Rangefinder Magazine
August 2005

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Industry News

Kodak Discontinues B&W Photographic Papers
Eastman Kodak Company (Rochester, NY, www.kodak.com) recently announced it would stop manufacturing black-and-white photographic papers. The decision was made to discontinue silver halide-based papers because of a growing decline in demand for the media. Kodak will continue to manufacture black-and-white films and the chemistry needed to develop them. Most industry observers attribute the decline in silver halide-based paper products to the growing use of digital imaging technology, which is rapidly taking over many areas of photography.

Yervant Comes to California
Yervant Zanazanian, M.Photog III, F.A.I.P.P, one of Australia’s most awarded and sought-after wedding photographers, will teach a rare one-day seminar for California Photographic Workshops in San Francisco on Monday, August 22. Yervant won 1st, 2nd and 3rd places in the 2005 WPPI Album competition, and 1st place in the 2005 AIPP album awards competition. Here are just a few things you will experience at Yervan’t one-day workshop: See how Yervant shoots his brides and grooms. Watch him in low light without flash. Watch him set up shots—is it fashion or wedding, posed or PJ? Learn his post-production and Photoshop techniques. Discover Yervant’s business secrets. And learn much, much more.

For information and booking, visit www.cpwschool.com/. To see Yervant’s work, visit www.yervant.com/.

Mary Ellen Mark to Appear in Philadelphia
The Philadelphia chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) will host award-winning pho­tographer Mary Ellen Mark as part of the release of her career retrospective book, Exposure (Phaidon, June 2005, $79.95, 288 pages). Mark, who is internationally recognized for her numerous books, exhibitions and editorial magazine work, is a contributing photographer to The New Yorker. Her work also appears in LIFE, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. Mark will present her work and a short film by award-winning documentary film maker Martin Bell, Sept. 15, 7–9 p.m., at Solmssen Court, Dorrance Hamilton Hall, University of the Arts, PA. Canon USA and Lowepro are the event sponsors. Admission is free to ASMP members, students, and the University of the Arts staff. There’s a $10 charge for the general public. More details are available at www.asmpphilly.com

AgfaPhoto North America Avoids Insolvency
AgfaPhoto North America (Ridgefield Park, NJ), the North American operating unit of AgfaPhoto, has survived the insolvency filing of its parent company, AgfaPhoto GmbH in Germany. Bing Liem, the president and CEO of AgfaPhoto North America, says the company will continue operating in a “business-as-usual mode,” with no interruption in the delivery of products and services. Liem says the company has experienced exceptional growth and success in 2005 and has strong prospects for further growth in the retail marketplace. He even expects a revenue growth of 20 percent over last year.

Manfrotto Ad Wins Creative Circle Award
Manfrotto (Bassano del Grappa, Italy, www.bogenimaging.com), a leading manufacturer of professional camera and lighting supports, was this year’s recipient of the Creative Circle Awards’ Bronze Honor for Best Specialist Press Campaign or Series. The three-part Manfrotto advertising campaign, which featured three-legged photographers, was developed to promote the company’s brand awareness. Creative Circle Awards were started 60 years ago to encourage and enhance creativity in advertising.

Cantrell & Buissink Hit the Road This Fall
Noted wedding photographers Bambi Cantrell and Joe Buissink will conduct several 41/2-day wedding photography workshops this fall. Classes will be kept to no more than 15 students and each student will receive hands-on training. Classes will be held at the Rothchild Pound House, in the historic district of Columbus, Georgia. Tuition is $1600, which includes model fees. A non-refundable deposit of $600 guarantees participation. Scheduled dates include Sept. 26–Oct. 1 and Oct. 3–7. Call (925) 934-1994 for additional information.

Windows XP Supports RAW Format Image
Microsoft officially embraced the emerging RAW image-file format by introducing an image Thumbnailer and Viewer that gives photographers the ability to handle RAW files without using a third party application. The free utility acts like an image browser with RAW image support for Canon and Nikon digital cameras.

Described as a PowerToy, the new RAW browser gives users the ability to view, organize, sort, and print RAW photos. It does this by using the camera manufacturer’s processing libraries for guidance as well as the built-in Windows Image Color Management (ICM) system. Both technologies guarantee that converted images will faithfully carry the highest possible image fidelity in the appropriate color space.
The process is simply. Double-clicking an image file automatically loads it into the new RAW Thumbnailer and Viewer. The image is initially displayed as a low-resolution proxy, and then followed by a high-resolution rendered version. The rendered version displays the actual RAW image data before it is optimized.

The new Thumbnailer and Viewer uses embedded EXIF data to render RAW image thumbnails in their proper orientation. It supports the sRGB and the Adobe RGB color spaces. The 47.7MB setup file can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com/downloads/.

Power Marketing Super Conference
Power Marketing 101 will host the 2006 Power Marketing Super Conference Oct. 15–18, at the Western Pleasure Guest Ranch in Sandpoint, Idaho. Power Marketing 101 conferences are among the most highly rated and sought after workshops in the United States for photographers, studio managers and owners who want to take their business to the next level of success. These four-day seminars are designed to give imaging professionals the tools they need to compete more effectively in the battle for customers and win the marketing war. Several prominent educators, including Mitche Graf, a leading marketer, will conduct the seminars. Registration is limited to the first 25, on a first-come, first-served basis. Additional details about the 2006 conferences are available by caling (888) 544-4149 or visiting: www.powermarketing101.com/.

Fine Art Photo Contest
The Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO, www.c4fap.org) invites all photographers to submit their work for the 2005 International Fine Art Photography Exhibition. Entry forms are found at the Center’s web site.

The contest is open to all U.S. and international professional and amateur photographers working in black and white or color, using traditional or digital methods or elements of both processes. All themes will be accepted. The Best of Show winner will collect $2000 and be featured in the ShowCase insert to the December issue of CameraArts magazine. All other winners will either be featured in the ShowCase insert or the web edition of ShowCase. Entries, which must be submitted by September 5, 2005, may be submitted on and will be judged from 35mm slides or digital images on CD.

dr5 Chrome Lab Moves
dr5 Chrome Lab (Denver, CO, www.dr5.com), home to the unique dr5 process of making high-quality black-and-white slides from negatives, is relocating its New York City and Los Angeles labs to Denver, Colorado. Lab owner, David Wood, said the lab was relocating for its customers’ sake and because of the rising costs in running the labs in Los Angeles and New York. The new facility, an historic brick building at 601 Galapago Street, will continue to offer the dr5 process as well as custom black-and-white negative processing and proofing.

Winner of 2005 Ultimate Studio Makeover Announced
Buckeye Color Lab (North Canton, OH, www.buckeyecolor.com) recently announced that photographer Kristin Woods of Photography by Kristin is the 2005 winner of the $22,000 Ultimate Studio Makeover. Kristin’s entry was selected from 12 finalists that were randomly selected from over 600 entries collected from trade shows during the first quarter of 2005.

Kristin Woods

The Ultimate Studio Makeover was conceived last year to reward photographers who have demonstrated drive and initiative in their business efforts. It was created for photographers who will take the prize money and make the most of it in their studio.

This year’s winner, Kristin Woods, began her photography career by going to a local photography studio and volunteering to learn what she needed to know to become a portrait photographer. Following that, she opened a studio in her parents’ basement and then a much larger studio in an old lumber building. Woods was forced to sell her studio after it flooded in 2001.

The Ultimate Studio Makeover contest is sponsored by Buckeye Color Lab, as well as eventpix.com, Flora Albums, Fujifilm, Marathon Press, Professional Photographers of America (PPA), Rangefinder magazine, Sekonic and Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (WPPI), among others.

GretagMacbeth and SanDisk Win 2005 TIPA awards
GretagMacbeth (www.gretagmacbeth.com), a technology leader in color management and measurement solutions, was awarded the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) award for the Eye-One series of color management solutions, while the Best Imaging Storage Media Award went to SanDisk for the Extreme III line of high-speed storage cards. TIPA awards, Europe’s “Oscar awards” for the photo and imaging industry, are based on several factors including quality, innovation, improvement, ease of use and broadness of scope.

GretagMacbeth’s Eye-One color management products were chosen this year because they offer an excellent, affordable, yet entry-level solution for calibrating laptops, flat panel and CRT monitors. They deliver a high-quality, color-managed workflow using ICC-based profiling.

SanDisk’s high performance media cards were selected because they meet the rigorous demands of digital photographers for new forms of storage media. Using Enhanced Super-Parallel Processing (ESP), the new cards are twice as fast as previous versions while supporting transfer rates of up to 20MB a second between camera and media card.

New Products:

Noritsu Introduces Ultra-high Capacity Minilab
Noritsu American Corp. (Buena Park, CA, www.noritsu.com) recently debuted the QSS-3102-2 fully digital high-capacity minilab. According to the company, it represents the second generation of the QSS-31 Series minilabs. The new QSS-3102-2 has a capacity of approximately 1782 4x6-in. prints an hour from both film and digital media input. It supports an extensive array of media while featuring improved correction functions and advanced networking.

Among its features are a new Multi Drive Unit which supports virtually every type of digital camera media on the market today. The new unit also offers Image Correction Improvements, including Digital ICE and Noritsu Digital Masking Software. Both tools remove dust and scratches from film-based images. Additional image enhancement tools correct for JPEG blocks, lens aberration, chromatic aberration, graininess in underexposed images, and brightness in the edge of the image field.

The unit’s digital film scanner uses an LED light source for the consistent scanning of a wide variety of films. Its multi film carrier supports 135, IX240, 110, and 120 film. Its laser printing engine produces high quality prints at 300dpi on both digital paper and conventional photographic paper.

It can produce enlargements in a variety of formats up to 12x18 inches and it includes a negative and positive film sleever, film set feeder, and IX240 Auto Supplier. The QSS-3102-2 digital minilab also offers an array of optional network components, which support CD-R writing, image editing, value prints, and image storage.

Creo Ships New Leaf Aptus Digital Camera Backs
Creo Inc. (Vancouver, BC, Canada, www.creo.com) is marketing the new Leaf Aptus digital camera backs, which include the Leaf Aptus 22 and the Leaf Aptus 17. They have resolutions of 22 million and 17 million pixels respectively.

The new Leaf Aptus line is designed to meet the needs of professional photographers with a user-friendly and intuitive 6x7-cm touch screen display. It can take up to 1000 frames at 1.2 seconds per frame, without interruption, and it has a unique user button that lets photographers quickly access image information and perform tasks without removing their hands from the camera.

The new backs support several different storage solutions. They include standard CompactFlash cards, portable 20GB and 30GB Leaf Digital Magazines, portable FireWire drives and a tethered computer. The new backs ship with the enhanced Leaf Capture 10 software, which has image-editing tools that adjust, select, and process images quickly and efficiently. Special offers, including trade-ins, are available for anyone interested in purchasing either the Leaf Aptus 22 or the Aptus 17 systems.

Canon’s EOS 20Da Is Perfect for Astrophotography
Canon U.S.A. (Lake Success, NY, www.canonusa.com) is marketing a digital SLR camera that’s specifically designed for low-light astrophotography. The new 8.2-megapixel EOS 20Da SLR uses a live preview LCD and modified low-pass filter to make astrophotography a snap.

The camera’s low-light characteristics depend on a low-pass filter that’s positioned in front of camera’s CMOS sensor. The low-pass filter facilitates sharp, high-contrast images of specific astronomical objects, such as the hard-to-shoot diffuse reddish nebulae. The filter also transmits 2.5 times as much light, with the wavelength of 656nm, as the comparable Canon EOS 20D.

The new 20Da supports live previewing by locking up the mirror and opening the shutter. It can be attached to a telescope by using a T-mount and it is compatible with the company’s EF and EF-S lenses. It supports ISO settings from 50 to 3200 and includes enhanced noise reduction for long exposures. Like other Canons, it also has a DIGIC II processor and a nine-point autofocus system. It has an estimated selling price of $2199.

New 50mm AF Super Angulon HFT PQS Lens from Rollei
Rollei (Stroudsburg, PA, www.rollei.com) is marketing a new autofocus, f/2.8 Schneider-Kreuznach high-speed lens for the Rollei 6008 family of high-end professional cameras. The sturdy AF Super-Angulon HFT PQS 50mm lens enables bright viewfinder displays while providing crisp sharpness, high color fidelity and exceptional reliability.

The lens features a between-the-lens shutter that is fully synchronized over its entire speed range. It is driven by the company’s Direct-Drive technology, which includes two linear motors that drive the diaphragm and shutter blades. Both motors are controlled by the camera’s microcomputer. The new lens also has a gold-plated 10-pin contact strip, which quickly transfers the control pulses from camera body to lens, without friction or wear.

The new 50mm Rollei lens is designed for studio and on-location professionals who cover everything from portraiture to fashion and landscape photography. It has a list price of $4499.

Eye Candy 5: Impact From Alien Skin Software
Alien Skin Software (Raleigh, NC, www.alienskin.com), recently completed the final upgrade to the Eye Candy 4000 suite of plug-in filters. The last of three upgrades, Impact, is a set of 10 Photoshop compatible plug-ins that includes seven optimized filters from the previous release and three entirely new ones.

Eye Candy 5: Impact is designed for graphic professionals and digital photographers who need to be able to generate high-quality, rendered effects. It includes embossing effects, with preset bevel shapes and all-new surface texture controls, as well as gel, glass, chrome and liquid metal effects. Perspective shadows and reflections are also included.

Impact also includes a new Backlight filter, which projects a dramatic light beam and spotlight effects; Brushed Metal, which simulates textured metal surfaces, and an Extrude filter, which gives 2D objects a 3D look, adding thickness and perspective. Eye Candy 5: Impact has an estimated street price of $99 and supports Mac- and Windows-based computers. It can be downloaded from the company’s www.alienskin.com web page.

AgfaPhoto Introduces New Memory Cards
AgfaPhoto (Ridgefield Park, NJ), recently announced it would significantly expand its memory card line to include four new formats. They are Secure Digital (SD) cards, high-capacity CompactFlash (CF) cards, xD Digital Media cards, and USB memory sticks. The company’s SD cards include a 2GB capacity card in both normal and turbo speed versions. Its CF card family has a 4GB capacity card while the completely new xD cards are available in 128-, 256- and 512-MB capacities. The smaller USB memory sticks have 128, 256 and 512MB capacities.

Pelican Introduces 18-inch Cube Case
Pelican Products (Torrance, California, www.pelican.com), a leading manufacturer of all-purpose watertight camera cases, is now marketing the new 0340 18-in. Cube case. Designed for mobility, the 0340 ships with detachable, stainless steel-framed caster wheels and a recessed, built-in, rigid, pull handle that is secured by a spring-loaded release latch. Its stackable design makes it compatible with most large Pelican Cases.

The 0340, which has nearly 6000 cubic inches of possible storage space, includes extra-wide handles that provide room for double hand holds on each side for lifting heavy loads. The case also has double-throw latches that have been tested to a failure threshold of nearly 400 lbs. It has four stainless steel-reinforced padlock protector holes for added security and a multi-pocketed lid organizer. Its rugged cell-core construction is augmented by a polymer sponge O-ring for a dust/waterproof seal. Additional details are available at (310) 326-4700.