Sponsors
Canon
- In 1933, the Canon company began in a lab in a small Tokyo apartment. By 1935, Canon had created the first Japanese 35 mm focal-plane-shutter camera. In 2000, Canon Inc. launched the PowerShot S 100 Digital ELPH compact camera. Professional Photographer magazine named the EOS 7D model as the 2010 Hot One in the digital SLR category priced between $1,000 and $3,000.
- Established in 1917, Nippon Kogaku K.K. produced optical glass. In 1945, the company began production of film cameras, and adopted the Nikon brand name. In 1997, the popular point and shoot Coolpix line of compact digital cameras began. Nikon launched the D1 model as its professional digital SLR.
- Founded in 1919, the Olympus Corporation produced its first digital still camera in 1993, the Deltis VC-1000, with a full-range macro zoom. This Tokyo corporation created the Camedia C-2020 Zoom, the first digital camera with a wide-field LCD monitor. In 2006, the E-330 model featured a movable liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor for ease in photographing high-angle and low-angle shots.
- Founder Konosuke Matsushita began his working life as a 9-year-old apprentice in a Hibachi store in Osaka. In 1918, Matsushita founded Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works, forerunner of Panasonic, one of the world's largest manufacturers of electronic products for home, business and industry. Based in Osaka, the Panasonic Corporation produced the world's first interchangeable 3-D lens for the Lumix G micro system. This set of two lenses simultaneously photographs left-eye and right-eye images.
- The Sony Corp. launched in 1946 as Totsuko or Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. The name Sony combined the Latin word "sonus" for "sonic" or "sound" with the word "sonny" to indicate a young boy. In 1996, Sony launched its point-and-shoot camera, the Cyber-shot DSC-F1, that featured a 1.8-inch liquid crystal view screen on the back. In 2009, Sony produced the first digital still camera with 224-degree panorama capability. Known as the DSC-HX1, this Cyber-shot camera features a 20x zoom lens, and captures up to 10 frames per second.