July 7, 2021

A concise round-up of new product updates, international snippets and other interesting stuff from the wonderful world of photography: Fujifilm to close Greenwood plants… Yet another WD security flaw… Epson Pano Awards calls for entries…

Fujifilm to close Greenwood plants

Fujifilm has decided to close down most of its massive manufacturing plant in Greenwood, South Carolina, putting 400 of the 500 employees out of work in the process.

Four of its five manufacturing plants will be closed by September 2022, with the operations responsible for the production of printing plates, inks, papers, and disposable cameras. Fujifilm will move the work to other facilities and third-party operators.

‘Market economic trends and a declining demand for many of the products manufactured in Greenwood challenged us to focus on how we adapt our efforts to continue to build a global, sustainable approach for Fujifilm,’ said Todd Croker, president of Fujifilm Manufacturing USA, in a release announcing the closures.

Fujifilm Holdings and Fujifilm North America will still operate at the Greenwood site, with the two divisions retaining close to 300 employees in roles relating to warehousing and distribution, the Personalized Photo Products Lab, information technology, finance, human resources, environmental health and safety, purchasing and compliance.

The Greenwood site encompasses over 500 acres, and represents a US$1.8 billion investments.

Yet another WD security flaw

With the spotlight currently on Western Digital (WD) security vulnerabilities due to 50,000 My Book Live hard drives being wiped, reports are emerging that other WD products are at risk.

Security journalist, Brian Krebs, has reported that WD Digital Nas drives running the My Cloud OS3 software has a security flaw that allows hackers access to the device.

While WD fixed the issue last year by releasing My Cloud OS5, many users found the upgrade removed key features such as connecting with third-party apps like Adobe. So many chose to stick with the more functional OS3, and others simply couldn’t upgrade to OS5 due to their devices not being supported.
But these users risk a major security vulnerability, which was discovered last year by researchers Radek Domanski and Pedro Riberio.

Astonishingly, WD refuses to patch the OS3 security issue through a firmware upgrade. And if your device doesn’t support OS5, then it’s time to upgrade!

‘We strongly encourage moving to the My Cloud OS5 firmware. If your device is not eligible for upgrade to My Cloud OS5, we recommend that you upgrade to one of our other My Cloud offerings that support My Cloud OS5.’ – Pretty ordinary!

Another solution is to dump WD, which clearly has little regard for its customers using legacy products, for a competing company such as Synology.

Epson Pano Awards calls for entries

The 12th Epson Pano Awards, an Australian-operated photo contest dedicated to rewarding great panoramic photography, has just over a month until entries close on August 16.

The Pano Awards, sponsored by Epson Australia and Nikon Australia, has a US$40,000 prize pool, including $13.5K cash, and is the world’s leading panorama photo contest. Panorama is defined as any image with a minimum 2:1 ratio.  In 2020 the awards attracted 5859 entries from 1452 photographers around the world. Click here for more.