Page 3 - Australian Photography Dec 2020

EDITOR’S NOTE
EDITORIAL
RIGHT: 2020 is probably a year most of us would be looking forward to putting behind us, but there have been a few positives.
THE YEAR THAT WAS
ESTABLISHED IN 1950
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MIKE O’CONNOR, EDITOR
Canon’s polarising EOS R5, and I’ll wager in 2021 more companies will follow suit. Watch this space.
Speaking of the future, it’s proving a little hard to re- main optimistic about Olympus’ fate. The announcement of the company’s sale in August was probably the biggest story in the photographic world this year. Yet despite the company doing an admirable job of trying to convince the public it will remain in safe hands, it’s hard not to think the writing is on the wall for one of the great imaging brands of our generation. It also raises awkward questions about the stability of the industry as a whole and whether we might see other camera companies downsize during the next year – fingers crossed I’m wrong on that one.
However, even with a few bad news stories this year, there is plenty to be optimistic about. I know from my own experience that lockdown gave me a pretty unique opportunity to focus on photography this year and I managed to pick up a few new skills while I was at it. Hopefully it’s been the same for you.
Finally, thank you for reading Australian Photography this year. We’ll be back next year, which is a bum- per year for the mag – our 80th year in print. It’s one we’re looking forward to celebrating with a few surprises planned along the way. Have a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and we’ll see you in 2021. ❂
E
ven if you were to include the Australian bush- fires or the November US election in the mix, there’s nothing that could even come close to
defining the year like the COVID-19 pandemic has done for 2020.
Around the time that COVID-19 first hit our shores in April, I wrote about the importance of supporting the little guys – the local camera retailers, photog- raphers running workshops, galleries, print studios and others who make up the beating heart of our photographic community here in Australia. Now, seven months on, the importance of this is greater than ever. As government support from the likes of JobKeeper begins to wind up, and loan deferrals end, the coming year will be particularly challenging for many small businesses. If our photographic industry is to emerge from the pandemic unscathed, it will desperately need us to get behind it in 2021.
But what of the rest of 2020, away from pandemics, bushfires and elections? In the technology world, 2020 really marked the tipping point in the mirrorless ver- sus DSLR battle, with dozens of new mirrorless mod- els making the mirrored camera start to feel a bit like yesterday’s news. That’s not to say there isn’t a future for the pentaprism (in fact, Pentax appears to have staked its future on it) but for the bulk of camera companies out there, mirrorless is clearly where they are headed. Then there’s the slippery path of video and video resolu- tion. This year saw the first real attempt by any manu- facturer to bring 8K video into a consumer product, with
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