Digital Camera Industry Research Articles

Early entrants attract better customer evaluations: evidence from the digital camera industry

PurposeIn addition to pioneering, empirical work on entry order increasingly addresses fast followers and laggards and the potential advantages they are able to capture. There is also a growing consensus in the academia, that current measures of firm performance used in the entry order literature to study these advantages are inadequate. This study analyzes the relationship between entry order and customer evaluations, which, depicting the performance of the firm's products in the market, are used as a proxy for firm performance.Design/methodology/approachThe study is set in the digital camera industry, analyzing entries into each new technology level, in terms of the sensor resolution of compact and bridge cameras. The complete dataset consisted of 1,816 digital camera models introduced between January 1996 and December 2017. The data are analyzed using hierarchical multiple linear regression.FindingsThe study finds evidence of early-mover advantage for the compact product category. In the compact camera consumer market, both first-movers and fast followers outperform late movers. Furthermore, the difference in performance in comparison to laggards is greater for first-movers than for fast followers. However, in the bridge category which consists of a more heterogeneous set of products, no significant entry-order effects are detected.Originality/valueThe results clearly indicate that there exists an early mover advantage. Furthermore, the results are not consistent across different product categories within an industry; hence, caution needs to be exercised when analyzing industry dynamics and entry order effects. Finally, our novel conceptualization of firm performance measured as online customer evaluation add new opportunities to investigate firm success

Low Cost Edge Sensing for High Quality Demosaicking.

Digital cameras that use Color Filter Arrays (CFA) entail a demosaicking procedure to form full RGB images. To digital camera industry, demosaicking speed is as important as demosaicking accuracy, because camera users have been accustomed to viewing captured photos instantly. Moreover, the cost associated with demosaicking should not go beyond the cost saved by using CFA. For this purpose, we revisit the classical Hamilton-Adams (HA) algorithm, which outperforms many sophisticated techniques in both speed and accuracy. Our analysis shows that the HA pipeline is highly efficient to exploit the originally captured data, but its oversimplified inter- and intra-channel smoothness formulation hinders its accuracy. We therefore propose a very low cost edge sensing scheme, which guides demosaicking by a logistic functional of the difference between directional variations. We extensively compare our algorithm with 27 demosaicking algorithms by running their open source codes on benchmark datasets. Compared to methods of similar computational cost, our method achieves substantially higher accuracy; Whereas compared to methods of similar accuracy, our method has significantly lower cost. On test images of currently popular resolution, the quality of our algorithm is comparable to top performers, yet our speed is tens of times faster. Source code for this work will be released with paper publication.

Mitigating a Liability of Ferment:Corporate Strategy as an Enabler of Survival in Eras of Ferment

We introduce the term “liability of ferment” (LOF) – “the threat posed to firm survival due to the absence of emerging dominant design features from a firm’s design” during eras of ferment (EOF). Drawing on the knowledge based view (KBV), we propose that the corporate strategy of a firm – represented in this paper by corporate development activities (CDA- acquisitions, alliances and internal development) is a knowledge accessing adaptive mechanism during an EOF that moderates the LOF – survival relationship. Using longitudinal data from the digital camera industry between 1991–2006, we find that while inter-industry acquisition experience, internal development (R&D investments & capital expenditure) weakened the negative effect of the LOF on survival, inter-industry alliancing strengthened it. These results show that different CDA have different effects on firm survival during an EOF implying that contingent on the choices made by managers, a firm’s corporate strategy can increase or decrease the likelihood of survival. Our results have implications for scholarly work at the intersection of the corporate strategy, KBV and EOF research streams and are topical for the practice of corporate strategy given that more than 50% of the Fortune 500 firms operate in industries that have experienced or are experiencing EOF.

3D Photogrammetric Reconstruction by Drone Scanning for FE Analysis and Crack Pattern Mapping of the “Bridge of the Towers”, Spoleto

Technological advances in the digital camera industry and computing resources make the use of photogrammetry a very fast, low-cost, contactless and non-destructive technique. It can represent a good alternative to obtain 3D information for monitoring and conservation of cultural heritage assets, especially where it is not possible to use 3D laser scanners and also in situations where areas to be inspected are not easily accessible [1]. Resolution generally depends on the number of images, their quality and the level of overlap between them, as well as hardware and software capabilities. Starting from 2D aerial or terrestrial photographic images, photogrammetry allows to reconstruct a 3D model in the form of a "point cloud" and also to derive accurate 3D measurements of large architectural elements.This paper is about stereo-photogrammetric scanning by drone performed by MENCI software s.r.l. aimed at the definition of the state of conservation of the “Bridge of the Towers” in Spoleto and its long term preservation without building scaffoldings. It was performed within the RoMA (Resilience enhancement of a Metropolitan Area) project, through an agreement between the “Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development” (ENEA) and the “Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities” (MIBACT).Photogrammetric scanning and FE modelling were applied within the project together with many other monitoring techniques in order to assess the bridge cracks pattern and its structural health by a multidisciplinary approach that allows their mutual validation [2].As one of the most important problems in the use of photogrammetric 3D reconstruction is the considerable demand in terms of hardware and software resources for images processing and data storage, thanks to the HPC (High Performance Computing) resources provided by the CRESCO infrastructure (Research Computational Centre on Complex Systems), it was possible to analyse and process a large amount of high-resolution photos in order to detect the crack pattern and to assess the actual damage state to be monitored over time [3].

19-3:Invited Paper: Computational 3D Imaging - PSF Engineering for Depth from Defocus -

A digital camera industry has been developed in a decade and has a lot of applications equipped with PC and mobile phone etc. However, optics and basic principle of image projection is not changed in latest digital camera. Computational imaging is a new research area for developing new imaging strategy for combining optics and processing of the digital imaging. Camera optics, such as lens and aperture, make an image on a sensor. The quality of the image is decided by the optical transfer function called point spread function (PSF). Computation imaging engineers the PSF for imaging and produces improved quality or function of the image after processing. I will introduce some examples of the PSF engineering methods; coded aperture, focus sweep in computation imaging, and show the coding improve the depth estimation by Depth from Defocus (DFD) application.

A Novel Image Identifier Generation Method Using Luminance and Location

It has been more than 40 years since the first digital imaging sensor was invented. For the last four decades, image acquisition functionality has continuously been improved, in terms of quality, size and cost. Consequently the digital imaging techniques started to be utilized in the digital camera industry and various component applications as well. According to the trend of the current applications of digital imaging, images are being produced not only by the conventional mechanism, such as regular camera, but also by the applications with digital image acquisition functionality, who aim to better understand the circumstances using an analysis of images. As a consequence of this trend, the amount of images created by diverse image related devices is immeasurably huge. Moreover the utilization of such voluminous amount of images demands a management system that can support information management operations, such as search, contents duplication and modification detection. These operations can be efficiently and effectively processed when the image related operations are performed by the usage of distinctive values, not by the image processing operations which require much more processing time. In order to meet the satisfaction of the requirement, we have been studied approaches that can utilize the line segments and the luminance areas. However, those approaches are disadvantage in the case of that an image contains the relatively large regions with sparse edges or stationary luminance. In order to resolve such circumstances, in this paper, we present a more improved approach, in the perspective of cost and requirement satisfaction. The proposed method mainly exploits luminance areas and pixel location, so that the produced image identifiers could satisfy one-to-one relationship between images and identifiers. With experimental evaluations, we demonstrate that our approach is most favorable considering cost-effectiveness and efficiency.

디지털 영화제작을 위한 레드 원 카메라의 활용성 연구

본 논문은 새롭게 개발된 레드 원(RED ONE)카메라의 장단점들을 분석하고 분석된 자료를 기존 디지털 카메라와 비교 했다. 영화제작시스템이 디지털영화제작시스템으로 전환하면서 기존 필름카메라 회사인 Arriflex도 디지털 카메라인 Arri D21을 개발했고 고화질 디지털 카메라의 대명사인 Sony도 CineAlta F35를 통해 디지털 영화제작의 선도적인 역할을 수행하고 있다. 이러한 디지털 영화제작의 기술적 진보속에서 레드 원 카메라의 등장은 필름메이커들에게 새로운 가능성을 열어주고 있다. Arri 와 Sony 같이 긴 역사적 배경을 가진 회사와는 다르게 개발 시작부터 현재까지 디지털 영화제작 스테프들의 요구를 최대한 반영하여 디지털 카메라를 발전시킨다는 점이 레드 원만의 독특한 장점 중에 하나일 것이다. 사용자를 배려한 디지털카메라의 개발은 영화제작 환경에 파급효과를 가져왔으며 상업용 디지털영화제작을 주도하게 된 중요한 요인이 되었다. This paper is an analysis of the newly invented RED ONE camera and its various advantages, and also a comparison of the results with already existing digital cameras. As film production systems have been converting to digital systems, Arri Camera, one of the existing film camera companies, has invented and developed the Arri D21.Sony, the leader of the high definition digital camera industry, is also securing its role as the leader of digital filmmaking by introducing the CineAlta F-900 series. With these advances in digital filmmaking, the advent of the RED ONE camera opens doors to new possibilities to digital filmmakers. The development of digital cameras with thoughtful consideration for its users has Influenced the filmmaking environment immensely and has become the reason why it is playing a major role in digital filmmaking.

Interactive image-enhancement for the desktop printing of digital photographs

The proportion of digital photographs that are printed at home by the consumer continues to plummet, and commercial printers continue to capture an increasing share of this market. A principal reason for this trend is due to the frustration expressed by consumers over their disappointment with the quality of desk-top prints, and their inability to effect the outcome, since the tools provided by the desk-top printing industry are generally inadequate, technically complicated or ineffective. This dissatisfaction is compounded by the fact that the digital camera industry has not yet provided either image-acquisition technologies or post-processing facilities that allow the consumer to control the rendition of flesh tones and faces to personal preference, long known to be the key to consumer satisfaction. The author will describe the basic imaging principles brought together for a simple user-friendly solution to this problem, allowing custom selection of flesh tones by non-technical consumers on the basis of individual preference. Results from among those for a large number of typical consumer images will be demonstrated.

Binary Tree-based Generic Demosaicking Algorithm for Multispectral Filter Arrays

In this paper, we extend the idea of using mosaicked color filter array (CFA) in color imaging, which has been widely adopted in the digital color camera industry, to the use of multispectral filter array (MSFA) in multispectral imaging. The filter array technique can help reduce the cost, achieve exact registration, and improve the robustness of the imaging system. However, the extension from CFA to MSFA is not straightforward. First, most CFAs only deal with a few bands (3 or 4) within the narrow visual spectral region, while the design of MSFA needs to handle the arrangement of multiple bands (more than 3) across a much wider spectral range. Second, most existing CFA demosaicking algorithms assume the fixed Bayer CFA and are confined to properties only existed in the color domain. Therefore, they cannot be directly applied to multispectral demosaicking. The main challenges faced in multispectral demosaicking is how to design a generic algorithm that can handle the more diversified MSFA patterns, and how to improve performance with a coarser spatial resolution and a less degree of spectral correlation. In this paper, we present a binary tree based generic demosaicking method. Two metrics are used to evaluate the generic algorithm, including the root mean-square error (RMSE) for reconstruction performance and the classification accuracy for target discrimination performance. Experimental results show that the demosaicked images present low RMSE (less than 7) and comparable classification performance as original images. These results support that MSFA technique can be applied to multispectral imaging with unique advantages.

The design and evaluation of a generic method for generating mosaicked multispectral filter arrays

The technology of color filter arrays (CFA) has been widely used in the digital camera industry since it provides several advantages like low cost, exact registration, and strong robustness. The same motivations also drive the design of multispectral filter arrays (MSFA), in which more than three spectral bands are used. Although considerable research has been reported to optimally reconstruct the full-color image using various demosaicking algorithms, studies on the intrinsic properties of these filter arrays as well as the underlying design principles have been very limited. Given a set of representative spectral bands, the design of an MSFA involves two issues: the selection of tessellation mechanisms and the arrangement/layout of different spectral bands. We develop a generic MSFA generation method starting from a checkerboard pattern. We show, through case studies, that most of the CFAs currently used by the industry can be derived as special cases of MSFAs generated using the generic algorithm. The performance of different MSFAs are evaluated based on their intrinsic properties, namely, the spatial uniformity and the spectral consistency. We design two metrics, static coefficient and consistency coefficient, to measure these two parameters, respectively. The experimental results demonstrate that the generic algorithm can generate optimal or near-optimal MSFAs in both the rectangular and the hexagonal domains.

International Competitiveness of Japanese Digital Still Camera Industry from the Perspective of Industrial Characteristics

International Competitiveness of Japanese Digital Still Camera Industry from the Perspective of Industrial Characteristics

Measuring Technology and Pricing Differences in the Digital Still Camera Industry Using Improved Hedonic Price Estimation

In this paper we present an improved hedonic price regression for cases in which many implemented technological characteristics are to be included into a set of explanatory variables. This approach modifies Massy’s (1965) principal components regression in which original dummy explanatory variables corresponding to the characteristics are transformed into principal components. The selected subset which we obtained from the principal components regression was further orthogonally rotated by Kaiser’s (1957) varirnax criterion in order to reconstruct explanatory variables with a simple structure for the final hedonic regression, resulting in a more straightforward understanding of hedonic regression in the case of many explanatory variables. This approach is applied in order to compare different pricing strategies in the digital still camera industry, where the products contain 35 different technical attributes. The pricing strategies were measured using relative errors: differences between log actual prices and log quality-adjusted prices were identified using hedonic regression. The result shows that those companies, which have priced their products cheaper than the value of contained technologies, or than the prices of competitors, seem to have gained a larger market share.