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Huawei apologizes for using DSLR shots to promote a smartphone photo contest

The blunder was discovered by the winner of an iPhone photography contest

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The promo video for Huawei’s photography contest. (Picture: Huawei via Weibo)
This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Huawei recently promoted a photography contest with a video featuring impressive pictures “taken with Huawei smartphones.” The problem? Some of the images were actually shot on a DSLR camera.

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The promo video for Huawei’s photography contest. (Picture: Huawei via Weibo)
The promo video for Huawei’s photography contest. (Picture: Huawei via Weibo)
The issue was first discovered by Weibo user Jamie-hua, aka Huapeng Zhao who won second place in the 2018 iPhone Photography Awards with a photo taken with an iPhone 6. Zhao said he thought the photos in the Huawei video looked familiar and decided to check. He discovered the machine behind them was actually a US$3,000 Nikon D850 -- not a smartphone. The photos can be found in the online photography community platform 500px, attributed to photographer Su Tie.
A photo credited to photographer Su Tie, taken with a Nikon D850 camera. (Picture: Su Tie via 500px)
A photo credited to photographer Su Tie, taken with a Nikon D850 camera. (Picture: Su Tie via 500px)
Huawei has since apologized on Weibo, saying that the photos were “wrongly marked” due to “an oversight by the editor.” It said the images were intended to encourage people to share their works on Huawei’s online gallery.
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The company has now updated the original video to remove the line that says the photos came from Huawei phones. It still says they were drawn from Huawei’s Next-Image community, though. When asked, a Huawei representative referred us to the contest rules in Chinese, which state that “you can publish photos taken with any equipment in the Next-Image community.”
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