Let’s set politics aside for a moment and examine what tariffs are intended to do, and how the current wave is directly impacting every piece of gear we use.

A tariff is supposed to balance trade or protect local industries. If Canadian lumber floods the U.S. market at prices that undercut American producers, a tariff can level the playing field. That makes sense when there’s a domestic industry to protect. But in the case of cameras, there isn’t. No one is building cameras in Iowa or lenses in Michigan. Most photographic equipment is manufactured overseas, primarily in China, Vietnam, and Thailand.

Currently, goods from China face around a 34% tariff, with threats of further increases, although the tariff rates change monthly as the U.S. and China continue trade talks.

 Vietnam’s tariffs, originally a staggering 46%, have been negotiated down to 20%—still a significant burden. And because importers have to pay those fees, they simply pass them down the chain. By the time the gear hits the shelves, it’s people like you and me who are footing the bill.

Why Tariffs May Kill the Photography Market: The Price Problem

The ripple effect is noticeable. We’ve already seen companies like Fujifilm and Nikon raise prices, sometimes multiple times, since last spring, because they can’t predict what the final tariff rates will be. 

Even if tariffs are reduced in the future, history tells us that prices don’t always return to their original levels. Once the market becomes accustomed to higher numbers, manufacturers are unlikely to revert to pre-tariff levels.

We’re always looking for deals to bring to you in our Deals section, and nearly every piece of camera gear has had a price hike. Many cameras and lenses now have a price when on sale that’s a hundred dollars or more than previous discounts. In other words, the best price you can get now on a lot of gear is the worst price it would have been just a year ago. 

And that has real consequences. When Sony launched the RX1R III at around $5,000, many reviews (including my own) pointed out how high that price felt, especially when the camera dropped features compared to its predecessor. Without tariffs, it could have been $4,500 or even less. 

In Canada, the RX1R III retails for approximately $6,300 CAD, equivalent to around $4,550 USD. Even factoring in Canada’s own tariffs, you can see how pricing shifts wildly depending on trade policies. And for an interchangeable lens camera, that extra $500 could have easily been used to purchase a new lens for your kit.

The Demand Dilemma – A Tariff-Driven Return To Bad Times

Here’s where things get scarier: higher prices directly cut demand. Cameras and lenses aren’t bread and milk. You don’t need a new body or lens the moment it’s released. Enthusiasts will hold onto older gear longer, and professionals, already working on tight margins, may stretch their cameras beyond their typical upgrade cycle or raise their rates to compensate. Either way, fewer units get sold.

Leica recently canceled a string of events in the United States, citing “unforeseen circumstances.” This event was thought to have been to introduce a rumored M EV1 camera, a new product category for the company. 

This cancellation could certainly have been due to delays in production, but it also could be the result of tariffs. The problem is we’ll never know. 

We’ve seen fragile moments before in the industry. When the 2011 earthquake in Japan took out Sony’s imaging sensor plant, it caused delays and profit drops across the board because of reduced supply and the resulting increase in component costs.

Tariffs could have a similar effect, only this time, it’s not a natural disaster; it’s a financial earthquake. 

Sure, the booming creator economy might soften the blow. New YouTubers and TikTokers emerge every day, and many invest in cameras instead of relying on their phones. However, many will still go for cheaper camera options instead of the higher-end gear they might have 

The Bottom Line

Tariffs are going to make photography more expensive, period. The only real question is by how much. Maybe we’ll see a few price drops down the line if trade agreements improve, but chances are, the higher baseline is here to stay. That means fewer people buying new cameras, fewer product releases, and more of us wondering if the gear we have will need to last just a little longer than we planned.

For those of us who care about photography, this isn’t just an abstract economic debate. It’s something that could reshape the gear market for years to come. As I said, once prices go up, they rarely go back down. When the cost of goods eventually drops, companies usually keep retail prices the same or similar and use the increased revenue to offset losses incurred during the price hike. 

And while we’ll continue to find ways to create, no matter what, it’s hard not to feel that the industry we love is being dragged into a fight it didn’t ask for.

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In early December, WIRED rebranded its photography website, WIRED Photo. When they did so, they promised better visuals and excellent storytelling. They’ve delivered with their recent coverage of Marilyn Mugot’s excellent night photography project.

The French fashion photographer and graphic designer travelled to China for six weeks this past autumn and returned home with eerie, cinematic images of Chinese neighborhoods. She prefers working at night because “At night, I feel like I have to guess where the magic is hiding. It’s very intense, like a quest…The lights and the elements take on mystical and secret dimensions which are not always real but a result of my imagination.”

Looking through Mugot’s work on her website or Instagram is like going on a journey through a place that is somehow straddling the line between real and unreal. Her post-processing renders colors in a distinct fashion, relying often on shades of blue, magenta and violet with the occasional burst of warmer hues. We’ve selected a handful of my favorite images from her recent trip to China to share with you and you can head to WIRED’s coverage for more.

(Seen via WIRED. Index image.)

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As if there wasn’t already enough evidence that animals, even ones in zoos, are unpredictable and still potentially as dangerous as their wild counterparts, a tourist visiting a Chinese zoo in Liaoning province was killed by a walrus.

The tourist, a businessman by the name of Jia Lijun, was attempting to take a selfie with the walrus. Per Chinese news outlet Sina, his WeChat showed him referring to the creature as being “so strong, so big.” Unfortunately for Jia, that description was accurate as shortly thereafter the walrus grabbed him by the back and dragged him into the pool.

A zookeeper then jumped in and attempted to save Jia, but tragically both men were drowned by the walrus. The zookeeper had cared for this walrus since it was a baby, so it seems unlikely that the animal meant any harm. Interacting with a one-ton creature comes with great risk, though, even if they appear docile. Hopefully the zoo will enact some additional safety measures around its walrus enclosure and prevent something like this from happening again.

Sadly, the number of fatalities involving selfies shows no signs of slowing. Today’s news is the second such incident we’ve reported on this month. Just a few weeks back, an Indian teenager accidentally shot himself while posing for a selfie.

(Seen via DIY Photography with additional information from Shanghaiist. Index image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

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China is currently in the midst of battling a rather astonishing bout of air pollution, most notably in Shanghai and Beijing. Not only is this level of pollution extremely dangerous but it’s so thick and blanketing that a new image from NASA shows the smog cloud from space.

The image below shows a combination of both fog (white) and smog (grey). On the NASA Earth Observatory blog, they explain:

China suffered another severe bout of air pollution in December 2013. When the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image on December 7, 2013, thick haze stretched from Beijing to Shanghai, a distance of about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles). For comparison, that is about the distance between Boston, Massachusetts, and Raleigh, North Carolina. The brightest areas are clouds or fog. Polluted air appears gray. While northeastern China often faces outbreaks of extreme smog, it is less common for pollution to spread so far south.

At the time of this image, the Air Quality Index for Beijing hit 487 – anything above 300 is considered dangerous to human health. The US embassies in Beijing and Shanghai are reporting fine particulate matter up to 480 and 355 micrograms per cubic meter of air, where being above 25 is unsafe according to the World Health Organization.

The smog is so bad, it’s been dubbed extremely hazardous, been cause for school cancelations and flight delays.

This problem isn’t unique to China. For decades, London had notoriously bad smog, which at one point killed 4,000 people over the course of just a few days. But what’s new is that now we have a much better grasp of the damages this level of pollution can cause, and the technology to see its full extent. Images like this one from NASA provide us with the context of this pollution – and shows just how incredibly large the problem really is.

(via io9)

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response

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In the David and Goliath battle pitting the dissident artist, photographer and blackjack player Ai Weiwei against the Chinese government, it’s clearly an uneven match — the artist is mostly winning. Weiwei is both China’s foremost contemporary artist, boasting a huge international following, as well as its most vocal and recognizable critic.

His activist art has taken many forms, from installation art to photography, cinema to architecture, and most recently to music videos. Ai Weiwei is a man of extraordinary personal courage, a force of nature fighting the censorship and repression of the Chinese government. When the government does something to censor or shut him down, he responds with courage and efforts to point out the absurdity of it all.

Surveillance camera outside the studio gate 2011-8-29 10:19pm
Photo by Ai Weiwei

Braving repression and censorship
Like Weiwei, there are thousands of reporters and journalists who daily demonstrate extraordinary courage in the face of repression and censorship. In 1985, Reporters Without Borders (aka, Reporters Sans Frontières) was founded in Montpellier, France, by four journalists: Robert Ménard*, Rémy Loury, Jacques Molénat and Émilien Jubineau to support reporters and to protect press freedom. However, since its founding the world has changed, and RSF has extended its mandate to include supporting the work of “netizens” and working to support freedom of information.

As one of its fundraising efforts every year RSF produces several photo albums as part of a series the organization calls “100 Photos for Press Freedom.” There are about 40 editions of the “100 Photos” series to date, with photographers like Don McCullin, William Klein, Steve McCurry and René Burri, contributing their images.

RSF uses its funds to publicize the injustices reporters face, and at times to support them with financial and legal aid. Sometimes it even provides a safe haven. I know about this first hand.

Ai Weiwei in the elevator when taken into custody by the police, August 2009, Sichuan, China
Photo by Ai Weiwei

…And sometimes even prison and death
A few years ago, on a cold October day I sat in a café across from my friend, the “Oracle.” She’s a journalist who once worked in America and now lives in Europe. She helps set up safe houses for journalists fleeing arrest and/or possible assassination. The guests stay in the safe house until things cool off or until it’s time to move on. That fall morning the Oracle sat cradling her teacup in her hands, trying to warm them up. Usually she’s very talkative, but she was very quiet. When I asked her what was wrong, she said simply, “We lost one.” She meant, of course, that someone she had been expecting to help had been arrested — or worse, killed before reaching safety.

Violence against journalists has become commonplace, happening more and more**. RSF tracks the numbers, and it looks like 2013 will be another brutal year for them, with half a dozen photographers and 45 reporters already dead. Additionally, RSF counted some 183 journalists in prison, 98 of whom are in China.

So it was clearly only a matter of time before Ai Weiwei and RSF would join forces.

China’s “invisible prison” of the mind
For the new RSF book, “100 Photos by Ai Weiwei for Press Freedom,” Weiwei has contributed 70 photographs which have never been published before, in addition to 30 others that have. These images record life in China’s “invisible prison” of the mind. As the world’s largest surveillance state, Chinese censorship and control of information is so pervasive that large parts of the population simply accept what they are told. Ai Weiwei sees himself as fighting to free the Chinese from this self-imposed imprisonment of thought. As he puts it, “Liberty is about our right to question everything.”

Spying from a bookstore above Chaoyang Park 2011-12-11 2:35pm
Photo by Ai Weiwei

In his “100 Photos” album, Weiwei’s images serve as a record of the banality of evil and his response to it. In one series of images, for instance, a couple sits across a restaurant terrace from Weiwei, the young man nonchalantly playing with his phone. When he finally raises it to take a picture of his date, he instead aims at the artist — only to discover to his dismay that Weiwei has already been photographing him.

Remarkable courage and sense of humor
Weiwei’s courage is remarkable, and he seems to remain serene throughout his storm of surveillance and oppression. On one occasion, he was arrested and beaten so badly by the police that he had to be flown to Munich for emergency surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage. His photographic souvenir of this life-threatening event? The X-rays of his injuries, which he published in “100 Photos.”

A few years ago, when the police surrounded his Shanghai studio with surveillance cameras, Weiwei decorated the cameras with brightly colored Chinese lanterns. Then to demonstrate his disdain for the surveillance, he put his own cameras up in his studio and his bedroom, and then recorded his daily life and posted it on the Web for all to see, thus outsurveilling his surveillers and satirizing their efforts.

Lantern at the studio gate 2013-1-10
Photo by Ai Weiwei

Wetwei started blogging in 2005, and when his blog was taken down by the authorities in 2009, he turned to Twitter (@aiww) to express his opinions. Then earlier this year, Weiwei turned to music video as a form of protest. He produced and starred in a music video titled “Dumbass”, yet another way to parody his prison experiences.

“100 Photos for Press Freedom by Ai Weiwei” is published in English and in French, and was released this fall. Partly supported by a crowd-funding campaign on KissKissBankBank, the book is currently available in an English digital version at the iTunes App Store. You can support Reporters Without Borders and do your bit to protect press freedom and freedom of information by buying yourself a copy of Ai Weiwei’s “100 Photos,” which costs about $15 in the U.S. You can also go to the RSF website and request it — or any of the other “100 Photos” albums — directly from the organization.

It’s the least any of us can do to support press freedom and it doesn’t take that much courage.

Want to learn more about Ai Weiwei? Check out these YouTube videos:

Louisiana Talks interview (Ai Weiwei speaks in English about his work)

Long interview at Art Basil

Story Footnotes:

*In an incredibly strange and ironic move, Reporters Without Borders founder Robert Ménard is running for Mayor of the city of Béziers, France, on the ultra-right wing Front National party ticket of Marine Le Pen.

**The world has become increasingly dangerous for journalists. On Nov. 2, two Radio France International journalists, Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by a small group of armed men in northern Mali. This killing reflects a change. Journalists who were once seen as neutral observers and whose neutrality was a safeguard, are more and more being seen as targets.

All photos used with permission of Ai Weiwei and Reporters Without Borders.

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