The 2025 International Imaging Culture Week Opens in Shenzhen, and the SmallRig Global Imaging Scene Industry Forum Decodes the Future of Imaging | The Frontline
Recently, the 2025 International Image Culture Week officially kicked off in Shenzhen. The 2025 International Image Culture Week (China, Shenzhen) covers three major sections of public image experience activities, including the Global Image Scene Industry Forum, the Award Ceremony of the SmallRig Public - Welfare Image Award, the Public - Welfare Image Poster Exhibition, the Public - Welfare Image Venture Capital Conference, and the Image Master Classes.
Founder and CEO of SmallRig, Leqi Innovation
"The superposition of the wave of technological development and the wave of the generalization of image narration has brought about an image scene industry. In this era, everyone is in the image scene, and everyone is also a user of the image scene." The founder and CEO of SmallRig, Leqi Innovation, and the director of the Management Committee of the Leqi SmallRig Image Development Fund pointed out in his speech that the image scene industry is developing exponentially. From traditional cameras and mobile phones to the iteration of diversified devices, and from movie sets and natural wonders to the segmentation of daily life in shooting scenarios, it has promoted continuous innovation in the fields of stability, lighting, and power supply of image equipment. He said that SmallRig, Leqi Innovation, held the Image Scene Industry Forum for the first time and released three key words at the meeting: the era of small - scale production, mobile phones as images, and the evolution of live - streaming. The development over the past year has also confirmed this value judgment.
As one of the core activities, the 2025 SmallRig Global Image Scene Industry Forum gathered representatives from the industrial chain such as Sony, Nikon, vivo, and Lexar, as well as more than a hundred industry leaders to discuss technological innovation and ecological collaboration. The forum proposed three core dimensions of "technology and image, co - creation and image, content and image", built a dialogue platform for the entire industrial ecosystem, bringing together global image industry ecological brands such as Sony, Nikon, vivo, Visual China, SmallRig, Hohem, Lexar, and Visual China, as well as more than 200 industry leaders, photographers, and scholars to conduct in - depth deconstruction of the image scene industry ecosystem.
The first round - table forum focused on "the development of image scenes and the recovery of the camera industry", bringing together Liu Dongyang, the senior manager of the Image Solution Marketing Department of Sony (China), Pan Zhiqiang, the CTO of SmallRig, Leqi Innovation, the aerospace photographer Chaocwei, Wang Jun, the assistant to the president of Photo World, and the host Liu Xiang, the general manager of the 500px community of Visual China, to discuss industry trends from the perspectives of manufacturers, accessory suppliers, creators, and the media.
The consensus of the discussion shows that the recovery of the camera industry is not only the increase in hardware sales but also the result of technological iteration lowering the threshold of creation, user demand driving scene fission, and industrial collaboration building an ecosystem: short - videos and live - streaming have given rise to the demand for lightweight professional equipment. Creators have shifted from "equipment dependence" to "scene adaptation", and image culture has penetrated from professional circles into the public life, forming a positive cycle of "technology empowering creation - content feeding back to the industry - culture shaping value", which confirms the core proposition of "images connecting people and the world".
In the round - table forum on "the development of image scenes and the construction of the image ecosystem", guests from Nikon, Insta360, Lexar, independent directors, and the field of female portrait photography discussed technological innovation and creative trends. The consensus of the forum shows that the image ecosystem is facing dual challenges of technological inclusiveness and professional depth in the wave of short - videos. Hardware manufacturers empower creation with AI algorithms, panoramic innovation, and storage expansion, while creators need to adhere to the essence of narration in the convenience of technology and achieve a dynamic balance between fast - spreading and slow - art through tool iteration and content precipitation, jointly promoting the upgrade of images from recording tools to a language for reshaping the world.
In the round - table forum on "the development of image scenes and the growth potential of mobile phones", Li Can, Qi Nan, the product R & D director of SmallRig, Leqi Innovation, the Hasselblad master Thomas, and the well - known overseas mobile - phone movie director Dr. Max Schleser and other industry experts conducted in - depth discussions on the innovation of image technology and the future of mobile - phone photography. Mobile - phone imaging has evolved from a tool to a creative ecosystem. Through hardware upgrades, AI algorithms, and innovation of scene - based accessories, it continuously expands the boundaries of humanistic records, professional film and television, and AR interaction, and user co - creation will become the core driving force for technology implementation and experience optimization.
Pan Zhiqiang, the CTO of SmallRig, Leqi Innovation, proposed three paths to deal with diverse scenarios: "User co - creation solves pain points in demand, for example, allowing users to participate in product design through the CoDesign model; ecological collaboration integrates host brands, accessory suppliers, and content platforms; industrial linkage builds a standardized service system."
Finally, as the founding chairman of the Entrepreneur Photographers Association (Shenzhen), the chairman of the Vanke Public Welfare Foundation, the founder of Vanke Group/Deep Stone Group, and the leader of multiple public - welfare organizations, Wang Shi shared the relevance between image culture and public - welfare power in his speech, combining his multiple identities as an entrepreneur, a public - welfare person, an outdoor explorer, and a photography enthusiast.
He added, "Everything that SmallRig, Leqi Innovation, has done makes me feel that their practices are not only applicable to the photography equipment industry but also have very good reference and inspiration for other industries, especially traditional industries."