Source: USA TODAY
Written By Jefferson Graham

LOS ANGELES — Mary Pat Dorr is a longtime Southern California wedding and portrait photographer who has refused to switch to digital. She swears by film and the trusty Minolta film cameras she takes to all her jobs.

“I still believe film has better quality,” says Dorr. “And I’m not willing to switch.”

Source: Motley Fool via Yahoo
Written by Jeremy MacNealy

Peter Lynch’s book One Up On Wall Street argues that the average person doesn’t have to look far to find knockout investments; we can begin by looking around in our day-to-day life. Applying this street-sense mentality, he offers the following example:

Source: pdn online
Written by David Schloss

As we have previously reported here and in the PDNOnline forums, Apple has worked with PDN closely on our reviews of Aperture, the professional photographic workflow program released at the PhotoPlus trade show in October. We have reported on many of the positive aspects of the cutting-edge program, while pointing out that some photographers are concerned about the Aperture conversion of RAW images. While our testing shows that many of these issues revolve around a mis-understanding of the default settings in both Aperture and ACR (many are comparing auto-adjusted images in ACR to non-adjusted images in Aperture) we’ve still seen instances where Aperture’s processing indicates that this is a first generation product, and that improvements are in order.

Exploring the World of Infrared Photography With a Modified Canon 20D

Source: The Luminous Landscape
Written by Michael Reichmann

Press Release: ROCHESTER, N.Y., Jan. 30 — Eastman Kodak Company today reported that revenue rose 12% in the fourth quarter, led by a 45% increase in the sale of digital products and services. The performance includes strong demand for the market-leading offerings from the company’s consumer digital portfolio and the successful completion of the company’s acquisition program to support its Graphic Communications business. For all of 2005, digital sales represented 54% of total revenue, marking the first time in the company’s history that digital revenue exceeded traditional.

RAW Survey launched: An International Study of the Experiences, Requirements, Preferences, and Concerns of Photographers regarding RAW Imaging Technology

Press Release: On January 31, 2006, the OpenRAW initiative launched an international survey on its Web site (http://openraw.org/survey/) to collect information about the experiences, requirements, preferences, and concerns of digital photographers and other interested parties regarding RAW imaging technology a concept that many writers are comparing to a “digital negative”.

Source: The Japan Times
Written by Reiji Toshida

Business is booming at the camera shop managed by Hiroaki Kitahara, but he has a sense of emptiness regarding the past and is worried about the future.

Major InfoTrends Study Indicates Digital Cameras Will Dominate Professional Photography Market by 2010 90% of professional pictures will be taken with digital cameras by 2010

Press Release: (Weymouth, MA) capv_convert_date(’20060117′) January, 17 2006… InfoTrends, the leading worldwide digital imaging and document solutions research and consulting firm, is pleased to announce the release of its highly anticipated multi-client study, North American Professional Photography Market (http://www.capv.com/home/Multiclient/ProPhotography.html) .

Konica Minolta Holdings will withdraw from the camera and film businesses, marking the end to one of the best known brands in the photography world.

Source: CNET via Reuters

As part of the surprise move, the Tokyo-based company said Thursday it will sell a portion of its digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera assets to Sony for an undisclosed sum and cease production of compact cameras by March of this year.

Source: RobGalbraith.com
Written by Rob Galbraith

Camera Bits has posted a new beta release of Photo Mechanic 4.4.1 for Windows and Mac. The changes since 4.4, as noted in the accompanying Read Me, are listed below:

Source: dpreview.com

From dpreview: “Nikon UK has made an interesting announcement titled ‘Nikon prepares to strengthen digital line-up for 2006′ that signals the beginning of the end of nearly 60 years of Nikon fllm cameras. Nikon Corp has made the decision to ‘focus management resources’ on digital cameras in place of film cameras, and is discontinuing most film camera bodies, manual focus lenses and accessories, and all large format and enlarging lenses. In Europe only the flagship F6 film camera will remain on sale.”

Source: The New York Times
Written by Michael Brick

The last best address leads to a metallic gray warehouse by the waterfront in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Trash haulers go about and there is a dull buzzing sound in the hallway. Graffiti gives information that white people are devils.

New products offer professional photographers unprecedented image quality

Press Release: 9h January, 2006 - Hasselblad launches the world’s first 39 megapixel DSLR camera, the H2D-39, and a comprehensive line of 39 megapixel camera backs

Source: ZDNET Between the lines
Posted by Dan Farber

Guy Kawasaki gave one of his patented demos, evangelizing for FilmLoop, a photo sharing company he has invested in that is run by his old friend (since 9th grade) and former Apple colleague Kyle Mashima and Prescott Lee. FilmLoop is the “killer app for the Macintosh,” Kawasaki said, joining MacPaint, Photoshop and PageMaker. Definitely a case of evangelistic exaggeration.

Bell Labs’ Willard Boyle and George Smith receive Draper Prize for the Development of the Charged-coupled Device

Pioneers Honored with World’s Top Engineering Award for Invention That Ushered in the Modern Age of Digital Imaging

Press Release: MURRAY HILL, N.J. — Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU), today announced that Dr. Willard Boyle and Dr. George Smith, both former researchers at Bell Labs, are this year’s recipients of one of the highest honors in engineering, the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) Charles Stark Draper Prize, for their invention and development of the charge-coupled device, or CCD. This award honors engineers whose accomplishments have significantly impacted society.

Double Memory Increase and Upgradeability Ensures Support of Rapid Camera Megapixel Growth

Press Release: LAS VEGAS, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ — Today PhotoVu(TM) announced the availability of the new PhotoVu PV1955(TM) picture frame, which adds support for up to 16.7 megapixel cameras, USB 2.0, and future upgradeability to Wi-Fi® wireless-G networking, advanced screen transitions, commercial applications, and Internet services. An optional 1GB USB flash drive or USB 40GB removable hard drive can also be used for stand-alone play.

Source: The Luminous Landscape
Written By Michael Reichmann

To understand Apple’s Aperture requires that one understand Steve Job’s master plan. No – I don’t have a copy of Apple Document 05-12-007. That’s safely ensconced in Steve’s office safe, and only known in detail to three people other than him, each of whom is sworn to die, even under torture (ooop – no more torture allowed) before divulging its contents.

Highlights include “Digital Photography Day”; Aperture training; Photoshop education; Adobe, Nikon and Canon exhibiting

Press Release: FRAMINGHAM, MA - December 12, 2005 - IDG World Expo, the leading producer of world-class tradeshows, conferences and events for technology markets, today announced a major focus on digital photography at Macworld Conference & Expo(R), taking place January 9-13, 2006 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Several new features have been added to this year’s event that will provide attendees with more education, services and product insight about digital photography - always one of the most popular topics at Macworld.

Press Release: Phase One A/S, Copenhagen, (Tuesday, December 13, 2005): Phase One®, today begins shipping the highest quality digital camera back ever — the P 45. The P 45 — the world’s only digital camera back with a 39 Mega Pixel sensor — captures images that are sharper and more detailed than ever before. It is the latest release of Phase One’s revolutionary P-series digital camera backs. Offering unsurpassed image quality, the P 45 is the ultimate in medium and large format digital photography equipment.

Source: PDN Online
Written By David Schloss

The following article, the first in our two-part online review of Aperture, focuses on the design goals behind Apple’s new photo management software, and some of the hotly debated features of the new program. As this article was getting readied to run on PDNonline.com, we received an invitation from Apple to get a hands-on look at an update to Aperture, already in beta, and designed to address some of the concerns raised by early adopters. Part 2 will run next week on pdnonline.com.

Source: WIRED NEWS
Written By Rachel Metz

A prototype camera made by a Stanford University graduate student could herald the end of fuzzy, poorly lit photos.

A computer science Ph.D. student at Stanford University has outfitted a 16-megapixel camera with a bevy of micro lenses that allows users to take photos and later refocus them on a computer using software he wrote.

Traditional journalists and newspaper sites tap into online photo communities to gather visual research and allow readers to contribute and interact. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Source: USC/Annenberg Online Journalism Review
Written By Mark Glaser

Imagine if you were a photo editor at a major publication, and you could view and search through every digital photo on every computer in the world to put together a feature. Or if something spectacular happened, and you could search photo tags to see what everyone at the scene was seeing.

Source: PC Magazine
Written By Terry Sullivan and Kyle Monson

We’ve been hearing foreboding tidings out of Japan all week: First Konica Minolta announces pretty serious headcount reductions and product streamlining as a way to combat the huge losses they’ve been suffering. The word from their latest financial report, issued earlier this week, is that they’re “shifting (their) expansion strategy to focus on high-value-added products.” In other words, we can probably expect Konica Minolta to phase out low-end consumer cameras and target photo enthusiasts and D-SLR users.

Pixmantec Partners With ETCETERA Consulting To Provide Sophisticated Color Profiles For Canon And Nikon Digital SLRs

Press Release: Copenhagen, November 15, 2005: Danish digital imaging specialists Pixmantec ApS are pleased to announce the immediate release of RawShooter | Color Engine. A plug‐in for both existing and forthcoming RawShooter RAW workflow applications, RawShooter |Color Engine provides discerning photographers with an excellent alternative to the standard RawShooter profiles. Designed in cooperation with color expert Magne Nilsen of ETCETERA Consulting, RawShooter | Color Engine seamlessly integrates into all RawShooter applications. Built using an advanced architecture, RawShooter | Color Engine delivers a level of sophistication that has yet to be seen in DSLR profile management and thus has the potential or exciting enhancements to come.

Source: The Age
Written By Terry Lane

Digital technology continues to cut a swathe through the businesses built on traditional chemical-based photography.