Friday, April 28, 2006

Nice camera bag


Designed for the digital camera this bag looks very cool.

"Perfect for photojournalists, the SlingShot 200 AW uses a unique sling design to go from “carry mode” to “ready mode” in just seconds. Carried comfortably on the back, it easily rotates to the front so you can get to your camera quickly. The SlingShot 200 AW holds an SLR with mid-range zoom lens attached 3–4 extra lenses, cables and accessories and has a full access lid to make loading it a snap. This feature-rich bag also includes a built-in memory card pouch, micro fiber LCD cloth and two generous organizer pockets. It’s certain to surprise even the most demanding photojournalists."

LowePro SlingShot 200 AW

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Trouble with Aperture


Apple has asked the team engineers for Aperture to leave. Wow! "Sources familiar with Apple's professional software strategy said they were not surprised by the move, describing Aperture's development as a "mess" and the worst they had witnessed at Apple."

Read more about it at Think Secret

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The RED ONE Camera


Been following this development for awhile now and the camera was finally unveiled at NAB 2006 this week. The RED ONE camera is the latest greatest project from Oakley founder Jim Jannard, a serious photography and video buff who owns about a thousand different cameras himself. The RED ONE is designed to be a modular, upgradable system, so users can add hardware, software, storage, handling and monitoring accessories as they’re developed or needed; a wonderful idea in itself, but check out its other specs:

"Typical high-end HD camcorders have 2.1M pixel sensors and record with 3:1:1 color subsampled video at up to 30fps. We deliver 11.4M pixels at up to 60fps and record RAW, or 2x over-sampled HD in 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 - your choice. That’s more than 5 times the amount of information available every second and a vastly superior recording quality. Don’t need all that data for your workflow? Dial it back, and keep all the other advantages of the Mysterium Super 35mm cine sized (24.4 x 13.7mm) sensor. You get the same breathtaking Depth of Field and selective focus as found in film cameras. Mysterium boasts a greater than 66db Signal to Noise Ratio thanks to its large 29 sq. micron pixels. And 11,480,800 pixels deliver resolution that can only be called Ultra High Definition."

RED.com

The scoop from HD for Indies

NAB 2006

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

A little help with photography and the law.


I ran across this lawyer's website and thought it would be good to share.

From the site:

"Bert Krages is an attorney who concentrates on environmental, intellectual property, and education issues. Prior to entering the legal profession, Mr. Krages was an environmental engineer. Recognized nationally as an advocate of the right to take photographs in public places, he also teaches photography and sells images through a stock agency. In addition to photography, he enjoys outdoor activities such as fly-fishing and hiking."

Bert Krages II website

Monday, April 24, 2006

Double or Nothing


John Miller on the art of Douglas Huebler @ ARTFORUM

IN RETROSPECT, Douglas Huebler seems to have framed the scope of his work (or at least the general reception of it) with two irreconcilable declarations, the first being Conceptual art's most oft-quoted pronouncement, "The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more." Despite its laconic tone, Huebler's remark, initially put forward in a 1969 artist's statement for a show at New York's Seth Siegelaub Gallery, mercilessly lampoons the expectation that artists be prolific. It implies a cessation of production, not because the world is particularly wonderful, but simply because it meets a minimum standard: "more or less interesting." It hints at a certain ecology as well. To make more objects—particularly, boring art objects—would be redundant. Why bother?

READ ON

Friday, April 21, 2006

Mamiya Bails Out


Another venerable Japanese camera company is about to exit the business, just weeks after Konica Minolta produced its last camera. According to reports out of Japan Mamiya, best known for its high-end pro equipment, will be selling off its film and digital camera business to focus on other sectors. The company apparently has had "stagnant sales" of its digital models, including its 22-megapixel, $12,000, Mamiya ZD, which was released in Japan in December and in Europe just last month. The buyer is apparently Cosmos Scientific, a Japanese company better known for its IT business than for any expertise in digital imaging. As of now, it looks like the deal is set to close on September 1.

Sony Alpha


Sony is branching out in the digital imaging field and has introduced a D-SLR camera line dubbed "alpha". They will continue with the Cybershot product line. Not much detail in the press release and the Flash site is in Japanese – more to come as I continue to investigate.

Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer has carried the ball and done further investigation. It seems that Sony has bought out what was left of Konica-Minolta. Hmmmm.....

Press Release(PDF)

Sony Japan (Flash)

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

TIPA Awards


"TIPA Awards are recognised as the Oscars of the industry. Recently, the president of a leading manufacturing company said: "We believe that winning the TIPA award helps our marketing activity very much".

Many awards are presented each year all over the world in all sectors of commerce, industry, and the arts. Some awards are sold, others are bought. But we can assure you that only those products that really deserve them can win the TIPA awards. That's why they are so prestigious. "

The Award page

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Who are you?


Can digital and traditional photography co-exist?

Will silver based photography pass away or will there be a paradigm shift in aesthetics?

Obviously digital has taken over the commercial field of image making, where shall silver fall?

I open the floor to you for comments........

Friday, April 14, 2006

The history of image reproduction


A few years ago I was in New Mexico rummaging through a flea market and ran across a 5x7 glass plate negative that intrigued me, so I bought it for 5 dollars. Unfortunately it broke on the return home and I stashed it in a box of old images. I ran across it the other day and brought it to work to scan it. I was originally attracted to this image because it was a glass plate negative of a Carte de Visite nailed to a wooden plank, the earliest form of photo reproduction I had seen. Yesterday I printed the image on an Epson 9600. So this is an inkjet print of a glass plate negative of a Carte de Visite, a little photo history lesson in itself.

The Epson Lawsuit

How many times have you replaced an ink cartridge when your Epson printer says it is out of ink and noticed there is still some ink sloshing around in the cartridge? Well a lawsuit has been filed against Epson and a settlement has been reached. Read the settlement notice.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Spanning Time: A conversation with Uta Barth


"In terms of contemporary photography, Uta Barth occupies a unique artistic position. The photographer’s often blurry images of trees, streets, and empty spaces are less concerned about documenting her environment or saying something about herself. On the contrary: Barth eliminates every clear hint that could relate something about the theme or story of her photographs. Instead, she poses a far greater challenge to herself in truly attempting to see. Cheryl Kaplan spoke to the Los Angeles-based photographer about her work".

READ ON AT db ARTmag

Nan Goldin "Chasing a Ghost"


by Jerry Saltz @ The Village Voice

Perhaps the most pitiable image in all of Dante's Inferno is the wood of suicides. Here, in hell's Seventh Circle, between a river of boiling blood and a desert of burning sand, is a dense, pathless forest where the souls of the suicides are encased within gnarled trees and fruitless bushes. Odious Harpies—monstrous birds with claws and female faces—race through the wood tearing the trees limb from limb, causing them to bleed. Cries and wails echo in the sunless, starless air.
Throughout her career, but especially in her latest and most wrenching work— Sisters, Saints, & Sibyls, the 39-minute three-screen lamentation that is a duel memoir of her sister's suicide at the age of 19 and her own mortifications of the flesh and battles with addiction—the photographer Nan Goldin has been one of the great living suicides of recent art history. Her legendary slide show of more than 700 images set to music, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency," begun in the 1970s and carried out through the 1980s, is the great Book of the Dead of the period—a love letter to a generation caught in a disintegrating death ray, cursed and blessed, drawn like moths to a flame, first to each other, then to desire, then addiction, then stalked by AIDS and overdose.

READ ON

Friday, April 07, 2006

Canon imagePROGRAF iPF9000


Canon Europe, world leader in digital imaging technology, has today launched its first 60" large format printer, the imagePROGRAF iPF9000. Aimed primarily at the print-for-pay sector, including copy shops and professional print businesses, this new flagship device delivers best-in-class image quality at high speed, and incorporates a range of industry-leading technologies, including Canon's new 12-colour pigment ink system.

CANON SITE

Cameratown Announcement

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Slides and Prejudice


Matvey Levenstein, Clementines, 2000.
COURTESY LARISSA GOLDSTON GALLERY, NEW YORK


The controversy around painting from photographs continues as new generations and new image-making technologies keep the debate alive

By Linda Yablonsky @ ARTnews

The image that the Whitney Museum has chosen to promote “Day for Night,” its 2006 Biennial, is an extremely close view of a woman’s eye. The eye is green and heavily made up with hot pink shadow and sequins. Taken from a 5-by-9-foot painting by Marilyn Minter, it has a tawdry sort of glamour.

The eye appears in color on the dust jacket of the exhibition catalogue, while an enlarged detail is printed in black and white on the cover. The original, Pink Eye (2005), was partly fingerpainted in enamel on aluminum. In reproduction, however, it looks just like a photograph.

In fact, Minter created the painting from two different photographs that she shot herself and combined on a computer in Photoshop, the digital equivalent of a darkroom, before projecting the result onto her painting’s surface and tracing it. That is enough to make some people scream—despite the power of the image, the evidence of the artist’s hand, and her transformation of the source.

These days, photo-based painting is as common as rain and just as inevitable, as younger artists such as Nick Mauss, Lucy McKenzie, and Wilhelm Sasnal take up the practice and exploit it. Yet it often complicates the public’s understanding of art and can easily put painters who use photographic aids, including computers and projectors, on the defensive. The question is: why? Why should a painting based on a photograph be considered a less legitimate work of art than one painted from observation or one that is simply abstract?

READ ON

Smithsonian Agreement Angers Filmmakers




By EDWARD WYATT @ New York Times

Some of the biggest names in documentary filmmaking have denounced a recent agreement between the Smithsonian Institution and Showtime Networks Inc. that they say restricts makers of films and television shows using Smithsonian materials from offering their work to public television or other non-Showtime broadcast outlets.

Ken Burns, whose documentaries "The Civil War" and "Baseball" have become classics of the form, said in an interview yesterday that he believed that such an arrangement would have prohibited him from making some of his recent works, like the musical history "Jazz," available to public television because they relied heavily on Smithsonian collections and curators.

"I find this deal terrifying," Mr. Burns said in a telephone interview from San Francisco, where he is filming interviews for a documentary on the history of the national parks. "It feels like the Smithsonian has essentially optioned America's attic to one company, and to have access to that attic, we would have to be signed off with, and perhaps co-opted by, that entity."

On March 9, Showtime and the Smithsonian announced the creation of Smithsonian Networks, a joint venture to develop television programming. Under the agreement, the joint venture has the right of first refusal to commercial documentaries that rely heavily on Smithsonian collections or staff. Those works would first have to be offered to Smithsonian on Demand, the cable channel that is expected to be the venture's first programming service.

READ ON

Monday, April 03, 2006

Photographic Discoveries : Recent Acquisitions

Charles Marville, Rue de la Bûcherie, 1865/1869

"In the last few years the National Gallery of Art has significantly expanded its holdings of both 19th- and 20th-century European and American photographs. Presenting approximately 70 works by such celebrated photographers as William Henry Fox Talbot, Eugène Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Brassaï, this exhibition highlights significant new acquisitions of photographs made during the first century of the medium's history, from the early 1840s to the 1940s."

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
March 26th to July 30th

NGA website
Press Release