About 30 years after going out of business, Zeiss Ikon is coming back with a new camera. It uses the popular M-mount lenses, and Cosnia and Carl Zeiss will make a range of T* lenses for it. The FAQ blatantly claims that "ZI lenses better than other M bayonet lenses on the market" (obviously implying Leica).
They are taking 1200 special orders for a limited edition camera right now with wide availability in 2005. Expected price should be around $2000 for the body only (ouch!). Another toy to add to the list of stuff I am getting the next time I win a lottery...
The really good thing is that all over the website they are hinting at future digital compatibility. This clearly indicates a digital camera in the pipeline...
I've been getting increasingly interested in Black and White photography of late. It started with trying to save some money on film and processing, but I guess I'm starting to see the charm and fun of B&W.;
One of the things that comes with B&W; is that you need to develop your own films, or be prepared to spend a fortune on getting a single roll processed. But the good thing is that developing B&W; is really easy and fun! Thanks to the awesome documentation on Ilford's site (particularly this document), and the helpful folks at Nikonians, I managed to develop my first roll recently. While the results werent mindblowing, it was great to see actual pictures on the negatives once the process was done.
Unfortunately I dont have access to a real darkroom or enlarger right now. I've heard from many people that making your own prints is where the real fun is, and cant wait to try that out. Until then I have to be content with with scanning the negatives using the Minolta Dimage Dual Scan IV scanner that I got sometime back.
One amazing resource for all B&W; related stuff is the Black & White Magazine.
Its been a while since I last posted here. In the last month I've shifted to a new apartment, been to the Gold Rush state, attended the biggest Computer Graphics conference, learnt about B&W; film development, done quite a lot of carpentry, watched a whole bunch of cool movies, and discovered the original hazelnut spread.
This post has nothing to do with all of those. This post about the TimeCatcher's World website. It has easily one of the best nature photographs I've ever seen. Vibrant colors (thanks to velvia), amazing scenes, absolutely brilliant! Will I ever be half as good as these guys!?
"This site is dedicated to the beauty this planet has to offer... Photography has the power to bring all those incredible images right into our home and has given us the drive to create this project... Numerous scientific research has proven this site to be a real feast for the eyes. You may experience the will to quit your day job and travel. We cannot be held responsible for such actions. Viewer discretion is advised." - Timecatcher Team
Nikon finally announced their new consumer Digital SLR, the D70 today. The specs look amazing! Unlike the EOS 300D, this is not a crippled sibling of its pro-cam brothers. Several things are better than the D100, and comparable even to the D1. Well, all this is still only on paper - it needs to be seen how well the camera performs. But I would not worry too much about that - its a Nikon after all! And all this only for $999 (body only)! Only problem is the build quality - it is plastic (I can live with that).
The first review of the D70 is up at digitalreview.ca. There is also some info on dpreview (the full review would take a few weeks, i guess). Also the forums are buzzing with activity: here, and here.
The price of entry level digital SLRs has halved in the last year. The features have increased. The era of hobbyist Digital SLRs is finally beginning to dawn on us. Another couple of years, and film will be all but dead (for most hobbyists atleast).
In the early 1900s, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii conducted elaborate photographic surveys of the Russian Empire under Tsar Nicholas II. The thousands of pictures that he took of people, architecture, transportation, etc. are one of the best record of the Russian Empire before the Revolution. What really intrigued me about this is that all this work was done in color!
He developed a really ingenious technique of photography. Using three filters (red, green and blue), he took three pictures of a scene on ordinary ordinary black and white glass plate negatives. These pictures were then projected using the same filters to get a single color image. Very neat work!
The Library of Congress came to possess huge collection of these triple-negative plates and photographer Walter Frankhauser guided in cleaning and alignment of about 120 plates to get hi-res color pictures. Now it is possible to easily view these pictures the way they were meant to be seen - in full vibrant color! Make sure you check out the Library’s online exhibit, The Empire that was Russia. Do explore this site for a while - it is well worth the time!
The quality of this work is simply amazing, specially the color. Most digital cameras today come nowhere near the vivid color these images display. That brings us to, is Digital Photography correct today? This is one of my advisor’s favourite topics of discussion. I would not go into details here, but one thing that is obvious is that digital cameras should not try to mimic film cameras. Digital has far greater potential that film ever had, and a new way of thinking about Digital Photography is needed to make use of it.
Well, back to the topic, Frank Dellaert (at CMU, now at GaTech) made use of vision techniques for automatic alignment and colorization of the plates. Though his results are not as good as the 120 that were manually done, he has almost the entire slide collection colorized. Addison Godel has a decent gallery that he generated using Photoshop.
The picture on this page is “The Bukhara Emir”. Click on it for a bigger picture. Notice the vivid color in his dress.