Japan's Crisis and the Photography Industry

As I'm sure everyone is aware, Japan a grappling with a domino series of crises of incalculable proportions due to the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant explosion.  Thankfully so far, though still in heartbreaking numbers, the loss of lives has been far less than feared which is of greatest importance in our concerns. It's a shallow relief however as a huge worry is when and where hundreds of thousands of displaced evacuees will be settled - all this while exhaustive searches are still underway for thousands of missing victims. 

foto source: Reuters via Int'l Business Times

And of course, the next set of concerns are the radiation levels still being assessed post the nuclear reactor explosion; and the economic strain and certain domino effect of that, to Japan's manufacturing industries - which will most certainly affect global industries, not least of which will be for consumer electronics, technology, and photography/film industries. 

Adorama - one of America's reliable and lauded  importers of consumer and pro photo, video, and printing equipment recently released a report that thankfully  includes some good news of most companies including Nikon, Sony, Canon, and others reporting no loss of employee lives and minimal injuries.  But quite a few have harrowing reports of extensive damage to factories and equipment, and an inability to resume operations due to frequent power outages. 

NB. Links for retailers and manufacturers above relay to new or relief effort pages on their respective sites. 
 

foto source: the Nikon Blog

*
- Sony, Japan's largest exporter of consumer electronics has stopped operations in 10 factories. 

- Canon has suspended operations in 8 plants

foto source: Digital Photography Review: Canon Japan Tour

- Nikon's Sendai factory where D3X, D3S, and other popular pro slrs are produced has had to close due to damaged equipment

foto source: Amateur Photographer

- Epson has had to close two factories located nearby the Fukushima nuclear plant

- Sigma has halted operations at two plants due to power outages.

foto source: Photo Rumors

- Apple has also reported a halt in operations due to temporary shut down of their suppliers Mitsubishi and Toshiba (also see Toshiba's LCD Plant news just released on REUTERS). **  



How will this affect shooters? Well at the outset this will create shortages in supply, as there were also damages to freight ships just about to depart with equipment due for markets around the world. Of course the other fear is a rise in costs in an already expensive industry. 





Hundreds of millions of relief dollars have been donated to the government, and victims of Japan's earthquake disaster by Nikon, Apple, Canon, Epson, Sony, Panasonic, Ricoh, and a growing number of other technology, freight, airline, and entertainment industries. 


* 
See the full article with a more comprehensive report here on the Adorama News page.

See the first Adorama crisis report on here: Japan Photo Industry Disrupted by quake


**
See latest Apple report here: Apple Supply Chain Temporarily Affected by Japan Earthquake. 

"From Harm to Hope"

Unbelievable that this time last year the fundraising focus was on helping Haiti recover from devastation caused by the same seismic disturbance.  And like that crisis (and countless others worldwide in similar and different disasters or crises) there are a great number of organisations collecting donations to help.  

As I've done before here on this blog - I will post a link to one that I've supported time and again.  The IRC is an non-governmental organisation whose sole purpose is to work in rescue and resettlement missions to aid displaced victims of natural or political disasters.  That's ALL they do people!  They are of course setting up operations in Japan.  Check 'em out in your charitable considerations.

Or donate directly to the IRC Japan Rescue, Relief, and Resettlemnt missions HERE


Additional Sources for this post and Adorama article:  Reuters, TIPA, Amateur Photographer , San Francisco Chronicle, Optics, International Rescue Committee, Canon News, Nikon Blog, Industry Pulse News, and statements from numerous technology consumer and pro equipment manufacturers.

NB - if the format is mangled on the Facebook version of this post - hit 'View Original Post' for the um...original post.