Flickr new account policy – the “Flickrpocalypse” is coming

This year, Flickr was bought from AOL, er, I mean OAth by SmugMug.

The new Flickr is changing their account policy for free accounts to a limit of 1000 photos/videos. The original Flickr was at 200. No problem, they want us, the users, to be the customers and not the product. They also need to operate in a way that is sustainable, and by do so they are giving an incentive to get a paid account (they call it “Pro”).

But there is one important detail, hidden in the fine print of another page:

Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted — starting from oldest to newest date uploaded — to meet the new limit.

After February 5 they will delete content, just based on date. What about these projects of the commons? What about these accounts of people that left us? They will be erasing a large cultural heritage, just like that, not taking the responsibility of stewarding the content they acquired. I think this is a bad move for them. It feels like a breach of trust ; it is perfectly ok to prevent upload on any unpaid account over 1000, but deleting it, it is not. Also they are voluntarily crippling something they need: inertia that the traffic drives, making the service more popular.

Just as a side note, my Flickr account is still under the threshold, there is currently no risk, until Flickr decide to change the limits later.

Creative Commons are working with them to mitigate the loss of some much Creative Commons material:

Flickr is one of the most important platforms to host and share CC licensed works on the web, and over 400 million of the photos there are CC licensed — representing over a quarter of all CC licensed works on the web.

And I know the Internet Archive team will be working hard on trying to mitigate the disaster.

Please, please, Flickr, don’t delete the content.

Update: it seems that there is a program to exempt institutions from this. Don MacAskill, SmugMug CEO donated 100-years of Flickr Pro to the Internet Archive, even though it is covered by the program. Also Cory Doctorow agrees with my suggestion. This is not a reversion of the delete policy, just a mitigation for the Commons.

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Nikon Z7 teardown

LensRental, after doing it for the EOS R, tore down a Nikon Z7 to show what’s inside:

This is not marketing department weather resistance. This is engineering department weather resistance. Anything that can be sealed has been sealed. I’m impressed, and I will say for future cut-and-paste blurbs: this is as robustly weather sealed a camera as we’ve ever disassembled.

Remember this is a ~USD$3,500 camera body, which the build quality impressed.

What’s inside the EOS R

Lensrentals has a teardown of the Canon EOS R Mirrorless Camera. Nicely engineered camera, albeit nothing out of the ordinary.

It was rather a boring disassembly, really, about what we should expect for Canon doing a Canon 6D Mark II quality mirrorless camera. It’s neatly laid out and nicely engineered inside. One thing that struck me is that it’s not very crowded inside there, or as we like to say “they left a lot of air inside”.

Leica M-10D

Leica just announced the M10-D a M-mount rangefinder digital camera, that doesn’t have a screen or other controls at the back. Sounds familiar? It seems the timing is in sync with the Pixii I talked about yesterday. Similarly, to control anything but aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation, you have to use the companion smartphone app.

The Leica M10-D is a stripped down version of the M10-P. Is it cheaper? No. Both have an advertised street price of USD$8,000.

Pixii

It is not everyday that there is a new rangefinder camera not made by Leica.

The French startup Pixii announced their camera.

The Pixii is a rangefinder digital camera (yes, an actual rangefinder) with an M mount for the lenses. Of course M39 screw mount lenses can be used with an adapter. There is not much known about the specs, neither the sensor size, nor the price. One of its key features is that it doesn’t have a screen, but rather just have connectivity to a smartphone.

From PetaPixel:

No word yet on pricing or availability. PIXII says those details will be announced in the coming weeks.

To be continued…

Yashica is not back

As I guessed a year ago, Yashica isn’t back. Petapixel has reports that Yashica’s “Unexpected” Y35 Camera is Worse Than Anyone Expected

While the concept may be novel and fun for people yearning for the look and feel of film cameras while having the convenience of digital, execution appears to have been lacking.

I personally didn’t believe the idea was any good. It seems that it is not even good in its making.

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Instax hacks

PetaPixel has two articles about hacks on top of the Fujifilm Instax instant camera.

An Instax Camera with the Leica M lens: a prototype using the SQ10 as a base, where the M lens mount replaces the lens, to produce square images. The hybrid model of small sensor and Instax printer make this work, as the coverage of an M lens is insufficient for even Instax Mini. Still the image quality is seriously limited by the quality of the sensor and the “printer”.

Combining a Hasselblad 500 and an Instax Mini 9: the Instax mini act as a film back for the Hasselblad.

We were really happy with our first tests. The full frame of the film is exposed and the images are sharper than we’ve ever seen on this type of film. There are still a few ongoing issues with light leaks and with focusing because of the slight difference in focal plane length.

Interesting to see the creativity in that area.