Canon South-Africa Expo, Investments In Taiwan, And A New Canon Brand Ambassador

Alodia Gosiengfiao, Canon’s new Brand Ambassador – Image credit: infochat.com.ph

A quick round-up of news concerning the brand Canon. Let’s start with Canon’s South-Africa Expo (click here for the whole story):

Canon South Africa has announced that this year’s highly anticipated Canon SA Expo will be held from Friday, 30 November to Sunday, 2 December 2012 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, Gauteng.

The Canon SA Expo will be open from 10:00 to 18:00 daily and entrance will be free.

As with last year’s incredibly successful Canon SA Expo which attracted in excess of 13 500 visitors over the three-day period, Canon SA has taken it upon themselves to make this year’s show bigger and better.

The Expo will again showcase Canon’s wide range of consumer and selected business solutions. Visitors to this exclusively Canon Expo will also be the first to see and touch some of Canon’s latest technology.

There will also be a photographic competition. Each of the four winners will get an EOS 5D Mark III and an EF 40mm f/2.8 STM lens.

Next, cens.com reports (click here for the whole story) that

Canon Taiwan Inc, a Taiwanese affiliate under Canon of Japan known as a globally-leading digital still camera (DSC) brand, increased investment to NT$ 15 billion (US$ 500 million) in the camera-lens factories in the Taichung Export Processing Zone and Jiayi County, in Southern Taiwan.

[…] Canon Taiwan’s Jiayi plant focuses on producing its popular single-lens digital cameras series EOS-600D and 1100D, and will move all production lines of single-lens digital cameras to the Jiayi plant at the end of this year.

Finally, Alodia Gosiengfiao, a costume playing star, is Canon’s newest brand ambassado (click here for the whole story) for the Image Communications Products (ICP) division.

She considers Canon to be her number one brand of choice for gadgets because of its highly advanced features, superior quality, and numerous offerings, which are not limited to only professional photographers. “It really targets the community, what they want and need,” she declares. “The service is great; anything is accessible with Canon.”

Her plans with Canon include participating in conventions, encouraging people to join the photography community, modelling in monthly photo shoots, and meeting and working with people with the same interests—not too far from what she would do in the cosplaying industry.

[Hack] Transform Your Broken Battery Grip In A Computer, Plug It On Your Cam (Update)

Image credit: D. Hunt

Update: click here for a listing of cheap battery grips on eBay.

Ireland based photographer David Hunt had a cool idea: To modify an otherwise unusable battery grip and to fit a computer into it. He bought a Raspberry Pi computer (€35), modified the grip and managed to stuff the Raspberry Pi inside. A broken EOS 5D Mark II battery grip was used. The little computer runs on Linux, has 2 USB ports, a network port, HDMI outoput, and some more amenities. Things you can possibly do with this computers include…:

  • Wireless tethered shooting – attach a Wifi dongle to the USB port, so I can transmit pictures to a PC or tablet PC as I’m shooting.
  • Attach a USB memory key or hard drive so I can back up the images on the camera.
  • Remote control the camera using a PC, tablet PC or smartphone (from anywhere in the world).
  • Intervalometer – take a picture every few seconds for those high-speed sunset sequences, including exposure adjustment as you go.
  • On-the-fly image conversion for faster previews on remote display device (iPad, etc).
  • Add a small LCD display to give status, allow user input via buttons, etc.
  • Trigger camera via shutter release port, also allows waking up of sleeping camera, which cant be done via USB.

Doesn’t that sound cool?? It’s a prototype, no question, and as Dave Hunt states “there’s plenty of work to be done on the software side“. But the prototype is working, and the potential is clearly visible. For the time being, Dave was able to activate tethering. Hope to hear more about this.

Image credit: D. Hunt
[David Hunt, via petapixel]

Project Imaginat10n: Movies Directed By R. Howard, E. Longoria, J. Foxx, B. Stone, G. Chapman And J. Murphy

Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria – Image credit: Wikipedia Commons

Canon’s Press Release:

Canon U.S.A. And Ron Howard Announce Partnerships With Five Inspirational Directors: Eva Longoria, Jamie Foxx, Biz Stone, Georgina Chapman And James Murphy

Inspired By Consumer Photos, the Five Celebrities Will Go Behind the Camera and Unveil their Films at the “Project Imaginat10n” Film Festival
LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., August 14, 2012 – Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, announced today the first photography-inspired film festival in history, aligning with five influential celebrities from five diverse disciplines who will direct short films under the tutelage of two-time Academy Award® winner Ron Howard. Eva Longoria, Jamie Foxx, Biz Stone, Georgina Chapman and James Murphy have signed on for year two of Canon’s “Long Live Imagination” campaign and the next endeavor, “Project Imaginat10n,” where consumer photographs will inspire Hollywood films.

In 2011, Ron Howard and Canon U.S.A. invited photographers of all levels to submit their most imaginative photographs based on eight elements of storytelling for an unprecedented user-generated contest, “Project Imagin8ion.” The project set out to prove that photography could be used as a creative vehicle, even inspiring a Ron Howard production. Nearly 100,000 photos later, eight photos were selected and influenced an award-winning short film, “when you find me,” directed by Bryce Dallas Howard.

A new exploration of the creative exercise, “Project Imaginat10n,” kicks off today at imagination.usa.canon.com, where consumers will have the chance to submit photos to be narrowed down by Canon, Ron Howard and community voting. The “10” in “Imaginat10n,” represents ten storytelling elements and ten films that will ultimately be produced, five of which will be directed by our creative icons to be showcased at a special Canon “Project Imaginat10n” Film Festival in 2013. The other five film directors will be announced at a later date.

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