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Digital Photography: New Kodak Camera Surprise

Kodak DCS 760 digital camera

Kodak Professional pretty much caught everyone off guard with its announcement of the DCS 760, a new digital camera based on the Nikon F5 body, at CeBIT, a major computer show in Germany. Since Nikon introduced the D1 at about one-third of the price of Kodak’s equivalent camera, a lot of people including myself had presumed we would not see any more Kodak cameras based on a Nikon body. Largely because of the D1, Kodak has been forced to lower its prices several times in the past year to remain competitive, especially in the photojournalism field.

The specifications of the DCS 760 are pretty impressive. It has a 6-million pixel Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) Charge Coupled Device (CCD) sensor which produces 18 MB digital files capable of producing 16x20 prints without interpolation, according to Kodak. This camera replaces the DCS 660, which suffered from a slow operating speed, due to its large image size. Kodak has overcome this shortcoming in the DCS 760, which can capture up to 24 frames at 1.5 fps before the buffer is full. Although this might not be fast enough for sports and photojournalism work, it is plenty fast enough for wedding and portrait photographers who also demand higher image quality. The CCD is not quite the size of a 35mm frame, so there is a 1.3X multiplier effect.

At press time Kodak had not announced the price of the DCS 760, which goes on sale after May, but it did promise it would be competitively priced. The DCS 660, the camera it replaces, was reduced in price to $7995 a few weeks previously, so hopefully the new camera will cost even less. Considering the 660 cost $29,995 a couple of years ago, this is a substantial price drop. The upcoming Kodak Pro digital back for medium format cameras will cost $19,995, which is a very attractive price, compared to other camera backs on the market.

	Click on the butterfly icon on Test Strip 3.0 and the Metamorphis program will automatically work through color corrections on this image of model Rachelle Marie Short.

Judging by user groups on the Internet, Canon users are getting increasingly frustrated at the slow introduction of a new Canon–based digital camera body. Apart from the D30, which is aimed at the high-end amateur market, there has been no new professional digital camera body since the Kodak DCS 520 was introduced in 1998. Apparently Kodak has no plans to introduce any new Canon-based cameras, leaving everyone to wonder just when Canon will introduce its body for professional photographers. With it lagging so far behind Nikon in the digital camera race, Canon fans reckon the camera will be something really speculator and competitively priced once it does hit the market. I guess only time will tell.

Test Strip
Version 3.0 of Test Strip has now been introduced for Mac users. Developed by photographers for photographers this plug-in for Photoshop is a more substantial alternative to the Variations tool built into Photoshop for adjusting colors, saturation, contrast etc. in an image. Test Strip allows one to make adjustments and see the results of different changes side by side for comparison. This makes it much easier for those of us (me included) who are mystified and often confused by the menus used to adjust curves, levels, hues, etc. These changes are invariably needed to reproduce the best images.

The new version of Test Strip includes a new feature called Metamorphis, which takes the concept of easy adjustments even further by essentially automating the process. The system guides one through the adjustment process by showing two differently adjusted images. You click on the one that’s closest to the desired look and you are then presented with another two images. The program then evaluates the user’s choices and creates precise transformations. After eight or so pairings are displayed the program displays a final version which can be further fine-tuned if needed. Vivid Details, the publishers of the program, claims that Metamorphis helps avoid over processing of images, which can easily happen when users are unfamiliar with the effects of different color correction parameters. A demo version of Test Strip can be downloaded from the company’s web site.

The 300-watt capacity inverter (left) is plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter to charge the D1 battery (center) using the regular 120-volt battery charger.

Power Inverters
Last month I talked about the value of having a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) to keep your computer running in the event of a power cut. A UPS works fine for protecting sensitive computers and electronic components from sudden shut downs and it also preserves data. However, most affordable UPS units do not have enough juice in their batteries to keep a computer system going for much more than 20–30 minutes. There are other alternatives to providing power for a longer period of time such as a generator, but that is impractical for most people unless they are often working away from a mains supply and need portable power generation. For the rest of us who only occasionally need portable 120-volt supply, there are power inverters. The term inverter is a bit misleading as they actually convert 12 volts DC to 120 volts AC. This means that a 12-volt car battery can be used to power equipment that normally needs 120 volts. Low-end inverters can be plugged into the cigarette lighter in a car and are powerful enough to power items up to 300 watts. Bigger units need to be wired directly to a battery to cope with the higher loads.

Obviously, a car battery will run flat eventually unless it is being continuously charged. The rate at which the battery discharges naturally depends on the size of the battery and the amount of juice required by the equipment. In simple terms, a battery should last for 5–10 hours if a computer or TV set using 300 watts is attached. Motor homes use these inverters to supply 120-volt circuits, and they rely on on-board generators to keep batteries charged when the vehicle’s own engine is not running.

I recently purchased a small 300-watt inverter at a discount warehouse for $30, which is considerably less than the $100+ prices I had seen them advertised for a year or so ago. So far I have only used it to recharge a battery for my D1 camera using the 120-volt charger that comes with the camera. It easily charged the battery in a couple of hours during a car journey. It’s certainly a reassuring feeling that I can now recharge batteries for my camera and laptop computer while driving or away from a mains power supply.

	Peter iNova’s unique CD-ROM eBook contains a ton of information and even some color matching charts as well as demo software and over 300 filters.

Coolpix CD eBook
Although there are no hard and fast figures to prove it, I suspect that the Nikon Coolpix 990 has become the one most widely owned digital camera among serious photographers, including readers of Rangefinder. Although the camera is not used by news photographers and studio photographers, as it is really just a point-and-shoot camera, it is more than good enough to use as a carry-at-all-times camera for grab and shoot usage. Having said that, many pictures taken on this versatile camera have been published in magazines and newspapers because it delivers good quality images and is affordable. For example, I use a 990 to shoot most images that accompany this column each month because its swivel lens is so useful for shooting different angles without having to move the subject or one’s body.
Peter iNova is a Los Angeles-based photographer who has obviously spent many many hours mastering the 990 as well as Photoshop and digital imaging techniques in general. He has put all his knowledge together in a very intriguing electronic book, called Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras.

What makes this book so different is that instead of just being 250 pages of text thrown on a CD-ROM, which would be better off printed in a book, this so-called ebook includes much more. The book extensively covers color correction techniques using Photoshop that are applicable to any camera. The nature of publishing on CD-ROM allows Peter to make the experience interactive with links between subjects and practical facts as well as demo software and filters galore. What’s perhaps most impressive is that the CD-ROM contains over 300 filters and Photoshop actions that can be used to correct images and produce special effects. There are even actions that automatically add a frame to images that make it look as if an image was shot on a piece of film! All in all, the book is well worth $50 to any owner of a Nikon Coolpix camera. It would also prove invaluable to any newcomer to Photoshop and digital photography in general. Undoubtedly it will also be a useful companion for the new Coolpix 995 upgraded camera that will have been announced by the time you read this column.

A sample page from iNova’s book displays the level of detail that is applicable to more than just Coolpix owners.

Belkin FireWire Card
I signed off last month’s column somewhat in frustration, as I could not get a Belkin FireWire adapter card to work on my PC because it was not compatible with my original Windows 98 operating system. Although Windows 98 SE (Second Edition) is not officially still on sale, I did find an upgrade copy at my local CompUSA store alongside Windows ME (Millennium Edition), its replacement. Because ME is a stop gap operating system that will be superceded by Windows XP later this year it seems that Microsoft is not working as diligently as it should on its compatibility with peripherals. I was not brave enough to upgrade to ME and then have to worry about compatibility with older software and printer drivers, Instead, I opted to perform a minor upgrade to 98 SE.

The upgrade was painless enough and once I had the drivers installed for the FireWire card everything was fine, although I did have to reboot the computer three times to get everything working smoothly. This upgrade enabled me to hook up the external QPS QueFire CD-RW drive I had attached to my Mac for the past few months and use it on the PC. I found that this 12X CD writer would only work at 10X speed on the PC, which meant it took about six minutes to burn a CD-R instead of under five on the Mac. I was unable to figure out why it would not run at its maximum speed on the Mac and not on the PC. I also found that the bundled Adaptec CD Creator software on the PC was not as intuitive to use as Toast (also published by Adaptec) on the Mac.

	The Belkin PCI FireWire adapter card enables a PC to use FireWire peripherals such as CD-R writers and DV camcorders.

As you’ve probably guessed, the QPS CD-RW is now hooked back up to my Mac where it is used regularly to burn CD-ROMs containing images captured on my digital cameras. But at least it’s nice to know that I can hook up the same peripherals to my Mac or my PC. I can now also do video editing on either machine as the FireWire card included a basic video-editing program that I was able to get to work with my Canon Optura DV camcorder.

John Rettie is a photojournalist who resides in Santa Barbara, CA. He has been using a camera as a professional for 31 years, a computer for 21 years, and has combined his knowledge of both for the past eight years. Readers can contact him by e-mail at john@johnrettie.com or by snail-mail c/o Rangefinder.