Selfies is now on sale in the US!

When Shooting Yourself went on sale in the UK last summer, Haje was ridiculously excited about his book devoted to self-portrait photography. Unfortunately, he was forced to put his excitement on ice for the US edition, which had a little longer to wait for its release. Thankfully, that wait is over and we can pop the champagne corks because Selfies is now on sale in the US!

Don't worry, the entire book doesn't comprise selfies of Haje. He does put in an appearance, and so do I, but there are gorgeous images from photographers Carly Wong, from Elly Lucas, and Callan Kapush, amongst many, many others. Some of them are dab hands with props, some are location shooting gurus, and a few even take off their clothes! It's full of tips and tricks, and ideas and explanations. And it's fabulous.

You want to lay your hands on a copy? Awesome! You can pick one up direct from the US publishers, HOW, from an Internet behemoth bookseller, as a swanky e-book, or from your favourite bricks-and-mortar bookshop.

A speedier Android Instagram experience

Instagram has pushed out an update to the Android version of its app, making it smoother, sleeker, and speedier, whatever Android device you're using. From giant sized handsets to more compact and slightly less well specced devices, Instagram should load faster and be responsive. The profile screen should load twice as fast and with an app that's been halved in size, overall performance should be faster, too.

As well as functioning more speedily, it should look sleeker, with simplified visuals that make better use of screen space on smaller handsets and keep navigation easy with a rearranged layout. Instead of just being nice to use for people with the latest handsets, Instagram looks to be pushing its global appeal.

Our World Book Day giveaway has a winner!

What do The Casual Vacancy, Room on the Broom, and Darwinia have in common? Apart from being books, that is. They're all being read by people who entered our World Book Day giveaway. And what's special about The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau? That's being read by Neil Corman, who's our official prize winner! No, the winner wasn't selected on his book choice. I plugged all of the entrants' names into Random Thing Picker and it picked one for me.

Congratulations Neil! If you drop me an email with your details, I can arrange for a super-special pre-publication copy of Social Photography to be dispatched to you post-haste. And thank you to everyone who entered and to the Ilex Press for providing the prize. I do enjoy these little treats!

The Flickr-Getty deal is no more. What now?

A communication sent to all photographers who have licensed their photos using the Flickr-Getty partnership has leaked, detailing that the agreement between the image sharing site and the stock house has reached its term and will not be renewed. For five years, editors from Getty have been able to trawl Flickr looking for photos that they think might sell and contact their photographers directly, giving them the option to license their images through Getty. The contract is now up, and while it won't be renewed, Getty hasn't ruled out working with Flickr again:

Our original agreement reached its end, and while we continue to be open to working with Yahoo!/Flickr, we do not have a new agreement at this time. We will continue to work with the tens of thousands of contributors and license the existing content.

So what does this mean for Flickr contributors who've licensed images through Getty, and what does it mean for Flickr?

Nothing changes for Flickr photographers whose images are licensed through Getty already. Just because the Flickr-Getty contract has concluded, the photographer-Getty contracts won't be terminated. The Flickr collection will be renamed 'Moment' and will include images from Getty's new iPhone app of the same name. Combined with its freshly signed agreement with EyeEm, Getty looks to be venturing deeper into the mobile photography market.

As for Flickr, and by extension Yahoo!, this presents them with the possibility of licensing images themselves. Yes, this is pure speculation on my part, but it isn't beyond the realms of imagination. An easy licensing option administered by Flickr or Yahoo! based on an archive of in excess of five billion images might be attractive to its users, attractive to image buyers, and offers Yahoo! the chance of some much-needed income. It would take more than feather to knock me down if Flickr announced an in-house licensing deal for its users within the near future.

(Headsup to Amateur Photographer)

Vine knows it when it sees it and chooses to ban porn

Porn: some people love it; some people are digusted by it, but we all know it when we see it, right? It's this 'we know it when we see it' approach that Vine is adopting with its new policy covering sexually explicit content on its social netowrk. Vine reckons that explicit sexual content isn't a 'good fit' for its community so its users will no longer be able to post looping six-and-half second videos of it. Vine doesn't, however, want to be seen as too prudish. Unlike Facebook and its draconian 'no nipples' policy, there's no banishment of bare breasts, and content showing nursing mothers, Femen protestors, and nude models will remain welcome on Vine. In fact, Vine estimates that in excess of 99% of its users won't be directly affected by the policy change. For anyone who violates it, however, the punishment is account suspension until the offending material is removed. Persistent posting of forbidden content will result in permanent account suspension. The changes are laid out in a blog post and a specific sexual content FAQ.

Vine maintains that it doesn't have anything against sexually explicit content, just that it would prefer not to be the source of it. Doubtless the App Store and its policies prefer that it wouldn't be the source of it, too.

University of Cambridge seeks cash to buy Captain Scott's Antarctic negatives

When Captain Scott ventured to the Antarctic on his ill-fated polar expedition in 1911, it wasn't just about racing Roald Amundsen to the South Pole. He was accompanied by a strong scientific team, and Herbert Ponting, the official expedition photographer. Ponting's images of the expedition are well-known, but he also tutored Captain Scott in the use of a camera and several other members of the team had cameras, too. The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, which is a sub-department of the University, holds Herbert Ponting’s glass plate negatives and his presentation album from the same expedition, the prints and albums of all the other expedition members equipped with a camera, and the remaining prints of Scott's photographs in its archives. Together, they form the most comprehensive photographic record of the expedition held anywhere in the world.

What the Institute doesn't hold, however, are 113 'lost' negatives of Scott's images. These negatives record his early attempts at photography under Ponting's direction as well as those he took of the team on the Southern Journey. In order to secure the negatives for the archive, the University needs to raise a total of £275,000 before 25 March 2014, after which point they will be sold at auction.

The university has already succeeded in raising £75,000, and is asking for donations to reach its £275,000 goal. Explorer Sir Ranulf Fiennes explains why the negatives are regarded as important for the archive: 'The negatives of Scott’s lost photographs are of major significance to the national heritage. Scott’s attainment of the South Pole and his subsequent death captured the public imagination on its discovery in 1913 and continues to exercise an extraordinary fascination. The negatives are a key component of the expedition’s material legacy as an object and as a collection in themselves.'

He speaks at greater length in this video:

Anyone able to make a donation can do so here.

Reflecta's smartphone scanner

Reflecta has just announced a new Smartphone Scanner that allows you to easily (and fairly cheaply) digitise your prints and negatives to your smartphone for easy sharing. I quite like the sound of this. Capable of digitising 35mm negatives as well as 6 by 4" and 5 by 3" prints, the Smartphone Scanner holds your phone in a cradle while the iPhotojet app works to capture the print or negative that's been inserted into the holder. Once the image has been scanned, you can adjust its brightness and colour before saving it or sharing it to Facebook or by email.

It's compatible with iPhone 4 / 4S / 5 / 5S and Galaxy S2 / S3 / S4 and is supplied with all appropriate cradles. You can power it by USB or battery and it's supplied with four AA batteries, a USB cable, holders and a Quick Start Guide.

The Smartphone Scanner is being distributed by Kenro in the UK and Ireland, and will cost about £40.

EyeEm and Getty Images team up to licence mobile photos

You might be thinking that EyeEm, a mobile photo-sharing app, and Getty Images, the international stock agency, have been in the news enough this week. On Sunday EyeEm announced that it is establishing EyeEm Market, a means for its members to sell their mobile photos and today Getty Images unveiled its new embed feature that will make 35 million images free for use in non-commercial contexts. Now, though, they've teamed up to announce that Getty Images will be making EyeEm images available for licensing across its platforms, including iStock by Getty Images and a bespoke Getty collection. For EyeEm, this places their users' images on a huge stage with millions of potential buyers for royalty-free and rights-managed licences. As Florian Meissner, EyeEm's CEO said: '... now because of our partnership with Getty Images and their extensive distribution network, members of our community will have a great opportunity to earn revenue from their creative work.'

From Getty's perspective, Craig Peters, SVP Content, Getty Images says: 'We are seeing increased demand for fresh, original content that reflects the world as consumers see it, so we are pleased to be partnering with EyeEm to open up this collection to our customers and to provide this talented community of photographers with a new revenue stream.'

Whatever anyone might wish to say about the death of professional photography, Getty perceives that there's a need for mobile images and EyeEm is able to fill it. We can't make it go away by ignoring it, so we might as well embrace it.

It's exciting times for Getty, EyeEm, and mobile photographers.

It's World Book Day so we're giving away books to celebrate!

Thanks for your entries, everyone! It was just a one-day give-away to celebrate World Book Day and we're now closed to submissions. In celebration of the marvellous World Book Day our lovely publishers the Ilex Press has offered up some free books for Photocritic readers. It even includes a pre-publication copy of my newest book Social Photography which isn't yet available in the shops. How rather awesome!

To enter our little giveaway, we want you to do one simple thing: tell us what book you're reading at the moment. It's probably easiest just to leave a comment here on Photocritic. But you can enter via Twitter if you prefer.

If you want to enter via Twitter, send a tweet to me (@SmallAperture), Haje (@Photocritic), or Ilex (@Ilex_Photo) and include the hashtags #WorldBookDay and #IlexGiveaway. (We'll need the hashtags to collate the entries, so don't forget them!)

Winners will be selected at random. I'll stick a pin in a list or something.

Anyway, to get the ball rolling, I'm currently reading Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson. It's hilarious.

Getty takes a huge leap and makes millions of images free to embed for non-commercial use

Overnight, Getty Images has announced some big news for small users of images: a large selection of its image library will opened up for free use in non-commerical contexts. Photos will be made available using an embed code that credits the photographer and links back to Getty. Following from Getty's metadata deal with Pinterest in October last year, this is a clear indication that Getty has realised that the photographic landscape has changed and that in order to stay ahead of the game—where images are now common currency—it needs to evolve its models and practices.

As Jonathan Klein, Getty's co-founder and CEO put it: 'Whether via a blog, website or social media, everyone is a publisher and increasingly visually literate. Innovation and disruption are the foundation of Getty Images, and we are excited to open up our vast and growing image collection for easy, legal sharing in a new way that benefits our content contributors and partners, and advances our core mission to enable a more visually-rich world.'

Not all of its images will be embeddable, however, and photographers won't be given an opt-out. If you license your images via Getty, it's Getty which decides if they're to be free-to-use or not.

The two questions people are likely to be asking then are: how does this benefit Getty and how does it benefit photographers?

In many respects, it's the same answer for the two different questions. Images were already being used without a licence or without a fee being paid. Getty and photographers were fighting a losing battle, especially when images were used by small-time blogs and non-profits. By introducing a means to track use and ensure accreditation for free-to-use images, they can control their content better. It also opens up the possibility of monetisation options at a later date. The theory goes that it's better to give away something when you've little hope of making a profit from it, but keep tabs on it, than it is to try to keep content locked up but have it stolen and roaming free anyway.

When your pictures are being used legally for free, it makes it easier to ensure that they're paid for when they should be, too. Don't forget, this deal only covers images that are put to non-commercial use. Getty still want their fees from commercial enterprises.

However, I do anticipate a great many photographers being unhappy if not that their images can be licensed for free in non-commercial contexts, but that they don't have the opportunity to decide how their images can and cannot be used. It rather flies in the face of the notion that we don't work for exposure. I expect that from Getty's persepctive, it needed to be an all-or-nothing approach to ensure that the new venture got off the ground. Regardless, Getty will always demand its pound flesh, whether from image users or image makers. It might be a risk, but it's certainly a calculated one that Getty expects will reap dividends.

You can check out the embed feature here and ensure that you're making correct use of the free-to-use model by checking Getty's terms and conditions.

The art of scientific photography at the Cambridge Science Festival

The Cambridge Science Festival opens on Monday and as part of its incredibly diverse and packed programme, it has teamed up with the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) and Dr Stefanie Reichelt, a scientist at the University of Cambridge's Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, to focus on the science of photography and the promotion of scientific photography. They're providing a range of talks, lectures, demonstrations and exhibitions, with something that should appeal to everyone. Saturday 15 March will be devoted to the subject of imaging and imagery. It starts with a talk asking just how many megapixels you really need and precisely how many do you really get and ends with a talk about developing the imaging tools of tomorrow. This goes via talks on colour vision, high- speed photography, medical imaging and images, 3D and stereo imaging, and whole lot more. The Camper Obscura will also be on-site that weekend. Yes, as its name suggests, its a camera obscura in a camper van.

As well that day devoted to photography, there are other events related to images taking place over the course of the festival: the life sciences poster and image exhibition, the Inspiring images: engineering captured on camera exhibition, and a digital recreation of the earliest known colour photographic technique and an exploration of what happens when you collect the different elements of the colour spectrum separately.

All of the details of all of the events are available on the Cambridge Science Festival website. Specific details about the photography-oriented events is here. You don't need to book and the talks are free, but it is requested that you register for the morning or the afternoon session.

Maybe I'll see you there?

Photo-sharing app EyeEm launches EyeEm Market - a sales platform for mobile images

Before Instagram hit the app store with its mission to square crop all of our photos and apply one of a dizzying array of filters, there was a Berlin-based start-up called EyeEm that was offering mobile photographers the opportunity to share their images and get to know each other. Instagram might've grabbed the headlines and the Facebook swag, but EyeEm didn't go anywhere. EyeEm quietly grew its network of users to over 10 million and concentrated on helping them to get the most out of their mobile photography with challenges, blog post tutorials, competitions, and allowing mobile photographers to connect with each other. That's paid off and it's allowed EyeEm to start on its next venture: EyeEm Market. It's what it sounds like, a stock house for mobile images on EyeEm. EyeEm users were invited to join by email this morning and the plan is to launch in late spring 2014.

Terms for members have already been set out: 'You always remain the copyright holder of your images and make 50% net revenue from each photo you sell.'

While EyeEm hasn't disclosed the details of the potential buyers it has approached, it's confident that it could be helping its users to take their first steps into a new branch of the professional image market. To that end, it's published some image guidelines for those who are hoping to make some sales. This includes no pets, no plants in pots, and no selfies (unless they're particularly unusual); and to concentrate on the holy trinity: business, health, and family. Not forgetting geo-tagged landscapes and images that can be hard to otherwise get.

Is this another nail in the coffin of professional photography, showing how everyone can now be a photographer and make money from their smartphone cameras? Regard the situation from one stand-point, and yes, that is exactly what EyeEm Market means. But think about it from a slightly different perspective and it demonstrates how the image market place is changing.

Photo-buyers want mobile images. They're part of the photographic landscape now—part of the zeitgeist, if you will—and we can't put the genie back in the bottle. Instead, we have to embrace it. If we can present photo-buyers with an adequate means of accessing and paying for the images that they want, there's a chance it will drive up quality and ensure that the creative industries are rewarded adequately. It's a damn sight better than images being used without recognition and without recompense because there's no means of buying them.

We can't ignore the market; we have to seize all the opportunties that it presents.

And EyeEm has seized its opportunities and shown that there's more than one way to make a buck from photo-sharing apps.

St Jude be praised! The Canon EOS M won an award!

It seems scarcely believeable but the much-derided Canon EOS M has managed to bag itself an award. I can hear you muttering and imagine you scratching your heads quizzically: just what was deemed award-worthy about the mirror-less camera with criminally slow auto-focusing speeds and risibly bad balance, and by whom? It would seem that the iF Design Award jury considered that its user interface was deserving of the Product interface: iF Communication Design Award 2014.

To give the EOS M its due, while its auto-focus was referred to as 'glacial', just about every review that I have read has lauded its touchscreen interface. At least Canon got something right there, then.

Canon also happened to pick up three other iF awards for its cameras: the 5D mark III, 100D, and the Powershot N. There were more its camcorders, printers, and projectors.

Time-lapses aren't just for videos

If you were under the impression that time-lapse sequences are the preserve of condensing the observation of periods of slow change into something that can be watched in a few minutes, photographer Mike Bons might encourage you to think again. He used the time-lapse technique to capture the precise moment that he proposed marriage to his girlfriend Erin: a single moment of immense change. Given that Erin said yes, I suppose we should call her Mike's fiancée now!

Mike succeeded in setting up the proposal and shoot with only a marginal amount of deception. Being a photographer, Erin and Mike don't tend to have very many photos of them together: someone is always behind the camera. By suggesting a photoshoot of the two of them together, he had every opportunity to capture the moment without giving away the game and getting some photos of them together. By creating a time-lapse of the proposal, he wouldn't need to worry about getting his timing right, either. Cunning!

Having bought the ring and settled on St Valentine's Day as D-Day, it was time to do the deed at Meyer’s Pier, in Belleville, Ontario, with their car's headlights backlighting the scene.

Mike set up his Canon 6D with a 70-200mm lens set at 175mm, manually focused on the point they'd be standing, and an exposure of 1/80 second, ƒ/3.2, ISO 3200. He set his time-lapse device to record one photo every second, and then it was a case of getting Erin out of the car, where she was keeping warm, and getting down on one knee.

The next step was all in Erin's hands!

After she'd said yes, and they'd got all the photos they wanted, I rather hope that they spent a romantic evening together before he embarked on his post-processing.

To create the final image, Mike selected his favourite shot from the time-lapse sequence and stitched it together with some panorama shots that he'd taken when he was setting up. This was to ensure that he achieved the field-of-view that he wanted along with the depth-of-field that he wanted from his settings of 175mm and ƒ/3.2.

Tah-daa! One life-changing instant captured by time-lapse. And many felicitations to Mike and Erin.

Oh, and seeing as Mike is a photographer, you might want to check out his website for his other photos that don't necessarily involve proposing to his girlfriend.

(Headsup to Triggertrap)

More editing power for Google+ on Android

Google has introduced some Snapseed-like editing tools to its Android version of Google+ today, as well as what it calls 'non-destructive editing in the cloud' and new ways to view your images. The updates to the editing tools themselves are fairly basic: crop, rotate, one-touch filters, and enhancements that are familiar to Snapseed users, for example Retrolux and HDR-scape. They're the sorts of tools that you'd expect in a basic editing suite. 'Non-destructive editing in the cloud' is a touch more exciting, however. While it might be a horribly cumbersome term, 'non-destructive editing in the cloud' should make for a far more integrated photo-editing and sharing experience for Google+ users. It is designed to allow users to edit their images across different devices, and being non-destructive, start over if required. This means you can start to edit a photo on your desktop at home, continue your processing on phone on your way to work, and finish it off at your other-half's on their tablet. If you decide you don't like what you've done at any point, you can revert to the original before sharing on Google+.

As for the new ways to view images, the 'All' view allows you to see all of your photo library, whether on the device that you're using or backed up to the cloud, and you can sort them by date. If you've tens of thousands of images, you won't be seeing all of them in the 'All' view yet, but they're on their way.

Whatever you think of Google+ as a social network, it's always worth keeping it in mind as an image storage solution, especially with this integrated approach to editing and filing. You don't have to share your images there if you don't want to.

(Headsup to Engadget, further details from Todd Kennedy at Google)

Juxtaposition: London past and present in pictures

I'm a big fan of the Museum of London. It panders to my penchant for Romans, hosts very interesting exhibitions, and has a great app to guide you around the city itself: Streetmuseum. To mark the launch of version 2.0 of Streetmuseum, the museum has released 16 gorgeous, ghostly images of the city, merging past with present. You can look over the Thames from Tower Bridge, from the 1920s on the left and the 2010s on the right; or stand on the corner of Long Acre and Neal Street (just about where Marks and Sparks is now), looking towards Covent Garden Tube station, 2010 on the left, 1930 on the right. It's wonderful to see how much London has, and hasn't changed.

The new version of the app has had 100s more city locations added to it, meaning that you can select a destination from a London map or let yourself be geo-tagged to your present location. Then a historical image of London will appear on your screen and you can expand it to learn about where you are. Most of these are in central London, but some are in its outer reaches, too.

The photos range in date from 1868 to 2003 and were taken by photographers including Henry Grant, Wolfgang Suschitsky, Roger Mayne, and George Davison Reid.

The app is free to download to your iPhone and is available now.

MWC review, with a photographic bent

All the big announcements have been made, now it's a case of rounding up and winding down from the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona this year. There have been a few new smartphone announcements and some interesting apps have come to the fore that might interest photographers. Here's a swift review.

Samsung Galaxy S5

The big news is that this one is waterproof. No more worrying about whipping it out to take a photo in the rain. The S4 had a decent 13 megapixel rear-facing camera, which has been bumped up to 16 megapixels in the S5. The front-facing camera still sits at 2 megapixels. It can shoot 4K video at 30 frames-per-second and comes equipped with HDR and selective focus functionality.

Post-shot focusing means that the camera takes two photos every time you release the shutter and you can choose from a background that's in or out of focus. Samsung reckons that the S5's auto-focusing speed is super-fast, at 0.3 seconds.

It also comes equipped with a reflector-integrated flash LED. What's that mean exactly? Supposedly it will ensure a wider field of view better, allow for better photos, whether day or night, and should mean that everyone in a photo, not just those in the centre of the frame, are illuminated by the flash.

The S5 is due to go on sale in April this year and will cost in the region of £550.

Sony Xperia Z2

This one is also waterproof. It also has a higher resolution count than the Samsung Galaxy S5, with a 20.7 megapixel, 1/2.3-type Exmor RS for mobile CMOS image sensor, and is capable of recording 4K video and enjoys SteadyShot image stabilisation, too.

The Z2 comes pre-loaded with a bundle of camera apps, including timeshift video (a slow-motion effect); creative effect; background defocus; AR effect (augmented reality effects); and Vine4. There's also a dedicated camera button to help when you're shooting underwater.

The Xperia Z2 should be available in March 2014.

The Nokia X-series

Nokia announced its X-series of phones, which run Android rather than Windows. The X, X+, and XL are budget phones and they appear to have cameras to match. There's nothing as exciting as the Lumia or PureView technology going on in these.

Lenovo's DOit apps

As well as a new tablet, Lenovo unvelied five new apps that aim to make your digital life easier by simplifying data management. Called the DOit apps, they break down to: SHAREit, SECUREit, SYNCit, SNAPit and SEEit. SHAREit, SNAPit, and SEEit (the proliferation of caps is getting tiresome now) are those of interest to photographers, with SHAREit there to transfer data, including images between devices easily.

SHAREit comes preloaded on all new Lenovo Android tablets and smartphones and can be downloaded for free from Google Play. Come February, it will also be available for download from the Apple App Store for iPhone/iPad, as well as for Windows PCs.

SNAPit and SEEit are intended to work in tandem: SNAPit being a camera app and SEEit the gallery app. The camera app gives you a selection of functions including panorama and burst mode; the gallery app lets you categorise photos with the help of facial recognition software and has the now-to-be-expected gamut of filters and effects. These, however, are Lenovo-only.

Most Innovative Mobile App: CamMe by PointGrab

CamMe is a gesture-controlled remote shutter release app for use with iOS devices. From a distance of upto 16 feet from the phone, you can raise you hand, make a fist, and trigger a three-second timer. You can also use CamMe to take photo booth-style selfies, with three shots arranged in a film-strip.

It's free to download from the App Store.

UK's most innovative mobile technology company: Seene

Seene allows you to capture, view, and share 3D images from your iPhone. Why might you want to do that, you ask? Well the Seene team see it as great tool to help with 3D printing, or as a superior means for people to view products online.

Seene is free to download from the App Store.

Ember looks to light up iPhone photos

In December last year we featured a Kickstarter project called Lightstrap, which aimed to bring better lighting to smartphone photos. About a week into the campaign, Brick and Pixel, the team behind Lightstrap, pulled the plug on it citing that a better offer had come along. While quite a few people were disappointed by this decision, it has proved to be something of a small mercy for Ember, a new night photography tool that is looking for Kickstarter backing. Ember slides over your smartphone like a case. It comprises 56 LEDs and a diffuser, with the ability to adjust its brightness using a slider and a range of filters to control for light temperature. This should make for more evenly lit photos that don't wash-out people's skintones or give them evil red eyes.

By removing the top of the Ember case, it's possible to continue to use add-on lenses, for example Olloclip or Moment. It's charged through a micro-USB port, making it independent of your phone's battery, and capable of providing light for about four hours of shooting.

Embers are only iPhone 5 and 5S compatible, which is a shame for any other type of smartphoneographer; it's not as if we don't take photos or would appreciate some better lighting options. If, however, you're an iPhone 5 or 5S owner and interested, you can help make the Ember happen with an early-bird Kickstarter pledge of $59. Should you miss out on that level, it's $79 for one Ember.

Ember needs to raise $30,000 to make it a reality; with 25 days to go, it's raised just over $4,000. At this rate, it's touch-and-go if it makes it.

Canon's rumoured withdrawal from the compact market is no great loss

It is only a rumour, but there are suggestions that Canon will soon cease production of lower-end, sub-$200 point-and-shoot cameras. Given the steady erosion of compact camera sales and their inability to compete against the convenience and ubiquity of the smartphone, it's hardly surprising. It's also a step taken already by Olympus by Fujifilm. And just as we stated in the cases of both Olympus and Fujifilm, this is a good thing. By my count since January 2012, Canon has released twelve IXUS model cameras and ten Powershot A-series cameras. These are typically regarded as its cheaper and cheerier models. They tend to range between £80 and £180, although the odd few come in much higher than that, have more than enough megapixels to keep the pushiest salesperson smiling, a decent optical zoom range, the ability to record video, and sometimes are blessed with image stabilisation. Unlike Canon's dSLR range, which comprises a controlled range of cameras with clear spec expectations at given price-points, it's verging on the impossible to discern one compact model from another. Their variations in spec are so slender that they all merge into one rainbow-coloured haze.

Herein is their downfall. First, they're not something that you'd go out to buy when you have a wirelessly connected smartphone in your pocket. There's not really enough value-added to justify the outlay. Second: when there are so many different cameras with so little to differentiate one from another, it's little wonder that consumers' eyes glaze over and they decide to stick with what they now know: their iPhones and their Samsung Galaxys. Choice is a good thing, but sometimes offering too much choice, without making obvious why it's needed, is self-defeating.

Let's not forget, that little tot-up of cameras didn't include any of Canon's Powershot SX range, which covers the superzooms, its D-series rugged cameras, the S- and G-series, which are its high-end compacts, and the quite-frankly-ridiculous N-series.

If anything can convince you that Canon really ought give up on the definitely-fled smartphone crowd, it's the N-series of cameras. They smacked of desperation, of designers under pressure to produce something 'young and funky and with-it' in an attempt to recapture a market long since gone, and engineers who'd rather be working on any other project than that one. Yes, they are out of the 'sub-$200' bracket of cameras that are expected to be axed, but they have no place in the range, either.

By relieving itself of the burden of the cheap end of the compact camera spectrum, Canon can refocus its attentions on the areas where there is hope, where there is potential, where there really is a market. Most definitely on its dSLRs, that seem to have gone off of the boil ever so slightly of late. Perhaps on its higher-end compact cameras, which are still selling and I believe show that compacts do still have a place in the canon of cameras, but could benefit from some innovation and development. And maybe even in the mirror-less division, where the EOS M has been so painfully disappointing.

This shouldn't be regarded as a move of panic or despair on Canon's part. I actually think it's rather mature. It shows how it might be beginning to analyse the market, to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and to come to terms with the idea of an evolving photography world.

ExpoExpress: guerilla photo exhibiting

With so many photos being taken every day, and only a fraction of those making onto Facebook or Flickr or 500px, and even fewer of those really being looked at, how can we give our images a better chance of being seen? Especially by people who don't necessarily hang around the usual photo-sharing sites. It was a question that was puzzling Sydney-based photographer Manuel Caminero. He also wanted to make better use of an 18-hour lay-over in Dubai when he'd already seen most of the sites. (I'd take an abra over the creek into old Dubai to explore the backstreets and pick up some street food. Always worthwhile.)

# ExpoExpress from Manuel Caminero on Vimeo.

His solution? A sort of guerilla photo exhibition. He printed out a selection of his Australian lifestyle images and stuck them up (temporarily) in a public place in Dubai. Then he waited and watched. To his surprise, there was a generally positive reaction to his little project. People would stop and take a look, and when he had a word with them, they liked it. So he did it again. And again. And again.

And he reckons that you should give it a go, too. He calls it ExpoExpress: Print off a compelling series of images, find a place to pin them up in public, and then observe people's reactions to your work.

Just make sure that you don't litter. Or menace. Or cause any kind of obstruction.