StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

Getty, Corbis, National Geographic, ASMP, ASPP... Everyone Loves Adobe´s New .DNG Format

Adobe announced yesterday at the Photokina a new file format (DNG, Digital NeGative Specification) and

"hopes that the new [single file] format will solve the problem of multiple formats and multiple software packages by introducing a single format that can store information from a diverse range of cameras.
Adobe, who will be offering The Digital Negative Specification free of any legal restrictions or royalties, hopes that in doing so integration of the .DNG file format into digital cameras, printers, and software products will become widespread.
Where it sees the strength of the new file format is in a set of metadata that must be included in the file to describe key details about the camera and settings.
Of course the .DNG format is immediately supported in Adobe Photoshop CS as part of an updated Camera Raw Plug-in, as well as Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0" (Pocket-lint.co.uk: "Adobe tries to unify digital camera market with new file standard").

Link to the Press Release and the Adobe DNG website with the freely available Adobe DNG Converter:

Raw file formats are becoming extremely popular in digital photography workflows because they offer creative professionals greater creative control. However, cameras can use many different raw formats — the specifications for which are not publicly available — which means that not every raw file can be read by a variety of software applications. As a result, the use of these proprietary raw files as a long-term archival solution carries risk, and sharing these files across complex workflows is even more challenging.
The solution to this growing problem? The Digital Negative (DNG), a new, publicly available archival format for the raw files generated by digital cameras. By addressing the lack of an open standard for the raw files created by individual camera models, DNG helps ensure that photographers will be able to access their files in the future. (Link)

Link to the complete pdf-file "Introducing the Digital Negative specification".

Comments from Getty, Corbis, National Geographic Magazine, American Society of Media Photographers, American Society of Picture Professionals and other people here in the Adobe Press Release.

First more technical oriented review here: "Are Raw Files Forever?":

The cumulative effect of numerous manufacturers producing dozens of new cameras a year, each one of which has a slightly different raw format, has lead us to the point where there are now a huge number of different raw formats. This places a burden on photographers, as well as a concern about the accessibility of these images in the future. It is easy to imagine a day when a photographer turns to his or her raw files taken ten or twenty years previous, and finds that they are unreadable. This has nothing to do with physical media, but simply whether or not the files can be read by then available software that can interpret them. (Michael Reichmann/Luminous Landscape)

Billy Sells Andy...

"When the [Andy Warhol] foundation sought a suitable partner to facilitate the licensing and use of Warhol artwork, Corbis was a natural fit," said Martin Cribbs, director of licensing for the Andy Warhol Foundation. "Corbis has the most experienced and capable rights clearance team in the industry. In addition to enabling its advertising and editorial clients to license Warhol's imagery, Corbis can also clear rights for commercial use of Warhol work in a matter of hours. This was the key reason that we chose to collaborate with Corbis."
[Corbis and Andy Warhol Foundation Announce Content Distribution Partnership]
[© Image Rick Geary and David L. Wilson of Ready-Made Rubber, Link]

JPG Magazine: Another New Mag

Behind JPG magazine are Heather Champ [when she reads your blog you´ll notice that she uses Kinja =:-) ] and Derek Powazek:

"They're called "photobloggers" - a sloppy term for sloppy times.
[...]
In another time they would have been called artists. Personal documentarians. But we have a simpler word for them: Photographers.
[...]
JPG Magazine is for people who love imagemaking without attitude. It's about the kind of photography you get when you love the moment more than the camera. It's for photographers who, like us, have found themselves online, sharing their work, and would like to see that work in print" (read the Manifesto).

The first issue (theme: origin) will be published in November (submissions Due: 4 October 2004), but "only one submission per person, per issue, please." JPG Magazine will be published 6 times a year, every other month. Issues will be published as full color, perfect bound books, as high quality as possible.

So, after the hassle to convert your workflow from analogue to digital, photobloggers are starting to re-enter the publishing world of analogue and printed paper. After the launch of File Magazine ("File Magazine: A Collection of Unexpected Photography") another new and perfect place for picture researchers and buyers to scout for new talents.

The Digital Photography Weblog: Another Blog...

What some people were expecting: the new blog "The Digital Photography Weblog" (written by Amit Malhotra/Dallas; belonging to Jason Calacanis´ Weblogs, Inc.) went online a couple of days ago. Let´s see and wait... . The subtitle "A picture is worth five megapixels" is obviously not a too bright idea moving us to streams of tears of truly felt admiration. But maybe we all can read other and better stuff than the streamlined crap "XYZ reports today that ABC will report tomorrow that yesterday 123 reviewed the new digital camera xyz" of the other digital photography hardware blogs (which means loosely translated: "Hey, you DSOAB, click here to read the reprint of that press release I discovered yesterday, cause I gotta pay my rent with these Google Ads"). Hopefully from someone with a personality and a viewpoint and not that Copy´n´ Paste-attitude.

Another new blog (?) which recently came to our attention is "Cameras – Digital Camera Reviews, Comparisons and Ratings".

The Next Generation Of Miniature Cameras For Mobile Phones

"Camera lens company Carl Zeiss has partnered with Dialog Semiconductor to built what they claim is the next generation of miniature cameras for mobile phones. Their first joint project is a camera module for phones that measures smaller than a pea, yet, they claim, delivers "a very high image quality". The companies plan to start selling the modules to phone manufacturers soon.
The companies believe that with the right application of technology, 10 megapixel camera phones are within reach."
[infoSync World, via "Digital Cameras to have built in cell phones in the future?"]

Sign The Blog Sourcing Petition!

No need to add a word. Just sign: "We endorse the Blog Sourcing Petition to The Blogosphere Community", more information here: "A Petition to Commit to Proper Blog Sourcing" (Steve Rubel).

[via Tiffinbox]

The Moblogging Chaos At The Republican National Committee

"A moblogging operation should be taken as seriously, and as with as many resources and people, as a regular news operation ... Moblogging is suitable for breaking news or events with good visual images. It is not good for in-depth stories... ."

[© Image: guess who?]

A nice story ("Lessons learned from the RNC", Learning about mobile weblogging at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism):

Ladies and Gentlemen: it is now possible to leap to the forefront of journalism with technology available on the street. This is moblogging. The future is now.
Sort of.
Whoever thought of this was on to something when he or she decided to hire journalism students to use camera phones and the Internet as a nouveau wire service on the cheap. The idea was to be able to capture the ambiance of a political convention by assembling a mosiac of grainy images of the events via the camera phone. The images would give the viewer a near-real-time sense of the convention, taking advantange of the fast upload capabilities of the phone without the need to download images to a computer to edit or send. We would be a swarm of imagetakers and reporters, filing a photo every ten minutes on average, for the entire convention. Our editing team at the University of South Carolina’s Newsplex would edit our pictures and text, and receive dictation for longer stories, and post them to the moblog.

In practice, this operation worked only somewhat. The problems:

The picture quality is pretty poor...
[...]
We found it difficult to shoot some pictures, then take a time-out to jam out a sentence on the keypad. Typing any text of length on a numerical pad is s-l-o-w. Even with intelligent text... .

Continue to read the list of the little mishaps here.

Corbis, Gates, Microsoft And Potential Conflicts Of Interest

Brier Dudley/The Seattle Times in "Microsoft bonuses a bit leaner, but still fat":
"They won't go hungry, but Microsoft's top executives saw their bonuses fall over the past year, according to a proxy statement filed yesterday.
[...]
The proxy also has disclosures about potential conflicts of interest, including a note that Microsoft paid Corbis — a Gates-owned Seattle company — $1 million for digital-image licensing fees in the past year. It said Gates was not involved in the negotiations, and that the terms compared with those of other big customers."
[© Image David Icke]

New Blogs On The Block: New Digital Image

John Schott, creator of the blog Camera|Iraq and Director for Media Studies Concentration and Media Studies (MEDA) at the Carleton College, Minnesota, recently created a new blog called "New Digital Image".
The blog -- Schott is the producer of "American Photography: A Century of Images" -- is dedicated to moblogging in general (actually to teach his class) and brings up some interesting links.

Again: Blogs, Photo and Copyright

After his comment here and few emails later regarding the topic "Blogs, Photo and Copyright"/"Blogs, Photo and Copyright: The debate continues
[Copyright => Garbage?]"/"Copyright Protection -- How to Register Photographs" (a discussion that started with the post "Fair Use for photos on the web and in blogs: a modest proposal to avoid a major battle" by Jason Calacanis), Bahar Gidwani of Index Stock gives his view in "Industry Comment #6--Art is a private, personal product": "When people “rip” our art (Web slang for stealing it”), we should object loudly!"