About Us

We are a website from photographers for photographers. We are a photocommunity, which shares the love for photography. Whether you are a professional or a hobby photographer. No matter which brand you use. No matter which sensor size. From small like a smartphone to big like in Medium Format cameras. Both analogue and digital.

Why this strange name “Camera-info.com”?

We merged in 2012 and 2014 all our independant community forums into one. In the past each community forum had the same structure in the domainname:

Canoninfo.com
Contaxinfo.com
Cybershotinfo.com
Darkroominfo.com
Hasselbladinfo.com
Leicainfo.com
Minoltainfo.com
Nikoninfo.com
Olympusinfo.com
Pentaxinfo.com
Rolleiinfo.com
Sigmauserforum.com
etc.

We wanted to reflect these old domainnames in the new, merged forum. This is why we called the new forum accordingly “Camera-info.com“.

We quote below an email we sent in 2012 to all registered users of the different forums.That is basically our history and the explanation why we put everything together in one forum:

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Dear members,

Some of you follow us since almost 11 years (as of 2012). Some of you joined us recently. A lot happened over the past decade, both in the photo industry and on our sites.

This is why we want to take five minutes to recap what happened and why we changed as of today the forum structure to the setup as you can see it now (December 2012).

 

1. The past – where we are coming from…

Our birthdate was on 19.5.2002. It was a basic forum for Contax & Zeiss enthusiasts called Contaxinfo.com. This was only one community in a small niche market. At that time, internet sites and especially community forums was something weird and very seldom.

It was founded from a Contax fan, just as a private hobby to share his Contax/Zeiss experience with other Contax/Zeiss fans. Originally planned as a very basic forum only, to help each other and have fun with their hobby.

Since the user base at Contaxinfo.com grew over the first 3 months so strong, more and more features have been requested by users and so a user photo gallery, scanned material like brochures, manuals and prospects have been added quickly. Even Zeiss MTF data, which have been at that time not yet available over the internet, were added for download for free on this site. Zeiss in Oberkochen helped here a lot and they supported us with material, so we could scan and publish it online.

Special thanks go to Dr. Nasse and Kornelius Müller from Carl Zeiss Oberkochen and Frazer Allen from Kyocera UK for their ongoing support from the first day on. At a time, when no other brand understood the importance of the internet and community forums. Later, also Kyocera Japan supported us (thanks to Mr. Hosomi and Mr. Inoue). Even a limited edition with engraving the Contaxinfo.com logo on 300 Contax SL300R cameras has been agreed on.

Unfortunately, Kyocera decided in March 2005 to stop their engagement in the photo industry. This was a very tough time for us and all Contaxinfo.com users. Even after so many years, we still do not see a brand that was/is able to fill the gap of the Contax System, Kyocera created with this dramatic exit-decision.

Since we also offered at that time other community forums for brands we used ourselves too i.e. for Leica (leicainfo.com since September 2002), Hasselblad (www.hasselbladinfo.com since March 2003), Nikon and some other brands (since May 2003), we tried to offer a second home for our Contax users, depending on what their preferences were.

But the industry changed even more. Leica did its IPO in 1996, but went almost bankrupt in 2004. Sigma introduced its first DSLR in 2002 (SD9 with Foveon Sensor), Konica merged with Minolta in 2004 due to financial problems of Minolta and was then sold to Sony in January 2006. Otherwise there would not have been any Minolta or Sony DSLRs today. Almost all Medium Format producers went out of business (i.e. Rollei).

Nikon had a very tough start against Canon in the early DSLR days before they recovered with the launch of the D70 in 2004. Hasselblad and Pentax changed several times ownership and shrunk to a size nobody would have believed a few years ago.

Eastman Kodak, the company synonymous with film photography and the launch of the digital camera, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US in 2012 after a 131-year history and Fujifilm had a hard time too.

Olympus lost 75% of its stock market value in 2011 because of a financial scandal and it was not sure in 2012 whether they are able to continue their camera business. So almost every manufacturer was at least once in big trouble within the last decade.

The only good news are that there were also turnarounds. Leica recovered with the Rangefinder M and the new MF S2, although the R-mount was stopped, which many users shocked at that time. Pentax seems to recovery too and Fuji found their own way after experiments with the S3 & S5 DSLRs (based on Nikon bodies) with the new X-mount System. On September 28, 2012, Olympus and Sony announced that Olympus will receive a 50 billion yen capital injection from Sony. With the capital tie-up, Sony will become the largest shareholder (11.46%) of Olympus. The Olympus future seems with this safe.

Technology wise fullframe becomes finally mainstream in 2012, resolution and dynamic range of sensors are nowadays no issue anymore and optical viewfinders in DSLRs get better, so analogue photographers almost feel at home 🙂

Looking back, the past decade was contingent on “change”. Basically the whole industry underestimated the speed of change from analogue to digital. Old well-known brands disappeared, others were able to survive and totally newcomers like Sony, Panasonic and Samsung gained significant market share. New technolgies became mainstream like mirrorless system-cameras and electronic viewfinders.

 

2. The future – where we are heading to…

Reflecting the past, we do think that also the next decade will be contingent on change. We just do not know which brand will survive, which one will merge or what kind of technological innovations will change the industry again and with this the interest of our users for different brands.

This is why we decided to give up the strict separation of our different brandcommunity forums of the past. This makes it for you a lot easier in the future. One login, one domainname. In the past, we had for each brand its own community forum and domain name. In the future all those brands have their own section within this new forum.

We also want to focus more on the final image/print/web presentation instead of only on the question which sensor of generation xyz has less noise at ISO 6400. Also analogue photography shall have its place as it has always been in our forums. Just because DSLRs are so good nowadays does not mean that it is less fun to shoot with film.

So with this new forum structure, we hope to give you the best of both worlds. You have still the possibility to stay in your brand community, but you can also look what else is around the corner without the need to register again in a new forum.

And for the final image, you have shared image upload sections sorted by subject (landscape, people etc.) and brand-only threads within each community if you want to see what the camera or lens xyz is capable of.

Your Camera–info.com Team