Photokina 2002 Gary L
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photokina 2002 Gary L. Friedman crossed the pond to report for us from photokina – his fi rst visit to the biennial photo show, arriving with no prior expectations, and briefed to avoid covering all the ground the press releases would fi ll in… will forgo the big announce- System placement interactively as ments – the Canon EOS 1DS, an afterthought! This obscure prod- the Olympus/Kodak 4/3 pro- uct points the way to the future, I posed digital camera standard, and you saw it here fi rst. The and others – you can read about camera, sans lens, sells for a mere these just about anywhere. Instead £11,688… I will concentrate on bringing you You say the 200-year life of the interesting and innovative your archival acid-free B&W prints products that the other headlines is too short? Meet The Metal will likely miss. Photo from Woo Youn Master of Or I’ll talk about interesting Science Co., Ltd, Korea. They own yet unimportant things, like how a process where a B&W image is Canon and Nikon tried to out-do screened and then permanently each other in terms of buying fl oor engraved into a sheet of metal. space, yet both were dwarfed by They claim this print method will Fujifi lm and Kodak displays… last 20,000 years (1,000 years if outdoors). The samples they pro- The Unusual vided looked pretty decent, like a high-quality newspaper photo that Let’s start with the unusual. Sphe- had been bronzed. Steel or copper ron VR AG claims to be the fi rst mediums translate roughly to cold full-spherical digital camera in tone black or warm sepia in the fi - the world. That is, just like a 360° nal product – ideal for gravestones, camera will translate a cylindri- not continuous tone fi ne art prints. cal section in to a 2-dimensional An 11 x 14 “enlargement” will run rectangle, a spherical camera will to £230. www.koreamemo.com render an entire sphere on to a If you do studio work and are rectangle, including the sky and looking for an in-camera way to the tripod the camera’s sitting on. do projected backdrops, the Scene Useful for building virtual reality Machine by Virtual Backdrops is environments, and converting worth a look. Adding to the stand- directly to QuicktimeVR, this can ard half-silvered beam splitter and save loads of time shooting and projector in front of the camera is stitching an environment together a special highly-directional refl ec- by hand. It is essentially a 360° tive screen from 3M. At £1,900 for camera with a fi sheye lens, and a basic setup, it’s not the cheapest software to remove the tripod but it is one of the more effective artifacts on the bottom and “heal” front-screen processes I’ve seen, the sky on the top. and still keeping going despite the What is probably the most competition from digital backdrops. notable achievement in this prod- You can of course use it with fi lm uct is the sensor (which Spheron or digital cameras. www.Virtualbac developed in-house). It has a lati- kgrounds.net tude of 26 stops! They showed an The Loreo Lens-in-a-cap series impressive image of two helicop- is exactly what its name implies ters inside their hangar, and all the – a variety of 35mm body caps shadow detail in the cockpit and which have 1-element instama- the outside highlights through the tic-type 35mm lenses embedded window had all detail intact. Now within. It turns any SLR with aper- imagine what this would mean to ture priority into a point-and-shoot “normal” photography once this with an ƒ5.6 to ƒ64 range. At ƒ64 technology trickles down. the hyperfocal distance covers 50 Don’t worry about exposing for cm to infi nity. It’s also available as shadows and developing for high- a shift-lens (pictured) with a 3-ele- lights; just shoot for the average of ment 35mm ƒ11 to ƒ22 lens, with the scene (and you can even be off about 3.5mm shift in any direction. by half a dozen stops), and have Image quality was decent, but for the computer compress the image The Dom at night (all photographs by Gary Friedman on Minolta Dimage the £8.27 price (£11.45 for the for you after the fact. Or, go to 7i, except Hasselblad on next page). A view of the main halls, and above, PC-Shift version) who cares? It fi ts your computer and play with Zone Metal Photo for 20,000 year archival print life. Is she worth it…? Nikon, Canon, Olympus, and M- 7 screw-mounts. If that’s not unusual Above left: lots of tricks were used by companies to lure the mostly which was designed specifically to enough for you, they also make male attendees into their booths. In this case a painted model was communicate with this camera (but body caps with lenses that can posing by a medium-format vendor’s booth. Above right: one-of-a-kind will be able to work with others). take stereo pictures (two images 3-D cameras, such as this stereo Canon T90, were on display by RBT You can probably imagine how on an split frame, non-interlaced). (“Raumbildtechnik”) stereo enthusiast’s club. great the output looks. www.loreo.com I had an in-depth discussion with Lave Tenne, the camera’s Hidden eye primary designer, and he gave me some interesting insights into the More on the unusual front: fans camera’s five-year development. of street photography who don’t You’ll notice an absence of the like to get beaten up by their words “Carl Zeiss” from any of the subjects would be interested in H1’s marketing brochures. That’s Pretec Electronics Corp’s new Pen because Uncle Carl was too busy to Cam which really does look like a accommodate Hasselblad’s request pen (it even writes!). The pen top to design new lenses, and so Fuji contains a very tiny lens which got the contract. Lave was incred- feeds a 1.3MP sensor, and the pen Above: the digital Pen Cam, for spies. Below: the Loreo lens in a cap, in ibly impressed with the diligence can store 500 images before they various flavours, turns an SLR into a snapshot or pinhole equivalent. of the Japanese designers, and says have to be downloaded via a serial the Fujinon lenses even have an link. There is even a “surveillance” edge over the older Zeiss optics for mode where the camera snaps a the stringent digital needs. picture whenever anything passes Other components were out- in front of it. The back of the pen sourced as well: Minolta did the contains the shutter release and a autofocus and the bright focusing tiny 2-digit LCD display. screen; the in-lens shutter was The unit is so new that no outsourced to an anonymous com- sample images were available at pany in Sweden, and the display/ the booth, nor was anyone there user interface was done by Sony able to demonstrate to me how Ericson’s cell phone team, which it works. The biggest disappoint- is why it has the familiar feel of a ment for me was the fact that cell phone. The H-1 and the Kodak you must be holding the pen (and digital back also talk to each other; preferably looking through the allowing you to view the image’s tiny hole/viewfinder at the top) in histogram on the camera’s low- order to take a picture; I wouldn’t power LCD display rather than on mind modifying one so it can be the power-hungry color TFT display fired by remote control (while my on the digital back. hand is in my jacket pocket, for Lave admitted he was very nerv- example). Or even better, take all ous about the product’s introduc- the guts and hide it in a hat to tion until the official unveiling better ensure proper framing when on Tuesday, when the crowd of shooting blind. Lots of possibilities journalists politely applauded the here. The expected price will be camera’s introduction. Then he £76. www.pretec.com knew he had done the job right. Like many camera brands, Hassie ’Blad with a pop-up flash has an almost religious following, and changing something so drasti- It’s a dual introduction, really. Has- cally (in addition to making very selblad introduced their new H-1, The Hasselblad H1 was the only real ‘film star’ of photokina, and Fuji will little of it backwards compatible which is a 645 format with autofo- no doubt feel the same for their Japanese-market-only version. We must with exiting equipment) was a very cus and motorized film advance. At thank Hasselblad for their invitation to attend the full launch of the large risk. the same time, Kodak announced new system, but to do so would have meant missing several other Press The unit feels and handles like their new 16 Megapixel DCS Pro Day launches as they held this in a private location some miles from a large 35mm AF SLR, not unlike Back 645H digital camera back photokina. That 35mm really has a Distagon look to it… the Mamiya, Pentax, and Contax 8 9 pioneers in this field. The big dif- ference is the user interface and better integration with the digital back. And, of course, the pop-up flash! The retail price has not yet been set; a reference price for a complete set (lens, magazine, view- finder) would be between £3,500 and £4,200, available by November 2002.