U.S. Probing Nikon Cameras for Patent Infringement after Zeiss Complaint

There have been some legal rumblings in the camera industry over the past couple of months. It’s an ongoing patent dispute between Nikon and two other companies involved in camera technologies: Carl Zeiss and ASML. The latest news is that the United States has opened an official patent infringement investigation into Nikon’s products.

Reuters reports that the U.S. International Trade Commission launched its probe last Friday to take a close look at Nikon digital cameras, software, and components. The inquiry comes in response to complaints filed by Carl Zeiss and ASML, which are based in Germany and The Netherlands, respectively.

This legal and business dispute between the three companies began back in April, when Nikon filed lawsuits against Zeiss and ASML, accusing the two companies of using Nikon’s patented lithography technology without permission. The lithography technology is used to manufacture semiconductors that are found in a wide range of electronic devices.

In response, both Zeiss and ASML countersued Nikon, accusing Nikon of infringing on multiple patents, including those related to the technology inside Nikon digital cameras. Both companies also denied violating Nikon’s patents, and said they had no choice but to countersue in response to Nikon’s legal action.

Nikon, Zeiss, and ASML say they’ve held private negotiations over the years to come to an agreement over the patented technologies, but failed to do so. A retired judge in the U.S. was also brought in to help mediate in late 2016, Reuters reports, but the companies failed to reach a settlement.

Zeiss and ASML have previously paid Nikon $58 million and $87 million in 2004, respectively, according to Nikon.

The Japanese publication SankeiBiz writes that if Nikon is found by the U.S. ITC to have violated patents in its digital cameras, there’s a chance that the government could put a halt on sales of those cameras in the U.S. It seems more likely, however, that this dispute would be settled out of court before reaching that point.

And although the U.S. investigation into Nikon cameras sounds ominous, the company says it’s standard practice in response to many infringement complaints that are filed. Nikon also accuses Zeiss and ASML of purchasing 3rd party patents for the sole purpose of retaliating legally against Nikon.

“The United States International Trade Commission institutes an investigation in response to almost every complaint that is filed,” a Nikon spokesperson tells PetaPixel. “Thus, the decision to institute based upon ASML and Zeiss’s complaint is an expected and routine procedural event.”

“The ASML and Zeiss complaint came days after Nikon sued them for infringing patents on lithography technology that Nikon developed and uses,” the company says. “By contrast, ASML and Zeiss assert only patents they have purchased from third parties.”

“We firmly believe that they purchased the patents as a retaliatory litigation tactic and without any genuine intention to put those patents to commercial use. We look forward to demonstrating to the ITC that we do not infringe ASML’s or Zeiss’s intellectual property.”

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Here’s the World’s First Multi-Aperture Pinhole Lens for DSLRs

Pinhole photography is still alive and well in the digital age, and this new pinhole lens from Thingyfy is the first to offer a variable aperture. Available through their Kickstarter campaign at about $50, the lens is a relatively cheap way to experiment with camera obscura.

Pinhole is photography at its most basic. Though obviously long superseded by glass lenses, shooting with a pinhole lens can be a fun way to learn about light and to create artistic images. With their Kickstarter campaign, Thingyfy has introduced a new pinhole lens with a modern twist.

The 50mm lens offers 8 different pinhole sizes, from 0.1mm to 0.8mm. Made from anodised aluminium alloy and featuring a mechanical aperture ring and 58mm front filter thread, the Pinhole Pro should feel closer to using a modern lens than other options on the market.

According to Thingyfy, the 0.8mm opening allows enough light in to use Live Preview in low-light situations, which is especially useful for cinemetographers, or for composing before switching to a smaller opening in order to achieve a sharper image.

Included below are some photographs and an example short film shot by cinematographer Searing Lu with the Pinhole Pro on a Nikon D750:

The Kickstarter campaign has just 4 days left to run, and has raised over $91,000 from 1,270 backers — absolutely smashing the target of ~$14,858.

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At about $50, the Pinhole Pro is thankfully priced closer to the Potato Pinhole than the $1,500 Zero Optik. The lens is made with a wide array of mount options: Canon EOS/EF, Nikon F, Sony A, Sony E, Fuji X, Micro 4/3 (MFT), and Pentax K. The Sony E mount is a little more expensive, at CA$119.

The lenses are estimated to ship to backers within the next month, which is a quick turnaround if you pledge before the campaign ends. Thingyfy says that the lenses will retail at $179, so the Kickstarter campaign offers a substantial discount.

(via Kickstarter via No Film School)

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How to Retouch Environments Using Photoshop

Retouching isn’t just for portrait photography — it can make a huge difference when you want to clean up distractions from an image. This video from Phlearn will teach you in 30 minutes how to utilise various Photoshop tools to remove objects and blemishes from your environmental photos.

In the video, Aaron Nace demonstrates how to use the Brush Tool, Spot Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, and Pen Tool for retouching. The example is an indoor shot of an office, which you can download yourself (after creating an account with Phlearn) to work on in parallel with the video.

The tutorial really shows the power of even the most basic tools in Photoshop like the Brush Tool, which is used to paint over and flawlessly remove a wall heater in the image. It also provides a good lesson in cloning objects from an image and warping them in-place to replace unwanted elements.

(via Phlearn via Fstoppers)

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How to Accurately Color Match in Photoshop

Adjusting colors of specific elements in a photograph can be used to bring harmony to an image or to add creative flair. Here’s a 5-minute video that shows how to match colors in Photoshop.

Russell Brown’s example photograph features a red chair sitting in front of a water scene, wearing orange flippers. This, naturally, is the perfect scene to alter — the orange flippers must be color matched to the red chair.

Rather than using color balance, hue/saturation or levels, Brown uses grayscale values in order to match the colors.

Brown has done some leg work to set the image up for alteration by moving the flippers to their own layer. Next, he takes a small selection of the color that he wants to alter – in this case, the orange of the flippers.

By duplicating this swatch and placing it on top of the fabric of the chair, Brown is able to use it as a tone reference. He uses the magic wand tool to select all of the orange of the flippers. Switching to the red channel, he brings up the Levels panel and adjusts the midtones until the swatch matches the chair’s fabric. He repeats the process for the green and blue channels.

Switching back to the RGB channel, the result is red flippers, perfectly matched to the tone of the chair.

The beauty of this technique is in its simplicity and in its accuracy. As Brown says, it’s something to store away in the back pocket for that one time you need to color match some flippers to a chair.

The video at the top explains this technique in full. Brown, a senior creative director at Adobe Systems, has plenty of other tips on his Vimeo account, found here.

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Halide is a New iOS Camera App Made by an Ex-Apple and Ex-Twitter Duo

Halide is a new ‘premium camera for your phone’ that provides advanced control over camera settings along with a gesture-based interface that aims to become muscle memory, like the dials of a camera.

The app’s creators – ex-Apple designer Sebastiaan de With and ex-Twitter engineer Ben Sandofsky – aim to best Apple’s own app with a focus on advanced users, whereas the inbuilt Camera app acts as more of a ‘point and shoot’ option. While Apple’s recent how-to guides give some way to improve the photography of the average user, Halide goes beyond the possibilities of Apple’s own app by offering professional tools such as focus peaking, a detailed histogram, adaptive level grid, and RAW support.

Halide begins in a ‘smart automatic’ mode, but with a tap can be switched to full manual mode, giving the user control over ISO, shutter speed, white balance, and focus.

The duo put huge effort in to the design of the application, even commissioning a custom typeface for the user interface, developed by Jelmar Geertsma and called Halide Router. The app uses both visual and haptic feedback, giving it a tactile quality that is unmatched in the many other camera apps available in 2017. Speaking about the work put in to the app’s design, Sebastiaan explained:

Nothing matched the pleasure of using a well-built camera. Halide aims to fix that.

The app is available at the time of writing for a discounted price of $2.99, rising to $4.99 in a week’s time. It can be found in Apple’s App Store – no Android release for the moment, unfortunately.

(via Halide via TechCrunch)

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