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Toshiba's CEO and eight other executives resigned Tuesday to take responsibility for doctored books that inflated profits at the Japanese technology manufacturer by 152 billion yen ($1.2 billion) over several years.

Toshiba Corp. acknowledged a systematic cover-up, which began in 2008. Various parts of the Japanese company's sprawling business including computer chips and personal computers were struggling financially, but top managers set unrealistic earnings targets under the banner of "challenge," and subordinates faked results.

On top of its struggles in electronics, Tokyo-based Toshiba's prospects in nuclear power, one of its core businesses, were shaken after the 2011 Fukushima disaster set off public fears about reactor safety, making new nuclear plants unlikely in Japan. All 48 of the nation's working reactors are now offline.

Bowing deeply before flashing cameras at a news conference, CEO Hisao Tanaka kept his head lowered for nearly half a minute in a gesture meant to convey deep shame and contrition. Tanaka's predecessors, Norio Sasaki, now a vice chairman, and Atsutoshi Nishida, an adviser, also gave up their posts along with six other executives.

"We have a serious responsibility," Tanaka told reporters. The company will need to "build a new structure" to reform itself, he said.

The company said that the fraud continued through the fiscal year that ended in March, and work on revising the accounts to show the complete and true financial picture is not yet finished. It promised an emergency stockholder meeting for September, where it plans to deliver a genuine financial report.

The scandal highlights how Japan is still struggling to improve corporate governance despite recent steps to increase independent oversight of companies.

In 2011, Olympus Corp., which makes medical equipment and cameras, was embroiled in a scandal after its president Michael Woodford, a Briton, blew the whistle on a long-running cover-up of losses at the company.

Loizos Heracleous, Professor of Strategy at Warwick Business School in Britain, said corporate Japan is still lacking in areas such as transparency and board independence compared with the global standard.

"The Toshiba scandal will be seen in the context of the Olympus event, with investors wondering whether there is a pattern of account manipulation in corporate behavior," he said in a commentary. "Japanese regulatory authorities will need to reassure the markets that they are casting a watchful eye over Japanese corporations."

Toshiba has repeatedly apologized to shareholders and customers. It has set up an outside investigation group to analyze why the scandal happened and propose what needs to be done to prevent a recurrence.

The inflation of profits to meet targets was carried out not only on one or two projects, but across the board, sometimes because the projects weren't even breaking even, according to the report of an investigation.

"There was intense pressure to produce results under the challenge initiative," the report said. "So employees felt cornered into resorting to inappropriate measures."

Tanaka will be replaced by Masashi Muromachi, chairman of the board.

In the Olympus case, the company eventually acknowledged it hid 117.7 billion yen ($1.5 billion) in investment losses dating back to the 1990s. Woodford, the CEO, won some praise in Japan for his courage in bringing dubious old-guard company practices to light.

Japanese society is conformist and prizes team work so much it tends to frown upon whistleblowers, and their legal protection lags compared to those in the West.

Long-established companies such as Toshiba tend to have a highly hierarchical structure, making it difficult for employees to challenge top-down decrees.

Other systematic cover-ups at big-name companies have surfaced in Japan over the years. Unlike some Western accounting scandals, those in Japan, including Toshiba's, did not result in any enrichment of individual employees.

Instead, workers collaborated to "save face" for the company, such as hiding defect reports at automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp., which surfaced in 2000 but had been going on for decades. Another example of questionable accounting was at electronics maker Sanyo Electric Co., which surfaced in 2007.

Toshiba shares were up 6 percent, recovering recent losses, as investors took the resignations as a sign the company might right itself.

International news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP) has invested in Quantel's new sQ 1800 servers for its brand new global news production solution. AFP's Enterprise sQ system supports more than 50 simultaneous users at the Paris headquarters, a large operation in London, 10 further international bureaux and 100+ roving journalists.

The sQ 1800 servers are 100% compatible with AFP's existing Enterprise sQ system, providing a zero-risk system upgrade with more disk space for original footage and support for more editing workstations. When the new system goes live, scheduled for late 2015, AFP expect to produce more than 100 unique video stories a day, with localized versions for six different markets, all in TV and web formats, making a total output at least 1,200 media assets every day. In addition to daily news ingest, all system users will have access to the online archive, expected to accumulate up to 3,000 hours of media every year.

Philippe SENSI, deputy CIO at AFP, said, "The new servers are an investment for the future, allowing us to take maximum advantage of the latest generation of disk and processing technologies. We have developed a close relationship with Quantel and Snell over the past year, with our support team travelling to Quantel and Snell's Newbury, UK headquarters every two months to work with the development team to debrief and get an update on the project plan."

Tim Thorsteinson, CEO at Quantel and Snell, said, "We're working very closely with the AFP team to ensure their workflow has the ability to adapt and grow as future requirements in the industry change. The new servers give AFP unbeatable speed from ingest to editing to playout, maintaining its position as one of Europe's leading fast-turnaround news production facilities."

Pixel Underground, a SIM Group company, has completed a major facility expansion that includes the addition of a cinema-style 4K grading theatre. The new construction, which also includes a 4K online finishing suite, places the company at the leading edge in color grading and finishing services for motion pictures and television.

The new 4K theatre features a DaVinci Resolve color grading system; a Sony 4K, DCI-compliant digital projector; a 14-foot projection screen and a Flanders 55-inch evaluation-grade monitor in a cinema environment that can accommodate groups as large as 15.

“Many feature and television productions today shoot in 4K or higher,” said president Marc Bachli. “Pixel Underground is one of few facilities in Toronto where directors, cinematographers and producers can review their work in 4K during postproduction sessions. In our theatre, they can see their work at full resolution and get a true indication of focus, sharpness, grain structure and other attributes. That is a big benefit. We’re bringing 4K to the mainstream feature and television market.”

The 4K theatre will facilitate further collaboration between Pixel Underground and other SIM Group companies, including sound specialist Tattersall Sound & Picture and workflow specialist Bling Digital. “This move represents a significant step towards our goal of creating a comprehensive, world-class, postproduction offering,” said SIM Group CTO Chris Parker.

The 4K theatre includes 5.1 surround sound, with acoustical design and engineering support provided by Ed Segeren, technical director of Tattersall Sound & Picture. The theater is designed to function as a stand-alone facility with its own kitchen and other client services features.

The adjacent finishing suite features an Avid Symphony Nitris with Nuke and AfterEffects compositing also available. The suite shares a common network with the grading theatre to facilitate collaboration and the seamless sharing of projects and elements.

Construction of the new facilities spanned four months. Pixel Underground conducted extensive tests of the projection system to assess its ability to accurately display media from cameras made by Arri, Sony, Canon and other manufacturers.

Pixel Underground has recently completed projects for NBC, A&E, Scripps Network, Discovery (Canada and U.S.), National Geographic, BBC, Shaw and Chorus.

DP Stephen Hussar is fascinated by restoration projects, both the processes themselves and the motivations of the people who dedicate themselves to reconditioning pieces of the past. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that he has spent years documenting the progress of the restoration efforts on an 1891 steam locomotive housed at the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington (WW&F) Railway Museum in Alna, Maine.

In the mid-2000s, Hussar produced Restoration Stories, a hour-long documentary that has aired more than 700 times by PBS member stations across the country since 2006. He considered it as a sort of pilot for a series he wanted to develop, but never found the time to complete another episode between his still photography business, freelance gigs for PBS and other clients, and ongoing series work.

One of the features in the hour-long program focused on the railway museum, which was making plans to restore the 1891 locomotive during the time of the shoot. The restoration actually began a few years later, and the museum expects the engine to be operational by the end of 2015. Hussar has been collecting footage of the restoration process and plans to produce a one-hour Restoration Stories follow-up for PBS.

When he is not at the museum, Hussar stays busy with his day job, shooting food “beauty shots” and handling master dolly shots for several PBS cooking series. He began shooting cooking shows with Julia Child. Since then, he has worked on 16 seasons of America’s Test Kitchen, 12 seasons of Simply Ming, and eight seasons of Cook’s Country.

For his cooking shows, Hussar usually shoots with a Sony F55 and is very particular with his lighting, although setups tend to be quick so the food can look its best. “There isn’t one thing, it’s a combination of things,” he explained. “The food and the plate have to look nice. I also don’t use a front light – I like to light from the side to give everything dimension.”

Over the course of more than a dozen freelance shoots for a variety of clients, the Zylight F8-100 LED Fresnel has become Hussar’s “favorite lighting instrument of all time.” He plans to use the F8-100 on his various cooking shows when shooting resumes later this year. “I always ask for it because it’s so versatile and it’s so good,” he said.

During recent shoots in the museum’s machine shop, a daylight balanced F8-100 has become Hussar’s main light as well. The facility has warm 150-watt incandescent lighting throughout, along with windows that add sunlight, so Hussar uses the F8-100 to make it appear like the key light is coming from the windows. Previously, he used an F8-100 to create a similar beam of “sunlight” on a library wall filled with law books for a freelance shoot in an old Boston courthouse.

The F8-100 delivers close to the light output of a traditional 1000-watt Fresnel, but only draws 90 watts and can be powered by a standard 14.4V camera battery or AC adapter. While Hussar has used HMIs for years, he appreciates that the F8-100 stays cool – and does not have to warm up to provide the right color temperature. “The light coming out of it is even, controllable, and it’s the right color temperature,” he said. “It’s really well made. It’s a great Fresnel and it happens to be an LED.”

Hussar said using battery power instead of a power cord has been a helpful feature in the museum. “It’s a very visually interesting location with all of the shop machinery being historic and authentic,” he explained. “It’s not like I’m working in a hurry, but it simplifies things. The fewer wires running around heavy machinery the better.”

Available in daylight (5600K) or tungsten (3200K) versions, the F8-100 collapses to less than four inches thick for easy transport. Its patented focusing system allows spot and flood operations, while its eight-inch SCHOTT glass lens maintains single shadow traditional Fresnel beam shaping. Its quantum dot technology provides a more refined and balanced natural light output, delivering a high CRI (Color Rendering Index) and a high TLCI (Television Lighting Consistency Index). Recently, Zylight introduced the F8-200, which has many of the same features of the F8-100 but delivers the brightness of a 2,000-watt tungsten or 400-watt HMI.