available, able to process and record high-quality still images as well as 1080p high-resolution video. The SoC also includes other functions such as built-in 3D graphics, connections to separate wireless radio chips, and 3D TV imagery.

Ambarella has been making camera chips for five generations, using the expertise of co-founder Les Kohn and Didier LeGall, both of whom where instrumental chip architects at video processing pioneer C-Cube Microsystems. (LeGall, executive vice president, is pictured, left, next to marketing chief Chris Day, right). The company is headed by CEO Fermi Wang.

LeGall said in an interview back in December that the designs have advanced so far that a single chip can serve as the brains of a hybrid camera that can produce both outstanding still images and great video. It can also operate on low power and transfer data wirelessly. Usually there is some kind of trade-off between these various functions.

The iOne has three ARM processor cores, including a dual-core 1-gigahertz ARM Cortex A9 processor that has the horsepower to run Android applications. A third 533-megahertz ARM 11 processor handles real-time camera tasks and allows the camera to turn on in less than a second. It also has a 3D graphics core from Imagination Technologies.

The chip can process still images up to 32 megapixels and can capture 5 megapixel images at a rate of 30 frames per second, or as fast as a movie. The cameras with Ambarella chips will also work great in low light and have minimal motion blur. With dual-stream encoding, the chips will be able to record HD video and upload a second stream at the same time over Wi-Fi. And the chips are also very good at image stabilization, or keeping the image steady and clear while the photographer is moving.

Samples of the chips are ready now, but cameras with the chips will likely appear in the second half of 2011. Back in December, Ambarella had 350 employees. Current Ambarella chips are used in devices such as the Sony Bloggie video camera and a host of others.

Rivals include camera makers who create their own chips, such as Canon or Nikon, as well as other makers of image processors.

You probably haven’t heard of Ambarella. But the quality of your hybrid digital camera and video camcorder is far better than it used to be because of the company’s chips.

Today, the company is announcing a new generation of iOne camera chips that will become the brains of next year’s batch of cool cameras and video recorders. And thanks to the triple-core processors that Ambarella is cooking up for Android devices, those new gadgets will have the ability to wirelessly transfer videos and photos to photo-sharing sites on the internet. And by making imagery easier to share, Ambarella could make those photos and videos far more useful to people.

The iOne is a system-on-a-chip (SoC), or a master chip that integrates all sorts of functions. It is aimed at being the best image processor available, able to process and record high-quality still images as well as 1080p high-resolution video. The SoC also includes other functions such as built-in 3D graphics, connections to separate wireless radio chips, and 3D TV imagery.

Ambarella has been making camera chips for five generations, using the expertise of co-founder Les Kohn and Didier LeGall, both of whom where instrumental chip architects at video processing pioneer C-Cube Microsystems. (LeGall, executive vice president, is pictured, left, next to marketing chief Chris Day, right).

LeGall said in an interview that the designs have advanced so far that a single chip can serve as the brains of a hybrid camera that can produce both outstanding still images and great video. It can also operate on low power and transfer data wirelessly. Usually there is some kind of trade-off between these various functions.

“The iOne will fundamentally change the way consumers capture, create and share visual content,” said Fermi Wang, chief executive of Ambarella.

The iOne has three ARM processor cores, including a dual-core 1-gigahertz ARM Cortex A9 processor that has the horsepower to run Android applications. A third 533-megahertz ARM 11 processor handles real-time camera tasks and allows the camera to turn on in less than second. It also has a 3D graphics core from Imagination Technologies.

The chip can process still images up to 32 megapixels and can capture 5 megapixel images at a rate of 30 frames per second, or as fast as a movie. The cameras with Ambarella chips will also work great in low light and have minimal motion blur. With dual-stream encoding, the chips will be able to record HD video and upload a second stream at the same time over Wi-Fi. And the chips are also very good at image stabilization, or keeping the image steady and clear while the photographer is moving.

Samples of the chips are ready now, but cameras with the chips will likely appear in the second half of 2011. Ambarella has 350 employees. Current Ambarella chips are used in devices such as the Sony Bloggie video camera and a host of others.

Rivals include camera makers who create their own chips, such as Canon or Nikon, as well as other makers of image processors.

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