London: Canon’s Autumn Collection was unveiled yesterday with an unusual runway experience: Before the company’s range of brand new cameras, scanners, all-in-ones and printers were announced British Vogue stylist Charlotte Stockdale presented an intricate outfit designed entirely using Canon’s range of printer papers.
Jon Penney, product intelligence manager, then went on to introduce 30 new products including digital SLRs for the advanced amateur and new additions to the IXUS lifestyle range as well as the advanced home user in the form of the PowerShot.
After Penney had talked through all the new products, Canon country manager for the UK and Ireland Alessandro Stanzani, talked about a revolution in creative expression involving the fast-growing areas of online social networking.
He said that Canon has been looking at content creation in the form of photo sharing site Flickr, and creative content that can be seen on YouTube, the popular video site.
Stanzani looked at emerging trends associated with taking, storing and using photographs. “People are no longer taking photos only for special occasions,” he said.
There has been an explosion in the number of photos taken and uploaded onto the internet on a daily basis: 3 million to be precise. On top of this, 65,000 videos are uploaded onto YouTube alone each day.
Stanzani said that the fifth-most popular online activity in the UK is uploading digital photographs. As more and more people continue to bring a compact digital camera to record the night out for upload on a social networking site the next day, Canon see a 3pc growth in the digital compact.
By 2010 there will be almost 17.9 billion images captured in the UK, said Alessandra, and almost half will be taken by digital compacts.
Canon launched two digital IXUS compact models, both equipped with face detection technology as well as an anti-blur fix.
Recent Flickr data reveals that out of the top five cameras used by site members, three are from Canon cameras.
Canon also unveiled the Pixma iP4500, replacing the iP4300, which is currently Europe’s bestselling inkjet printer. The iP4500 is 58pc faster than its predecessor and prints 10 by 15cm prints in photo lab quality pictures in 21 seconds.
Home photo printing is also gaining ground and Canon aim to be market leader in home photo printing as well as number two in the laser all-in-one market, predicting 23pc in all-in-one growth.
By Marie Boran
