As point-and-shoot camera sales drop, so do Nikon earnings-- therefore there is no surprise when president Makoto Kimura admits to Bloomberg the company is looking into ways to tap into smartphone growth.

“The number of people taking snapshots is exploding by use of smartphones that sold 750 million or so last year and are still growing,” Kimura says. “We’ve centralized our ideas around cameras but can change our approach to offer products to that bigger market.”

According to Kimura camera sales "across the industry" for the April-May period are down by about -25% Y-o-Y basis, while Nikon results come "a little short" to "fairly low" estimates.

The Nikon imaging division expects expects the overall compact camera market to shrink by -12% during fiscal 2013, while high-end models might grow by 9%. In fact the company hopes high-end demand will compensate for slower compact sales "for several more years," even as the company looks for more growth drivers.

Samsung takes a second shot at the marriage of point-and-shoot camera and Android smartphone with the Galaxy S4 Zoom-- an Android 4.2 handset with a 16MP camera and 10x zoom lens grafted at the back.

The device should remind readers armed with longer memories of the Galaxy Camera, the 2012 Samsung take on the Android-powered digital camera. However customers can make calls with the Zoom, a functionality the Camera lacks.

Specs-wise the Zoom is similar to the recently announced Galaxy S4 mini-- a 4.3-inch device packing a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 8GB storage (expandable via microSD slot), 2330mAh battery, LTE/3G connectivity and a slew of Samsung software additions.

A Swedish company has plans for a wearable camera-app combination allowing customers to automatically capture "every moment" of their lives-- the Memoto, a lifelogging device the size of a postage stamp.

The little device carries a 5MP camera, a GPS and an accelerometer. It clips onto clothing and automatically takes a photo (complete with timestamp and GPS position log) every 30 seconds.

A micro USB port allows recharging and connection to PC.

Once connected to PC the camera uploads photos to the Memoto Web Service and Android/iOS app. The web service and app organise photos into "moments" based on GPS, time, accelerometer and light levels in order to create an easily searchable "photographic memory."

Canon announces the EOS M-- the first take on the fast-growing "mirrorless" camera segment from a company best known for bulkier single-lens-reflex (SLR) models.

"Mirrorless" cameras lack conventional mirror-based viewfinders (using a digital equivalent) allowing for lighter, more compact bodies with the capability for intechangeable lenses.

The EOS M has an 18MP APS-C CMOS sensor and uses lenses from the Canon SLR range, as the use of "EOS" name indicates. It ships with either a standard 22mm Continue reading...

Fujitsu subsidiary PFU launches the ScanSnap S1300i-- now able transfer scans directly to either mobile devices or cloud storage services.

The ScanSnap Folder application connector streamlines scanning to 3rd party applications, sending scans to wifi-connected Android and iOS devices, as well as services such as Evernote, Google Docs, Dropbox, SurgarSync and Salesforce.

The scanner features scanning speeds of up to 12 pages per minute (A4, colour, 150 dpi) or 24 images in duplex mode. It features Continue reading...

None of your customers' DSLRs are a match against what a team at Duke Unversity, Durham, has built using off-the-shelf electronics-- the AWARE-2, a camera able to shoot 1000-megapixel (or one gigapixel) pictures.

Described in scientific magazine Nature, the AWARE-2 consists of 98 identical 14-megapixel microcameras looking through a single large spherical lens. Each microcamera uses own optics and runs independent autofocus and exposure algorithms, before an image processor stitches together 98 Continue reading...

Sometimes an idea is crazy enough to might actually work-- like the Socialmatic, a concept for an Instagram-powered digital Polaroid camera from Antonio De Rosa.

For those of you not in the know, Instagram is a smartphone camera app for iPhones and Androids. It turns regular digital snaps into "artsy" vintage-style photos, with a number of filters emulating classic film cameras (chiefly Polaroid instant cameras).

The Socialmatic proposal looks fairly interesting-- it suggests the camera should have 2 main lenses (one for main capture, the other for 3D filters, webcam applications and QR code capturing), a touchscreen interface, 16GB of storage and wifi/Bluetooth connectivity.

PlanOn System Solutions launches the ScanStik-- a pen-sized full page colour scanner the company claims is the smallest in the world.

Describing it as "an office in the pocket," PlanOn says the ScanStik scans a whole page at once-- just like a flat-bed scanner, only without the bulk, with a "click and scan" function scanning a full page in just 4 seconds.

After scanning, users simply connect the ScanStik to PC via USB to transfer, organise and edit scans via included ABBYY Fine Reader SE and PaperPort Continue reading...