StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

iSmoke: The iPhone blends

This is totally off the topic, but it´s holiday season and for users of Nokia and HTC Touch devices tired of the iPhone hype this YouTube video below is finally overdue.

Later I tried an "iPhone" search on LuckyOliver, Dreamstime, iStockphoto, Shutterstock, StockXpert and Fotolia. They mostly all show the same images (click here for results of LuckyOliver, Dreamstime, iStockphoto, Shutterstock, StockXpert and Fotolia) from the same contributors -- the old microstock problem -- but no Apple iPhones.

Summer In The Hamptons: Thinking About New Ways to Record Images

It´s summer time, we´re all in the Hamptons, enjoying our life, and only the jerks and wage slaves that need to work for a living have to stay in the downtown photo agencies, instantly told "you are doing a very valuable job".

If your boss starts to tell you that I´m wrong on this then he probably also thinks that osamafanclub.blogspot.com tops the Top 100 at Technorati,  Podcasts are hacked and substituted with morning prayers and BloggerCon becomes Allah Akhbar Con. (BlogHerald in "The Top 10 signs terrorists have infiltrated the blogosphere", based on a recent Wahington Post story).

Feeling this joy of a careless summer vacation, it´s a devil-may-care time for Romain Guy to "think about new ways to record images":

"Here's how to build a hands-free photography rig using an iSight, a Bluetooth headset, a backpack, and a dash of AppleScript that enables you to capture images on the go by simply speaking, 'Take shot'. Romain Guy shows you how to build it."
(MacDevCenter.com: Digital Photography Hack: A Hands-Free Shooting Rig, p.1

Romain continues, "this rig suffers from three major shortcomings ... maybe a better way to go is to mount the iSight on a pair of glasses." (p.3).

These are the fundamental problems that sometime do occur in the Hamptons during summer.

The Legend Continues: My New Favorite Ricoh Caplio GX8

The former classical analogue cameras of Ricoh, the GR1, GR1s, GR1v und GR21 had had their famous history.

They were legends.

With a fascinating lens, they were real pocket cameras of the professional photogs: "No matter how much you love photography ... if you had left your camera at home: who in the world cares about the "untaken picture" except you being the one who had seen one of those "they never come back"-situations? That´s why pros in the past left in their daily life (shopping, driving in an bus, at the dentist) their heavy Nikon F-5 and other stuff at home and sticked to smaller cams ... indeed mainly to one camera ... ." (Link)

Since years, the Ricoh GR21 with its 3,5/21 mm lens is not produced any more and it´s very difficult to find them anywhere second hand and finally to buy them -- often the second hand price is higher than the original price years ago.

These "old" Ricoh cameras were even able to exposure black/white slide films like the Agfa Scala.

Then, all of a sudden, the new digital Ricoh GX showed up (see my story over a year ago: "Ricoh Caplio GX: A new Ricoh GR-1 for the Digital Age?").

However, and despite the honorable bay leafs in advance, the Ricoh Caplio GX did not receive very overwhelming reviews later.

Four months ago Ricoh finally launched the successor, the Ricoh Caplio GX8.

And it seems, at least for the very moment, that all of the old dreams became real truth again. More reviews here at the forum of Rob Galbraith with lots of personal experiences.

New Companies from Central Europe

Depressed by the economical downturn? Look at some new companies:

After the entry "istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo" and a recent comment by Bahar Gidwani of Index Stock Imagery ("istockphoto.com: You do the math") regarding Dreamstime and FreeStock here´s another new RF agency: Bildunion. They are offering images for 9.99 Euro (10.69 Euro including Tax) with no limitation regarding time, media and place of use or image size. Mostly material for illustrations, but also some real nice images (sorry, can´t link to them) that could be considered to be close to serious photography.

Two other new companies: Konrad Dienst and Artur Krüger over at confessMEDiA finally have launched their first and new website (sorry, no english version so far) some days ago. Their main product, the Communication Server, creates virtual photo portals for photo buyers and - together with their partner agencies - for photo agencies. But as always: the clients in Europe and US are top of the line but the dumb traditional media in our industry won´t listen. Not even one single word. Why? Is it just because the mighty German Press Agency (Deutsche Presse Agentur) bought APIS Picturemaxx through one of their subsidiaries three months ago? There are rumours regarding pan-european anti-trust laws and how they might apply to reality.

Another new company is Kappa Motion Media. Founded by the former co-founder of Digital Collections, Dennis Zierahn, Kappa is heavily focussing on software for broadcasting and stock footage companies: indexing, archiving, storing/media management, retrieval and scene detection of digitized film, video, motion and footage for rights management and new distribution channels like video-to-handy (handy = mobile phone; related: "Stock Footage: Need a Disaster? An Assasination?"). Stock footage might be the next hype ("Stock footage: Look no further than the newly organized, digitized and revitalized stock footage industry"; "The footage industry is set to grow dramatically" and "will increase and over time may approach that for still imagery", so Jonathan Klein of Getty Images on Dec 9th, 2004).
After looking at what Kappa´s doing practically, footage retrieval over the web is only a small piece of what can be done... . Watch out.

BTW: Getty had revenues in 2004 of $ 34.2m from footage sales (5.5% of the total revenues of $ 622.4m), the average license fee for a clip of stock footage was $ 629 with a final 2004 quarter rise of 25.5% compared with the last quarter of 2003. Corbis instead is unable to give figures breaking down revenues between footage and photos (Link).

[Links to Footage agencies and the new business field of mobile phones: "Traditional Stock Photo Industry Player Delivering Content On Mobile Phone"; "Corbis delivers content on mobile phones"; "After Corbis and Superstock, Getty Images Supplies Content To The Mobile World"]

Posted by Andy

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?"]

Questo blog è chiuso per ferie, fino all' 8 Agosto 2004

[© Grace and Katie]

Chiudo, per un circa settimana, questo weblog. Infatti, a mio modesto parere, per scrivere bisogna prima pensare e, i blogs spesso ti tolgono lo spazio per pensare.


(Hint for the person/CEO/BizDeveloper etc. who is constantly looking for "DigitalVision 2003 revenues", ""Image source" 2003 revenues" or "Index stock imagery 2003 revenues" and other good stuff-- Google hits are a tricky thing, especially with your really nice -- and static -- IP! So, no one has to work for Pixlogic, the company ("Visual Search") with Venture Capital from the CIA, just to know who you are...).
=:-)

What Color is your Pixel?

CP presents an introduction of called "Framed and Exposed: Making Sense of Camera Sensors" by Ben Long :"The most important part of your digital camera .. very well maybe its image sensor. It's where all the magic happens and where all the mistakes are made."
Good explanations of some common problems.
[Image dpreview.com]

Storing your digital photography longer than it takes your kid to grow up: Forget CDs and DVDs

Once, in the early days, we had Macs with SCSI connectors (SCSI - does anyone remember?) and some external hard drives (with the unbelievable storage capacity of 2 GB). Then the first Macs with FireWire only showed up -- in some nights all files had to be copied (...passing hours in the sandglass) and over the time the SCSI drives were sold or simply thrown away because it was to expensive to buy/establish/maintain a separate communication channel with old-fashioned SCSI drives. After discovering that some files hadn´t been copied properly, it was too late... . Two or three years later the last removable SCSI hard drives (Syquest 44/88MB, Iomega 1 GB) refused to work.

Now, there had been a lot of research going on in the last years how long and under which circumstances CDs and DVDs probably could live longer than three or five years. David is quoting the results of a examination called "Digital Media Life Expectancy and Care" by Michael W. Gilbert, last revised thursday, 12 June, 2003:

"With moderate care, most magnetic media will last for 10 years. With special storage and handling, digital magnetic tape formats can reliably store information for 30 years or more."

Not to be misunderstood: we are not talking of saving the files of a company (datacenter, RAID, multi location distributed files etc.), but the problem how a private person might handle all those files... and not only until the next generation of macs or pc shows up in the rooms of your preferred local dealer.
To outline the problem: if you burn -- as a backup of your hard drive --about 120 CDs/year (10 CDs/month) to store some of your images, you will have to reburn all those files at least five years later to be on the secure side (about 78 GB). These are only the files of one short year... . Good night and farewell my lovely if you only have one built-one hard drive for recovering purposes...if your drive crashes, you´ll have to insert hundreds of CDs manually...if they still word after 5 hot and humid summers.
So the only solution for a private person can be (besides RAID): a second built-in drive for backup-only, two external hard drives (capacity > 250 GB; three might make more sense), and t h e n CDs/DVDs.
By the way: Life expectancy of photographics slides: 100 years. Egyptian stone tablet: 2,200 years. And: a thief might steal your mac/pc, your hard drives - but never your slides.

Sony - that had been about time!

Sony and Macs... a history of its own (just think of synchronizing a Sony Clie with a Mac). Sony has now released the first version of the Image Data Converter program for Apple Mac enabling users of the Sony DSC-F828 to convert and edit image files in the SRF format (this how Sony calls RAW files). About time.

New Ricoh Caplio GX and 40 GB iPod: three week trip abroad without lugging around a laptop

Ever tried to use your iPod as an external storage for pix taken with the new Ricoh Caplio GX? Derrick Story, author of "Digital Photography Pocket Guide" and "Digital Photography Hacks" in iPod as Digital Photographer's Best Friend:

Yes, the iPod can store thousands of songs. But now you can use it to upload thousands of pictures too, directly from the memory card. And thanks to Panther, that's only the beginning of what is sure to become an indispensable tool for many digital photographers.
For the digital photographer on the go, the iPod can be a valuable addition to the camera bag. It entertains while stuck in airports between flight connections, stores your appointments so you know where to be and when, wakes you up if you oversleep, and stores an entire trip's worth of photos.
Panther users have even more flexibility thanks to the Image Capture app that comes bundled. With it you can share pictures from your iPod over a Rendezvous network, build web page catalogs, or download selected images to your Mac's hard drive. (macdevcenter)

Rollei Twin Lens Reflex Tradition: Rollei Goes Digital

[© Rollei]

Time for gadgets. Rollei introduces the Rolleiflex MiniDigi, a digital clone of the Rolleiflex 2.8F:

First developed in Germany in the 1920's, the Rollei 6x6cm Twin Lens Reflex Camera has always been a preferred tool for serious photography, especially portraits. Now, many of the outstanding convenience features and nostalgic design can be yours in a fashionable up-to-date digital.

The Rolleiflex MiniDigi ships with square frame format, waist level viewfinder with pop-up hood, 2-megapixel sensor [the only major disadvantage], 9mm f2.8 lens, SD card memory, crank action, 100 grams weight etc. See the Rollei Quick Time Movie (about 7.6MB/2:22).

Final Part III of Beyond Megapixels at the TechLounge

Update to "Beyond Megapixels: “The Megapixel Myth” at The Tech Lounge"

After publishing "Beyond Megapixels Part I" and "Beyond Megapixels Part II" now the final "Beyond Megapixels Part III" by Joe Marney:

This last installment of Beyond Megapixels contains an overview of camera function, such as metering, white balance and focusing systems, popular filetypes and their usefulness to the photographer, and features that define each digital camera. In keeping with the editorial nature of this series, I will share my preferences and opinions of these aspects when I deem prudent.

[Via Slashdot]

A Brief Introduction to GPS Photo Linking

David Goldwasser, contributor to the Digital Photography Hacks, at O'Reilly MacDevCenter.com:

Do you ever look back through your vacation photos and wonder where all of the photos were taken? What if there was a way to have all those images automatically show up as pins on a map or an aerial photograph? It may seem too good to be true, but it can be done. No mirrors or smoke; it's just making use of existing GPS technology. [..]
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there's a little hacking involved for Mac-based GPS photo linking. But the results can be quite impressive. If you've been working with these tools, please post a TalkBack below with any tips that you've learned. If there is a Mac software developer out there with some spare time (OK, but I can wish), I would be excited to see a native Mac-based solution for GPS photo linking. My sense is that there would be many thankful Mac photographers. (Link)

NYT staff photographers test cameraphones: Three say "Thumbs up", One pissed

Update to the stories in the category "Professional Photographers and Cameraphones"

The NYT (SLIDE SHOW: "Cellphones With Cameras") gave four of their staff photographers (Ozier Muhammad, Joyce Dopkeen, Chang W. Lee, Michelle V. Agins) a Sanyo PM-8200 cameraphone and asked: "What are cellphone cameras like to use?"

Ozier Muhammad was the only who didn´t like to work with the Sanyo or with cameraphones at all: "It seems to me more sensible to buy a P.D.A. with a built-in camera and Wi-Fi capability. I have one and the image is superior to any cellphone photo I've seen."

[©Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times]

Ozier Muhammad continues: "Since trying this one out, my feelings are about the same. I'd rather carry my cellphone in one pocket and my tiny high-quality point-and-shoot in the other" and "I didn't see the appeal since the quality is so awful".

Joyce Dopkeen´s experiences sound totally different:
"I thought it was quite a kick. Once I got the lay of the land, I found it O.K. to use. I was impressed with the quality, actually. I had a good response from the people I pointed it at, which surprised me. One guy, he rolled down his window and said, "What's that, is it a camera?" and scooted over so I could take his picture."

[©Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times]

[via Jonas/Columbia.edu]

Orbital Data closes $12 million round of financing

Line 56/Jim Ericson, the E-Business Executive Daily, reports in "Orbital Data's Fat Pipe" that

Two-year-old Orbital Data [founded by former Former Inktomi execs] today closed a $12 million round of financing and launched its flagship rack appliance, aimed at speeding large file transfers, specifically in the digital asset management (DAM) space. [...]
The Orbital 5500 is not a compression device. Rather, it employs an updated transport algorithm technology called TotalTransport, which is tuned to business applications. One device at each end of a distant network link speeds file transfer by 10 times and many more according to Orbital. Pricing runs $10,000 to $50,000 per appliance. [..]
With respect to DAM, accelerating the speed and volume of data will effect synchronization of business processes and workflows, [DAM authority Michael] Moon says. For large stock and customer image providers like Getty or Corbis, a five or 10 second latency can translate to cash in the till at the end of the day.

The San Mateo-based company estimates that the rapidly growing Digital Asset Management (DAM) space targeted will reach $1 billion in the year 2007 (where you got this nice number from?). Redpoint Ventures led the new round joined by current investor Sevin Rosen Funds. Orbital Data has secured 16 customers since it started shipping its product six months ago.

Top Fashion photographer Rankin Waddell & Nokia unite in fairy tale collaboration using the new Nokia 7610

Update to "Pro working with a Camera Phone" and "Nokia 7610: New Box with a lot of Toys in it"

First a photojournalist, now fashion photographer Rankin Waddell working with a cameraphone:

"Nokia today celebrates the availability of its latest imaging phone, the Nokia 7610, by announcing a pioneering collaboration with an iconic fashion photographer. Rankin, a highly acclaimed British fashion photographer, has used Nokia's most advanced camera handset to craft six enchanting photographs accompanied by 60 inspiration shots, inspired by the legendary Cottingley fairy photographs.
The magical Cottingley fairy images, created by schoolgirls Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, have fascinated and mystified the world for nearly 90 years. Now, retraining his eye from fashion to fairy tale, Rankin has re-created these historic photographs with a modern twist using the latest technology from Nokia. [...] Rankin explains: "I've always been captivated by the Cottingley fairy photographs and have harboured a secret ambition to give them a modern day reworking". [...] Nokia added: "Our collaboration with Rankin showcases - for the first time - how a camera phone can be used to support and enhance a photographer's creative process."(Nokia Press Release)

Rankin Waddell, born in Glasgow in 1966, has worked for Diesel, Givenchy, Mercedes, Hugo Fragrance etc. and together with Kate Moss, Madonna, Robbie Williams etc. He is a Co-founder of the Magazine Dazed & Confused (1991), also co-founded Vision On, a photographic art book publishing house, with Alex Proud (owner of London's Proud Galleries) in 1999. Still active as a magazine publisher, Rankin launched his own quarterly fashion magazine, RANK, as much as provocation as a manifesto, in December 2000, and is co-publisher of ANOTHER, the new launch from Dazed & Confused (Link). Rankin took part in some famous exhibitions, such as "CeleBritation", "Rankin Nudes" (book), and "Snog" (book):

"Some have even dubbed him the new David Bailey, which accounts for his occasional arrogance. He is the man that every A-List celebrity wants to be photographed by, even Madonna asked for him by name to shoot the images for the cover of her Ray of Light album as well as a front cover for Q magazine. He has photographed anyone and everyone, but still maintains that he is as normal as the rest of us. "I do not place myself in a bizarre parallel universe. I have a very down to earth approach to what I do. I don't ever say that I am a photographer from Vogue; I would be happy to take anyone's photograph." (New Insight co.uk, very good interview with Sarah Klugman about his career development => read it!)

[partly via Alan Reiter]
_____________________________________
The photo shown (©Elsie Wright/Frances Griffiths, presented here) is one of the old ones, NOT a new one from Rankin. Nokia has still not uploaded the new images from Rankin to the website.

Nokia 7610: New Box with a lot of Toys in it

Normally we don´t talk about hardware, but -- like the Ricoh Caplio GX -- no rules without exceptions:

Update to "Pro working with a Camera Phone", "Lifeblog by Nokia: No publishing to the Web and not for Mac" and these stories: (3; 4):

Nokia has begun shipping the camera phone Nokia 7610 with video-editing and mobile-blogging features in Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.
The phone maker said its 7610 phone can capture, edit, store, print and send pictures and videos. The handset comes with a Kodak application designed to let users upload pictures to a virtual photo album on the Web.
[...] Nokia recently announced a site called Lifeblog that lets subscribers archive cell phone photos in chronological order, along with other data, including text, video and audio, using a personal mobile Web log, or "moblog. (Dinesh C. Sharma, News.com)

The Nokia 7610 allows videos up to 10 minutes and ships with a 1 MP camera, Symbian, 8 MByte RAM/64 MB Reduced Size MMC and other meanwhile normal features as Bluetooth and USB.
Nice toy for adult children for something around $600.

Digital Cameras Devices for Professionals only

He would be happy!

They (1; 2) also!

According to EE Times ("Camera phones get sexy; do users care?") Samsung has announced that it wants to push quickly to five megapixel camera phones and make digital cameras devices for professionals only. "That's our ideal," said Dong Hoon Jang, a principal engineer in the South Korean company's mobile-phone group. The article continues:

Ricoh Caplio GX: A new Ricoh GR-1 for the Digital Age?

[Usually we don´t deal with hardware stuff (it´s annoying), but no rule without an exception]

No matter how much you love photography...if you had left your camera at home: who in the world cares about the "untaken picture" except you being the one who had seen one of those "they never come back"-situations? That´s why pros in the past left in their daily life (shopping, driving in an bus, at the dentist) their heavy Nikon F-5 and other stuff at home and sticked to smaller cams...indeed mainly to one camera... .
Do you remember the fabulous Ricoh GR-1 and their descendants (3,5/21 mm)? We still have one on our desk. The first real compact camera with a superb 28mm lens, Magnesium alloy die-cast body, less than 200 gr. and a great exposure measuring system for slide film (even the Agfa black/white slide film SCALA 200X). This - in the golden analogue days - piece of cake pros took to capture daily life situations (this Pulitzer Photo Winnie used it for a long distance marathon where he participated).
The Ricoh GR-1 is a modern classic*.
Now Ricoh comes up with the Ricoh Caplio GX (1; 2): 28-85 mm/F2,5-4,3, 5 MP, external flash possible, 114 mm x 58 mm x 29 mm, 205 g, cute shutter response time, 1.800 mAh... . “The Caplio GX is quite simply the finest digital camera our (Ricoh) organization has ever produced,” smiles Mr. Frans Limburg, the Manager of Ricoh’s PMMC-Benelux Office.
Let´s hope so! Hey, and what about the price?
________________________________________
*Wanna buy another modern classic? Tiffinbox.org (no commercial site) is selling a Leica M6 together with a 2.8/28mm.

Beyond Megapixels: “The Megapixel Myth” at The Tech Lounge

Joe Marney has publishing Part II of “The Megapixel Myth” at The Tech Lounge: "The best sensor in the world is worth nothing without a body and lens that compliment its design."
Regarding the Olympus E-1 he concludes: "The Four-Thirds initiative by a conglomeration of manufacturers is interesting to say the least, but the 4/3” sized sensor has not been developed to a point that it is truly competitive with larger APS-sized sensors. Olympus’ E-1 DSLR is a nice looking camera, and seems to have a great set of lenses, but the image quality just doesn’t seem to be there yet." This is exactly what pros are discussing in some of their forums.
Part III of this serie will examine file-types, in-camera functions and camera features.

In addition Stephen Voss gives a tutorial "On Digital Photography".

Beyond Megapixels: learn to love sensor size and image noise

Usually we don´t examine new hardware like DSLR or digital prosumer cameras. There are many other sites doing this (please see the left column at the bottom: "HardwareStuff: Recommended Reading").
But looking at recent ads you might thing that hardware for digital photography is only about the next generation of megapixel cameras with 8 or 11 or 16 or 22 megapixels. Instead there are only a few real innovations (E-System by Olympus, Sigma´s Foveon and Fuji´s SuperCCD sensor) waiting for further development. Joe Marney is publishing a three-part-report about the “The Megapixel Myth” at The Tech Lounge: “My contention on this issue is that the average photographer does not need more megapixels, they need better megapixels. I would much, much rather own a 5 megapixel digicam with good resolution at high ISO sensitivities and tough shooting situations than an 8 megapixel camera with great resolution only in ideal situations.”
These are not groundbreaking news driving us to tears, but it´s true. Read more in part two and three at The Tech Lounge soon.

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