Check out Mark’s going away party from April, 2008. For more information about Mark check out the Shadowland/Lightroom Development Story. Mark will be working from home and the Seattle office of Adobe while the family decides whether or not to return to the San Jose area. It’s also not clear as of yet exactly what projects Mark will be working on. He will be briefed about on going projects and news is expected in the coming weeks. It’s not thought that he plans to rejoin the Lightroom engineering team at this time. The DI department handles all of Adobe’s pro level imaging apps such as the Creative Suite apps of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Soundbooth as well as others. Lightroom and Camera Raw/DNG are also under the DI roof.

Welcome back Mark, we missed ya!

We’re getting the band back together and hitting the road again. The Epson Print Academy is going to Atlanta this Saturday, November 8th at the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel Downtown.

Featuring Andrew Rodney (The Digital Dog), Jeff Schewe, Greg Gorman, Mac Holbert and John Paul Caponigro, the new Epson Print Academy is headed to Atlanta for the first of a 15 city tour. We’re dragging along one of the new Epson Stylus® Pro 7900 printers with UltraChrome® HDR inks and we’ll be teaching how to get the most out of that, or any fine art ink jet printer. In fact, attendees are registered to win one of the 7900 printers (given out next June) or a change to win one of 15 4880 printers (one will be given away at each venue). For more information, check out the web site at Epson Print Academy.

• Science of Color Management
• Calibration, Characterization
• Advanced Custom Profiling
• Color Spaces, Gamut, Bit Depth and L*a*b
• Advanced Driver Settings

• Advanced Photoshop CS4 Camera Raw 5 Settings
• In-Depth Understanding of the Lightroom 2 Develop Module
• Non-Destructive Workflow
• Smart Objects
• Working and Printing in 16 bit
• Editing in Photoshop CS4 with Lightroom 2 Managed Files
• Printing From Lightroom 2 with Files Edited in Photoshop CS4

• Developing a Strategy for Image Enhancement
• Creating a Sense of Dimensionality
• Working With an Exit Strategy
• Drawing with Light
• Mastering Selections
• Gradient, Contour and Luminous Masking
• Managing Midtone Contrast
• New Techniques with Photoshop CS4
• Advanced Burning and Dodging
• Evaluating and Employing Advanced Black and White Conversion Methods
• Working With Microporous and Cotton Fiber Media
• Printing to an Epson Stylus Pro 7900 with Ultrachrome HDR Ink

PixelGenius, LLC has added a free ICC profile for the new Epson Stylus® Photo 2880 Printers designed to work with the Epson Exhibition Fiber Paper. The free profiles are available from the PixelGenius web site on this page. This brings the number of free profiles available to 10 including profiles for the R2400, 3/4/7/9800 series as well as the 4/7/9/11880 series printers.

PixelGenius has partnered with Epson America, Inc. in the development of these custom profiles for Exhibition Fiber Paper for use with Epson Stylus® Pro Printers that use UltraChrome K3 Ink™ and UltraChrome K3 Ink™ with Vivid Magenta. In addition PixelGenius has made available useful color management information and instructions on how to create the finest prints.

The profiles are provided “As Is” with no warrantee nor direct tech support from either Epson nor PixelGenius. The profiles have been created and tested by members of PixelGenius and are being provided to the printing community for free as a public service. 

We highly suggest that you visit the Epson Web Site to make sure you’ve downloaded and installed the most current printer driver and firmware for your particular printers.

To use these profiles, you should install them in the correct location for your OS;

Mac OS X: /Library/ColorSync/Profiles (available for all users)
Mac OS X: User/Library/ColorSync/Profiles (available for just this users)

Windows98: C:\Windows\System\Color
Windows XP: C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Drivers\Color
Windows 2000, XP: C:WinNT\ System32\Spool\Drivers\Color
Windows Vista: Right-click on the ICC profile, and choose “Install Profile”

Source: The New York Times

Written by Ann Eisenberg

ROBOTS already cut the grass and vacuum rugs. Now they are helping with a more artistic job: creating vast photographic panoramas with ordinary cameras.

A new, inexpensive robotic device from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University attaches snugly to almost any standard digital camera, tilting and panning it to fashion highly detailed panoramic vistas — whether of the Grand Canyon, a rain forest or a backyard Easter egg hunt. The robot is called GigaPan, named “giga” for the billion or more pixels it can marshal for a typical panorama. It creates the huge, high-resolution vista by extending its robotic finger and repeatedly clicking the camera shutter, taking tens, hundreds or even thousands of overlapping images, each at a slightly different angle, that are then stitched together by software to create one gigapixel shot.

Viewers can explore a panorama in detail when it is displayed on a computer screen, clicking on any part of the image and then zooming in for crisp close-ups. You can move from an overall shot of the forest, for instance, to an image of one small moth resting on the side of a single tree trunk.

The roboticized camera mount and related software were devised by a team led by Randy Sargent, a senior systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon West and the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and Illah Nourbakhsh, an associate professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. The work was part of a project to introduce people to different countries and cultures through images.

The GigaPan provides a low-cost alternative to sophisticated motorized camera mounts on the market used to take panoramic photos, said Greg Downing, co-founder of the xRez Studio in Santa Monica, Calif., which specializes in gigapixel photography. The motorized mounts can cost thousands of dollars, he said, and typically require a high-end camera.

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The P 65+ digital back and the P 65+ camera system are fully upgradeable, based on advancements in the chip technology, providing a competitive advantage through enhanced performance and new functions as well as a lower overall cost of operation. Such improvements have previously been available only at the cost of new chips and hardware.

The Phase One P 65+ is the first digital back and camera system to take advantage of the new Sensor+ design and is the world’s first full-frame capture system based on actual 645 film format. The P 65+ provides the largest live capture area available with coverage of 53.9mm x 40.4mm — enabling full viewfinder coverage thus no need for lens magnification. “What you see is what you get.” The P 65+ sensor format provides 20 percent more live area compared to 39 or 50 Megapixel, 48mm x 36mm chips currently delivering or announced. Sensor resolution is 60.5 Megapixel with 8984 x 6732 active pixels achieving 180 MB, 8 bit RGB files.

In addition to offering the industry’s largest live capture area and highest resolution, the P 65+ offers captures at 1 frame per second, reduction of Moire artifacts, next generation Lens+ & Focus+ technologies and an unprecedented 12.5 f-stops of dynamic range.

More technical details and demonstrations of Sensor+ technology will be available at the Photokina trade show in September 2008. Camera shipments with P 65+ digital back are expected to begin in Q4 2008. The P 65+ digital back starts at $39,900; the P 65+ camera system starts at $41,990. Advance orders are available now. For more information please contact sales@phaseone.com.

Phase One is a leading provider of digital image capture and work flow management technology. Phase One P+ Series digital backs and camera systems open new possibilities, putting the focus back on the moment of capture. Phase One Capture One software helps streamline the capture and post-production process. Supporting DSLR, medium- and large-format photographic equipment, Phase One products are renowned for their superior quality, flexibility and speed — enabling pro photographers to realize their most subtle and most complex visions without compromise.

Phase One is an employee-owned company based in Copenhagen with offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Cologne and Shanghai.

Scientific Imaging with Photoshop: Methods, Measurement, and Output by Jerry Sedgewick

Book Description

Adobe Photoshop is one of the more powerful tools available to scientists today. It is indispensable in the preparation of digital images of specimens for measurement, especially for separating relevant features from background detail. Scientific Imaging with Photoshop is the authoritative guide to the use of Photoshop in scientific research, with a special emphasis on the ethical ramifications of the use of image-enhancement software to extract data from digital images. Beginning Photoshop users will benefit from its tutorials in the basics of image processing, and more sophisticated users will appreciate the sections on automating Photoshop operations with actions. In addition, the book lays out procedures in straightforward language for acquiring digital images as well as outputting processed images in digital and hard-copy formats.

Scientific Imaging with Photoshop provides all this and more:
• Little-known methods separating features of interest from the background for subsequent quantification
• How to make dense colors and subtle visual detail reproduce properly in publication
• Correct Photoshop methods and techniques for all user levels
• Procedures that are usable in legacy versions of Photoshop as well as Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Extended

Jerry Sedgewick has been the director for the Biomedical Image Processing Lab at the University of Minnesota for over 10 years. The lab is a light microscopy core facility serving scientists and engineers at the University and in local industry. Jerry works side-by-side with members of the research community on a daily basis.  He has co-authored articles in numerous publications, including Science (for which he has created two covers) and Circulation, and he is the author of Quick Photoshop for Research: A Guide to Digital Imaging for Photoshop 5x, 6x and 7x.

Product Details

This full-week photography workshop is an intense immersion into digital photography with one of its pioneers. In five days you will go from perhaps not even understanding what a RAW file is, to making well-crafted and thoughtful prints.

Fieldwork, extensive lecture and lab work will fill your time together. Every student will have full access to their own workstation in the lab. Class Topics:

All necessary materials will be provided, including a copy of Stephen’s latest book “Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography.”

Class will run Sunday through Thursday from 9am to 5pm. Lunch will be provided each day of studio work.

Overnight Accommodations

About Stephen Johnson
A photographer, teacher and designer, Stephen has been teaching and working in photography since 1977. His books include At Mono Lake, the critically acclaimed The Great Central Valley: California’s Heartland and Making a Digital Book. His Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography was published in 2006 by O’Reilly Media.He runs his own photography, publishing and design company–scanning and designing his photographic books using a Macintosh computer and since 1994 photographing in the field with digital view cameras.

Current projects include With a New Eye, his ground-breaking and historic all digital national parks project.

Stephen’s pioneering work in digital photography has included software and product development for clients such as Apple, Adobe, Eastman Kodak, Epson, Foveon, Hewlett Packard, Leaf, Ricoh and X-rite. His work with Adobe includes the creation of the duotone curves shipped with their Photoshop software.

Photographic clients have included the Ansel Adams Publishing Trust, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Friends of Photography and the National Park Service. Johnson’s photographs have been widely published and collected internationally.

He has recieved numerous awards and grants for his photographic work, including an NEA for At Mono Lake, awards from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, the Commonwealth Club of California and the Golden Light Award for the Great Central Valley. The New York Times named the Valley book as one of the eight best photography books of 1993. He was named to the Photoshop Hall of Fame in 2003 and as a Canon Explorer of Light in 2006.

For more info see the workshop website here.

Press Release: SAN JOSE, Calif. and LAS VEGAS NV — April 14 , 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it plans to lead an initiative to define an industry-wide open file format for digital cinema files to streamline workflows and help ensure easy archiving and exchange. Adobe intends to leverage its successful Digital Negative Specification (DNG) file format as a foundation, and Adobe plans to work with a broad coalition of leading camera manufacturers, including Panavision, Silicon Imaging, Dalsa, Weisscam, and ARRI—along with software vendors, including Iridas and The Foundry, and codec provider CineForm—to define the requirements for an open, publicly documented file format that it plans to call CinemaDNG.

Adobe is currently working to develop the requirements of the CinemaDNG workflow and intends to subsequently publish a specification for the file format based on collaboration with companies throughout the industry.

“With the CinemaDNG initiative, Adobe is extending its leadership in developing open, interchangeable formats for digital still cameras into the realm of digital cinematography,” said Jim Guerard, vice president of Dynamic Media at Adobe. “By taking a proactive role and working collaboratively with leading digital cinema manufacturers, Adobe is helping to define an industry-standard approach that benefits the entire filmmaking ecosystem. Filmmakers will be able to adopt digital cinema cameras with confidence, and camera manufacturers will be able to provide specialized functionality while ensuring instant file format compatibility with existing workflows.”

Many filmmakers are foregoing film in favor of digital cinema cameras and workflows that offer improved creative flexibility, lower costs, and significantly faster turnaround times. However, those new workflows involve complex hardware and software, with projects passing through multiple vendors along the production pipeline. The proliferation of disparate, vendor-specific raw file formats has the potential to erode some of the advantages of digital cinema. By proactively leading the development of an open, public, and enduring standard that can be adopted throughout the production pipeline, Adobe and other companies through the CinemaDNG initiative are helping to solve an important, emerging workflow issue.

Advantages for Filmmakers
As a publicly documented and open file format, CinemaDNG would offer several advantages for filmmakers. They could avoid roadblocks caused by incompatibilities in workflows that involve multiple devices, vendors, and file formats. They could adopt digital cinema cameras while minimizing the risk that proprietary or camera-specific file formats would be unsupported in the future, because CinemaDNG would provide an open, durable, standard format that would be available for many years to come. Filmmakers could also rest assured that they have access to a robust archival standard for the new generation of raw-capable digital cinema cameras. CinemaDNG would also provide the foundation for an editing workflow that would allow filmmakers to use the highest quality source material.

Advantages for Manufacturers
For camera manufacturers and software developers, CinemaDNG is intended to help remove a key obstacle to the adoption of new products by providing reliable, instant compatibility with existing workflows. Manufacturers may be able to reduce development costs by eliminating the necessity to develop proprietary formats and conversion utilities. CinemaDNG is also planning to deliver support for proprietary metadata, helping manufacturers to differentiate their product offerings from competitors’.

“Experiencing a smoother, more streamlined workflow is, without exception, a good thing and open standards are a great way of accomplishing it,” said Bruno Nicoletti, chief technology officer at The Foundry, a leading visual effects software developer in London. “The Foundry supports Adobe’s plan for CinemaDNG, which will make the adoption of raw digital camera data much easier for everyone in our industry.”

“We are working hard on establishing a realistic and workable method of getting raw data from the camera to post,” said Marc Shipman-Mueller, product manager for Cameras & Lenses at ARRI, a top digital cinema camera manufacturer in Munich. “An industry wide standard for raw data can only help in this future oriented process that will provide multiple benefits for the users of raw data.”

About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com .

Think of it as digital photography 2.0.

In the last decade, photography has been transformed by one revolution, the near-total replacement of analog film cameras by digital image sensors. Now researchers and companies are starting to stretch their wings by taking advantage of what a computer can do with sensor data either within the camera or on a full-fledged PC.

Some elements of this new era, which researchers often call computational photography, are refinements of existing technology. For example, some cameras can wait to take the photo only when subjects are smiling and not blinking, in effect placing the shutter release button in the hands of the subjects rather than the photographer.

But more dramatic changes could shift the definition of a camera more dramatically. One major area of research, for example, uses computational processing to create a 3D representation of a scene rather than just the two dimensions of traditional photography.

“There’s a shift in thinking going on,” said Kevin Connor, who manages professional digital imaging products for Adobe Systems. “People are starting to see the broader possibilities and where we can push things…People are realizing that maybe we shouldn’t just be trying to make the best traditional photography experience.”

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Source: Science News
Written by Julie J. Rehmeyer

“Coral Star” shows the motion brought about by one particular dynamical system.
By Michael Field

Mathematicians often rhapsodize about the austere elegance of a well-wrought proof. But math also has a simpler sort of beauty that is perhaps easier to appreciate: It can be used to create objects that are just plain pretty—and fascinating to boot.

That beauty was richly on display at an exhibition of mathematical art at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego in January, where more than 40 artists showed their creations.

Michael Field, a mathematics professor at the University of Houston, finds artistic inspiration in his work on dynamical systems. A mathematical dynamical system is just any rule that determines how a point moves around a plane. Field uses an equation that takes any point on a piece of paper and moves it to a different spot. Field repeats this process over and over again—around 5 billion times—and keeps track of how often each pixel-sized spot in the plane gets landed on. The more often a pixel gets hit, the deeper the shade Field colors it.

The reason mathematicians are so fascinated by dynamical systems is that very simple equations can produce very complicated behavior. Field has found that such complex behavior can create some beautiful images. For example, the dynamical system he depicts in “Coral Star” does some peculiar things as it gets closer to the center (technically, the equation is discontinuous at the origin). So as you get closer and closer to the center, the image gets more and more complex.

“Even apart from the center, the image has quite a lot of depth to it,” Field says. “It’s a feature of the way it’s colored. I’m not so keen on bright primary colors. The shading makes it more interesting.”

This image has an unusual 35-fold symmetry, and Field created it as a present for his wife on their 35th anniversary.

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The website for the exhibition is at www.bridgesmathart.org/art-exhibits/jmm08/.

Copies of the catalogue for the exhibit, complete with high-quality reproductions of all the pieces of art, are for sale at www.mathartfun.com.

Press Release: San Jose, California (PRWEB) February 26, 2008—The world digital camera market stands enthused by the effervescent level of technology development and product feature innovations. Technical innovations in the field of batteries, photo printing, storage devices and internet technologies are expected to propel the growth of digital cameras. Wireless communications enabled digital cameras, for instance, are growing in popularity, given their cutting edge advantages and benefits, such as, added convenience, effectiveness, and functionality in the form of e-mail transmission ability, enhanced storage media, compatibility with PC image processing, and higher image resolution.

Ease of use, compact design, size, style and convenience are few of the product features critical to commercial success in the marketplace. In addition, amplified digital photo improvement and management software, shorter shutter delays, partial image capturing, ability to modify scene backgrounds, high-end optical and storage features, also represent product features, which play an instrumental role in keeping demand alive and consumer enthusiasm sufficiently kindled. Encouraged largely by rapidly falling prices, higher functionality and improvement in picture quality, consumer preferences are increasingly shifting towards medium and high-end models, thereby promising expanded market opportunities. The waxing popularity of single-lens reflex (SLR) digital cameras is triggering several acquisitions in the industry, since production of these cameras requires advanced optical technologies. Matsushita, Sony and Samsung are few global players who have forayed into the SLR digital camera market, lured by its lucrative potential. Sony’s teaming up with Konica Minolta, and Samsung’s partnership with Pentax represent just the tip of the iceberg. The industry is abuzz with mutually synergistic alliances, partnerships, and collaborations.

Digital Cameras: A Global Strategic Business Report
As stated by the recent report published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., world digital camera market is dominated by the United States and Europe with a combined share of over 59%, estimated for the year 2007. In the >2 MP – 5 MP digital camera market, European sales are estimated at 7 million units. Global sales in the above 5 MP digital camera market are expected to grow at a CAGR of over 50% through the period 2001-2010. In Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom, together, collar nearly 43% of the market for digital cameras.

Leading global and regional players operating in the industry include Canon Inc, Fujifilm, Samsung, Eastman Kodak Company, Sony Corporation, Toshiba America Inc, Sanyo Electric Co Ltd, Nikon Corporation, Olympus, Polaroid, Leica Camera, Panasonic, Casio Computer Co Ltd, Hewlett-Packard Company, and Vivitar Corp, among others.

The report titled “Digital Cameras: A Global Strategic Business Report” published by Global Industry Analysts, Inc., provides a comprehensive review of market trends, drivers, issues, challenges, and technology developments. Richly annotated with authoritative, and unbiased commentaries, and hard-to-find statistical facts, the report provides unequivocal views on future potential while throwing light on the prevailing climate in key regional markets. Product markets analyzed in the report include < or = 2 MP Digital Cameras, >2 MP – 5 MP Digital Cameras, and above 5 MP Digital Cameras. Latent demand patterns in product markets are quantified across major geographic market verticals including the United States, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, and Asia-Pacific, among others. Also provided in the report is an enumeration of recent mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic industry activities.

For more details about this research report, please visit
http://www.strategyR.com/Digital_Cameras_Market_Report.asp

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc.
Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (GIA) is a reputed publisher of off-the-shelf market research. Founded in 1987, the company is globally recognized as one of the world’s largest market research publishers. The company employs more than 700 people worldwide and publishes more than 880 full-scale research reports each year. Additionally, the company also offers a range of more than 60,000 smaller research products including company reports, market trend reports and industry reports encompassing all major industries worldwide.

It’s one of the oldest, most common problems in photography: that picture you thought would be the prize shot is out of focus.

Refocus Imaging, a Silicon Valley start-up, thinks its technology can be used to make cameras that can fix that problem–after you take the photo.

By fitting a camera’s image sensor with a special lens and then processing the resulting data with new methods, Refocus Imaging’s technology will let photographers fix their photos and exercise new creative control after the shutter is released, founder and Chief Executive Ren Ng said.

“There’s a lot of physical stuff in the camera that is limiting its performance,” Ng said. “What we’re doing is to capture much more than a two-dimensional photograph inside the camera…By collecting the light, we can process it in software to do what the hardware usually has to do.”

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Geotagging, in which digital photos are labeled with the location where they were taken, is mostly unfamiliar to photographers today. But new developments are likely going to put the technology on the map.

In interviews at the Photo Marketing Association trade show in Las Vegas recently, several camera executives expressed an interest in geotagging and some companies were demonstrating technology. It’s clear that mainstream geotagging is a matter of when, not if.

The strongest evidence I encountered is Air Semiconductor, a start-up building a chip designed to let cameras process GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite signals so latitude and longitude data can be attached to digital photos. It remains to be seen how well this works, but this idea is the holy grail of geotagging–no extra hardware or software is required.

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Source: Boston Globe
Written by Hiawatha Bray

Best mp3 music Get hereBest mp3 music wanted OnlyMusic tracks you sought AllMusic catalog you ever saw BestQuality music tracks Best

Polaroid Corp., the Massachusetts company that gave the world instant film photography, is shutting down its film manufacturing lines in the state and abandoning the technology that made the company famous.

“The Norwood plant is shutting down, and we will soon be winding down activities at the Waltham facility as well,” said Kyle MacDonald, senior vice president of Polaroid’s instant photography business segment. The closures, set for completion during this quarter, will eliminate about 150 jobs. In the late 1970s, Polaroid employed about 15,000 in Massachusetts.

The Norwood and Waltham plants make large-format films used by professional photographers and artists. Polaroid also makes professional-grade films in Mexico, and its consumer film packs come from a factory in the Netherlands. All these plants are slated for closure this year. Polaroid chief operating officer Tom Beaudoin said the company is interested in licensing its technology to an outside firm that could manufacture film for faithful Polaroid customers. If that doesn’t happen, Polaroid users would have to find an alternative photo technology, as the company plans to make only enough film to last into next year.

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Sitting on the back seat was a nice Canon digital camera. Gunderson asked the driver which previous passenger might have left it, but the cabbie didn’t seem to care. So Gunderson brought it home and showed it to her fiance, Brian Ascher. They decided that the only right thing to do was to find the owner.

But how? The only clues were the pictures on the camera: typical tourist snapshots, complete with a visit to the Statue of Liberty. How could they find a stranger among the huddled masses?

Gunderson is busy in finance for Bear Stearns Cos., so the detective quest fell to Ascher, a 26-year-old law student at New York University. He was on winter break and eager to put off writing a paper about climate change treaties.

He checked whether anyone had reported a matching missing camera to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. No dice. He placed ads in lost-and-found sections of Craigslist but got just one response — from a couple in Brazil who had lost a camera in a cab on Oct. 12, not Dec. 31.

“I guess they thought their camera had been riding around in a taxi for two months,” Ascher recalls now, chuckling at the notion that such a thing would be possible in New York.

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Press Release: Noritsu Koki announces an agreement that establishes technical cooperation between Noritsu Koki and Adobe Systems. This agreement enables photo retailers with Noritsu input terminals (CT terminals) and Noritsu minilab systems to accept and process raw image data, which is widely used in digital SLR camera photography. This is the first time that raw image data will be supported at the retail level, opening the door for retailers who want to easily provide high quality photographic prints from raw image files.

Raw image data provides more flexibility, higher quality, and more creativity than other image formats such as JPEG and TIFF, and this is why the use of raw image data has grown rapidly along with the increase in popularity of digital SLR cameras. However, raw formats differ between different camera manufacturers, as most manufacturers have chosen their own proprietary raw format. This means that when a photographer prints image data at home or at retail, they must first use proprietary software to convert the raw image data into another format such as JPEG.

Noritsu Koki and Adobe Systems have entered an agreement in which Noritsu Koki is supplied with technology to convert raw image data into the Digital Negative (Hereinafter DNG™ ) format, which is a standard raw format developed by Adobe Systems.

This DNG conversion technology will be incorporated in Noritsu minilab systems. This enables Noritsu equipment to read and process raw image data from each camera manufacturer without requiring an additional conversion step beforehand. Furthermore, the converted image data is then enhanced with Noritsu’s AccuSmart™ image processing technology, providing high quality photographs and media writing. This means that customers can easily receive a high quality print service, eliminating the need to conduct raw image data processing (conversion) beforehand.

The list of camera models supported by DNG conversion is extensive, and this list will continue to grow. Constant additions of new models ensure that digital camera models released in the future will also be supported.

Support is scheduled to be given to Noritsu equipment around the end of May 2008.

As of January 10, 2008. According information gathered by Noritsu Koki.
DNG™ is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Noritsu and AccuSmart are trademarks of Noritsu Koki.

Information about raw image data that can be converted with DNG is available on the Adobe Systems Incorporated web page listed below. Some models may not be supported.

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

Users of Noritsu products
In order to input and print raw image data with Noritsu input terminals (CT terminals) and minilab systems, a version upgrade is required for the equipment used.

The winners of the Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest 2007 have been announced and posted on their web site. The Honorary Chairman, Benoit Mandelbrot himself writes: “It was an astonishing event, both at the International Congress of Mathematicians and at the museum downtown. I am an inveterate optimist, but never expected to see a crowd standing in a long line to be allowed to admire mathematics in any of its forms.”

Source: CNET
Written by Stephen Shankland

Already, single-lens reflex cameras were disproportionately popular as photographers moved to models that responded quickly and worked better in dim conditions. The bulk and expense were worth it.

But a panoply of new models arrived to satisfy the needs of experts and professionals in 2007. First was Canon’s $5,000 EOS-1D Mark III, a rugged 10.1-megapixel photojournalist model unveiled in March that can shoot 10.5 frames per second. Alas for Canon, the camera’s record was blighted with concerns about its autofocus performance.

But the floodgates opened in the second half of the year with Canon’s top-end, $8,000 21.1-megapixel 1Ds Mark III. Canon hopes this full-frame model not only wlll keep professional SLR shooters loyal but also to woo studio photographers using even more expensive medium-format cameras. Announced at the same time in August and aimed at the serious enthusiast was the 40D, a $1,300 10.1-megapixel model.

A week later, Canon’s biggest rival, Nikon, shot back with the $1,800 D300, and, more significant by far, the $5,000 D3, the first digital SLR to follow Canon’s lead with sensors as large as a full frame of 35mm film.

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Source: ComputerWorld
Written by James Niccolai

New rules will go into effect on Jan. 1 that prohibit air passengers in the U.S. from carrying spare lithium batteries in their checked baggage.

The new rules, announced Friday by the U.S. Department of Transportation, are designed to reduce the risk of fires in aircraft. Lithium batteries have been identified as a possible cause of several aircraft fires.

Passengers will still be able to carry lithium batteries in checked bags if they are installed in a device like a laptop or digital camera. But loose batteries will need to be put in a plastic bag and carried on the plane as hand luggage, the DOT said.

The rules also limit each passenger to two “extended-life” lithium batteries. These are larger batteries with more than 8 grams of equivalent lithium content, examples of which are pictured in the DOT’s statement.

The rules are also described at the SafeTravel.dot.gov Web site.

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