Photo news: Kodak's back and forth and McCartney's Beatles photos

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The cover picture of this column was not taken on the current thunderstorm weekend, but two weeks earlier, when most people in Germany were moaning about heat in excess of 30 degrees. However, at the Wacken Open Air, WOA, in Schleswig-Holstein, the most important heavy metal festival in the world, you can hardly rely on stable weather conditions. And since we already wrote about the weather resistance of cameras in the previous issue of Fotonews, this photo is a small indication that modern cameras can often withstand more than you might think.

It was taken with a well-maintained Nikon D750 with Tamron's G2 version of the 70-200mm zoom with f/2.8, which is also a third-party lens that some people still don't trust. The author stood with it for a good half hour in the heavy rain before and during the "Saltation Mortis" concert. The show absolutely had to be photographed because the German medieval rockers were celebrating their 25th anniversary with all kinds of bombast. After drying off with a towel and a night in the car, suspended from the camera strap, the camera and lens were dry again. They have been working perfectly ever since, just as they did in the downpour.

Even professionals often don't trust weatherproofing

This is actually to be expected, because Nikon and Tamron describe the devices as weatherproof. A glance at the improvised rain covers, some made from the cut-off sleeves of thin plastic ponchos, shows that many photographers do not rely on this information. These include pro bodies such as Sony's Alphas, which should withstand the rain even without a cover. More on the conditions of festival photography, and what comes out of it and why, can be found soon in further articles at c't Fotografie.

Kodak wants to continue

Away from such experiments, which of course always take place at your own risk, there has also been some confusion surrounding Kodak this week. The sources are linked below, as the situation is still not completely transparent. First, Kodak said in a mandatory disclosure (8K form, PDF) to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that its future was uncertain due to high debts. Some media – quite rightly took this – as a warning of impending bankruptcy.

Shortly afterwards, Kodak rowed back and said that there were "misleading media reports". However, this is not in a stock exchange document, but only on the company's own website. Nevertheless, the figure that is supposed to create confidence is also mentioned: In the last financial quarter, the company only spent 3 million US dollars from its own cash reserves to maintain operations. In view of the company's 477 million debts, this seems really low. And Kodak does not want to touch its pension fund until its obligations have been met. This has been the subject of much speculation. Petapixel has written down how all this came about, not chronologically, but clearly.

Canon continues to produce discontinued PowerShots after all

The future of two popular compact cameras from Canon is now also clear. As already reported here several times, despite competition from smartphones, small cameras are experiencing a revival. As a result, Canon is once again accepting orders from resellers for the PowerShot G7 X Mark III and PowerShot SX740 HS. This is explained in a support message on the company's Japanese website. Both cameras, which were already in short supply, and the Mark III was launched six years ago were labeled as "no longer available" in May. Apparently Canon had, to use a phrase, "listened to the market".

Paul McCartney's Beatlemania exhibition on tour

A Beatle doesn't need that. Paul McCartney, one of the most successful musicians of all time, can certainly be said to have been acting on his own initiative rather than out of economic necessity for decades. Or: when you have achieved everything as an artist, you can devote yourself more freely to what you really want to do. And after more than sixty years, McCartney is now showing what he photographed at the end of 1963 and the beginning of 1964. In these three months, from December to February, the Beatles went from club gigs in northern England to the Ed Sullivan Show on US television. The basis was the second studio album "With the Beatles", which became a worldwide hit.

Shortly before this, what the media referred to as "Beatlemania" began in 1963. Today we would probably call it "hype", but how Paul McCartney still managed to take some sophisticated photographs during hundreds of dates, live performances and always having to spread good humor will probably remain his secret. At least some of the pictures can now be seen online. They were presented in the form of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in the UK in 2023 and can now be seen in the USA in an apparently expanded version of almost 300 photos.

The exhibition will be on display at the Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco until October 5, 2025. From November 6, 2025, it will take place in the self-proclaimed music capital of the USA, Nashville, in the "First Art Museum". Why is all this in a photo column? The two previous links were our recommendation for a long read on a Sunday evening because of the photos of McCartney with and about the Beatles as a first-hand contemporary document.

(nie)