36 Photography companies of the United States

Ansco was the brand name of a photographic company based in Binghamton, New York, which produced photographic films, papers and cameras from the mid-19th century until the 1980s.

Argus was an American maker of cameras and photographic products, founded in 1936 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Argus originated as a subsidiary of the International Radio Corporation (IRC), founded by Charles Verschoor. Its best-known product was the C3 rangefinder camera, which enjoyed a 27-year production run and became one of the top-selling cameras in history. The company's Model A was the first low-cost 35 mm camera in the United States. Sylvania acquired Argus in 1959 and sold it in 1969, by which time it had ceased camera production. More recently, the Argus brand has been reestablished and is used on a variety of inexpensive digital cameras made by Argus Camera Company, LLC., located in Inverness, Illinois.

B&H Photo Video is an American photo and video equipment retailer founded in 1973, based in Manhattan, New York City. B&H conducts business through online e-commerce consumer sales, business to business sales, and its one retail location. Customers engage with B&H via its websites, retail store, phone sales and customer service, email, and chat channels.

Bachrach Studios is an American photographic studio, believed to be one of the oldest continuously operating photography studios in the world.

Bell and Howell is a U.S.-based services organization and former manufacturer of cameras, lenses, and motion picture machinery, founded in 1907 by two projectionists, and was originally headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. The company is now headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, and currently sells production mail equipment, buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) smart locker and kiosk solutions, and provides maintenance services for automated, industrial equipment in enterprise-level companies.

The Byron Company is a New York City photography studio in Manhattan that was founded in 1892. It is "one of New York's pre-eminent commercial photography studios" that "documented the essence of New York City life". Percy Byron, the son of the founder, was "the premier maritime photography of his generation".

Calumet Photographic, Inc., often shortened to Calumet Photo and formerly known as Calumet Manufacturing Company, is a photographic retail and photofinishing specialty store, originally headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. In 2012, the company owned and operated a chain of 32 locations worldwide. The company had 15 locations in the United States, 8 in the United Kingdom, 6 in Germany, 2 in the Netherlands and 1 in Belgium, with 200 employees and an annual revenue of $10 million.

Camera World was a retailer of photographic equipment and photofinishing services based in Portland, Oregon, United States, and founded in 1977. It was an independent company until 2002, and then from 2002 to 2016 it was a brand of Ritz Camera & Image or C&A Marketing. In the mid-1990s, it was one of the largest mail-order retailers of photographic and audio equipment in the nation. The company's revenues totalled $80 million in 1998, of which $16 million were from online sales. Revenues grew to $115.7 million in 1999, and the company relocated its administrative offices and inventory to a new facility in Beaverton, Oregon, the following year. The company's only brick-and-mortar store, in downtown Portland, as well as its Internet business were sold in 2002 to Ritz Camera, which continued to operate them under the Camera World name. Ritz, in turn, was acquired by C&A Marketing in 2012, but retained the Camera World name as a Ritz brand, for both the store and the Internet business, until closure of the store. The store closed on January 21, 2016.

Castro Camera was a camera store in the Castro District of San Francisco, California, operated by Harvey Milk from 1972 until his assassination in 1978. During the 1970s the store became the center of the neighborhood's growing gay community, as well as campaign headquarters for Milk's various campaigns for elected office.

Central Camera is a camera shop at 230 South Wabash in Chicago, Illinois. It is the oldest camera store in the city. It opened in 1899 at 31 Adams Street. It was started by a Hungarian immigrant, moved to its current South Loop location in 1929 and is currently operated by a third-generation owner. In 2020, radio station WBBM referred to it as "a museum of photography". In 2020, it was burned in a two-alarm fire during the George Floyd protests. The owner has stated his intention to repair and reopen the store. As of June 12, 2020, a GoFundMe has raised over $200,000 for rebuilding. As of October 2020, the business had been operating in an adjacent vacant storefront while rebuilding was taking place.

Concord Camera Corp. was a camera manufacturer based in the United States. It produced primarily affordable cameras for consumer use under many brands. The majority of Concord products were produced in China

Fotomat is an American retail chain of photo development drive-through kiosks located primarily in shopping center parking lots. Fotomat Corporation was founded by Preston Fleet in San Diego, California, in the 1960s, with the first kiosk opening in Point Loma, California, in 1965. Fotomat became a public company in 1971 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1977. At its peak around 1980, there were over 4,000 Fotomats throughout the United States, primarily in suburban areas. Fotomats were distinctive for their pyramid-shaped gold-colored roofs and signs with blue and red lettering. Usually positioned in a large parking area such as a supermarket or strip mall, the Fotomat huts required a minimal amount of land and were able to accommodate cars driving up to drop off or pick up film. Fotomat sold Kodak and Fotomat brand film, as well as other photography-related products, and offered overnight photo finishing. Many people assumed Fotomat was owned by Kodak, because of the yellow roofs and font similar to Kodak packaging.

Fotosearch is a stock photography company, founded in 1998. The company sells royalty-free and rights-managed photography, illustrations, video footage, clipart, and audio clips. Today, with digital images from over 140 publishers, it is one of the world’s largest distributors of stock photography.

General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate incorporated in New York State and headquartered in Boston. As recently as 2018, the company operated through the following segments: aviation, power, renewable energy, digital industry, weapons manufacturing, locomotives, and venture capital and finance. Three years later, in 2021, the conglomerate had divested from several areas, and primarily consisted of the first four segments: aviation, healthcare, power, and renewable energy.

Graflex was a manufacturer that gave its brand name to several models of camera.

Southworth & Hawes was an early photographic firm in Boston, 1843–1863. Its partners, Albert Sands Southworth (1811–1894) and Josiah Johnson Hawes (1808–1901), have been hailed as the first great American masters of photography, whose work elevated photographic portraits to the level of fine art. Their images are prominent in every major book and collection of early American photography.

Heritage Microfilm, Inc. is a preservation microfilm and microfilm digitization business located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Kiron Lenses were photographic lenses distributed by the Kiron Corporation, formerly based in Carson, California, United States.

The Eastman Kodak Company is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated in New Jersey. Kodak provides packaging, functional printing, graphic communications, and professional services for businesses around the world. Its main business segments are Print Systems, Enterprise Inkjet Systems, Micro 3D Printing and Packaging, Software and Solutions, and Consumer and Film. It is best known for photographic film products.

Lifetouch Inc. is an American-based photography company headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, with its Canadian operations based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Light is an American digital photography company that has developed a multi-lens and multi-sensor camera designed for embedding in smartphones and mobile devices. The company's first product, the L16, is a standalone version with 16 camera modules. It plans to eventually provide mobile devices with higher-quality photo capabilities and true optical zoom.

Lytro, Inc. was an American company founded in 2006 by Ren Ng which developed light-field cameras. Lytro began shipping its first generation pocket-sized camera, capable of refocusing images after being taken, in 8 GB and 16 GB versions on February 29, 2012. In April 2014, the company announced Lytro Illum, its second generation camera for commercial and experimental photographers. The Lytro Illum was released at $1,600. The Illum has a permanently attached 30–250mm f/2.0 lens and an articulated rear screen. In the fall of 2015, Lytro changed direction, announcing Immerge, a very-high-end VR video capture camera with companion custom compute server. Immerge was expected to ship in 2016, and be useful to studios trying to combine CGI-based VR with video VR.

The Mandel No. 1 Photo Postcard Machine was a photo camera built in the years 1911 to 1930 by the Chicago Ferrotype Company. Like cameras from some other brands in that time, the camera produced a small photograph in waiting time. The photograph could be used as a real photo postcard and sent by mail, hence the name.

Mitchell Camera Corporation was a motion picture camera manufacturing company established in Los Angeles in 1919.

Nautilus Productions LLC is an American video production, stock footage, and photography company incorporated in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1997. The principals are producer/director Rick Allen and photographer Cindy Burnham. Nautilus specializes in documentary production and underwater videography, and produced QAR DiveLive, a live webcast of underwater archaeology filmed at the wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge in 2000 and 2001.

The Pach Brothers photography studio is one of the oldest photographic firms in business in New York City, having begun operations in 1867.

PhotoDisc, Inc. based in Seattle, was a publisher of digital stock photography free of royalties. It was founded in 1991 by Tom Hughes, Mark Callaghan and Mark Torrance, who later became the chief executive officer and chairman. After receiving the catalog in the mail, customers would write or phone the office and order the photos or pre-made collections by charter artists Clement Mok or Nick Koudis which would then be shipped to them on CD-ROM. In the fall of 1995, their website was launched making business more convenient as it was no longer necessary to wait for shipping as photos could be downloaded directly from the website, the catalog option was still available, though. In September 1997, PhotoDisc agreed to combine with London-based Getty Communications to form the Seattle-based Getty Images. In February 1998, at the closure of the acquisition, PhotoDisc's library amounted to 60,000 images.

Pictometry International is an aerial measurement company based in Henrietta, New York that develops software that uses three-dimensional aerial photographs to view high-resolution images of buildings in their entirety. Pictometry International's technology was developed at the Rochester Institute of Technology and shows structures at an oblique angle or at a 45-degree angle, from all sides providing perspective and overhead shot images that are accurate to 1/100th of an inch. The company has 80 Cessnas that provide high-resolution aerial photography in counties that include 95 percent of the U.S. population.

Ritz Camera & Image is a photographic retail and photofinishing specialty store, headquartered in Edison, New Jersey. The company owns and used to operate a chain throughout the United States under the names Wolf Camera, Inkley’s and Ritz Camera. In 2012, Ritz Camera was acquired by C&A Marketing.

Roper Technologies, Inc. is an American diversified industrial company that produces engineered products for global niche markets. The company is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida.

Sawyer's, Inc. was an American manufacturer and retailer of slide projectors, scenic slides, View-Master reels and viewers, postcards, and related products, based in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1914 as a photo-finishing company, Sawyer's began producing and selling View-Masters in 1939, and that soon became its primary product. It later diversified into other photographic products, mostly related to film transparencies, and established manufacturing plants in Europe, Japan and India. By the early 1960s, Sawyer's was the nation's second-largest manufacturer of slide projectors, and by 1965 slide projectors had surpassed View-Master reels and equipment as a percentage of the company's annual sales. In 1951, the company moved from Portland proper to the unincorporated Progress area in Portland's southwestern suburbs. In 1966, Sawyer's was acquired by New York-based General Aniline & Film (GAF), and its product lines and facilities were taken over by GAF. It was a subsidiary company of GAF until 1968, when it became simply a division of that company, renamed the GAF Consumer Photo Division. For several years thereafter, GAF used "Sawyer's" as a brand name for its slide projectors.

Seattle FilmWorks, Inc., was a mail order photographic film processing company that sold re-spooled 35mm motion picture film. It was founded in 1976 as American Passage Marketing by Gilbert Scherer. At its peak in 1997, Seattle FilmWorks employed approximately 800 people and processed about 20 miles of film a day in a 65,000 sq ft lab. In 1978, Seattle FilmWorks started selling motion picture film that is processed using Kodak's ECN-2 process. The film was loaded into 35mm film canisters for still photography use, and the company returned an unexposed roll with each order. In the 1980s, Seattle FilmWorks aggressively marketed its products and services and offered two rolls of Seattle FilmWorks film for US$2.00. It advertised in newspapers, magazines, and package inserts. Seattle FilmWorks was sold and renamed PhotoWorks in 1999. Its marketing practices led to a lawsuit against the company in 2000, which was settled a year later, and the company was later closed.

Spiratone was a company specializing in low-cost lenses and filters for cameras, lighting, and darkroom equipment.

Unique Photo is a camera, video, and audio superstore, and education center, with locations in Fairfield, NJ and Philadelphia, PA. It is a family owned business dating back to 1947. and now carries over 20,000 products.

ZUMA Press is an independent press agency and wire service that provides commercial photography services. It was founded in 1993 by photojournalist Scott McKiernan, with a global staff of over 50, covering news, sports, and entertainment events worldwide.