Is this cool or what?

There’s not many places where you can get a colorful sky in the middle of the night. China seems to be one of the best places to have these strange digital phenomenon.

This place is called “The Place.” It ranks right up there with some of the other awful names of Chinese locations. They should hire a poet or two so these places can sound more exotic. I’d be happier if it was called “Tomorrow Sky” or “The Sea of Matrix.”

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(Via Lost in Customs.)

photo credit: *clairity*

So beautiful subtle shading.

photo credit: miyukiutada

Really good natural lighting to bring out the depth perspective.

“Digital cameras are now in about 43 million homes in America, and that 40 percent penetration could reach 70 percent by 2007. The more mainstream they become, some analysts argue, the more likely that old printing habits will re-establish themselves. “

Manufacturers like Eastman Kodak Co., however, think the meteoric rise of camera phones could turn the lucrative print business into a growth market again, possibly within two years.

Aside from rushing higher-resolution cameras, speedier printers, fancier software and all-purpose kiosks into the marketplace, they’re employing all their marketing tricks to mold consumer habits and transform electronically stored images into prints of all varieties.

Their campaigns run from scaremongering about the perils of letting pictures languish on computers that might crash to behavior-reinforcing TV ads by Rochester-based Kodak in which new digital patrons shout out “Where are my pictures?”

And while an estimated 100 billion images are snapped in America each year — of which about a quarter are turned into prints — that could skyrocket above 1 trillion as camera phones not only proliferate but rapidly improve in quality.

“The ultimate goal of any process of photography, electronic publishing, printing or television is to reproduce all colors perfectly. To help make meaningful judgments about color rendition, a totally non-subjective standard of comparison is needed. That is why the GretagMacbeth ColorChecker chart was developed. It provides the needed standard with which to compare, measure and analyze differences in color reproduction in various processes.

The ColorChecker is a checkerboard array of 24 scientifically prepared colored squares in a wide range of colors. Many of these squares represent natural objects of special interest, such as human skin, foliage and blue sky. These squares are not only the same color as their counterparts, but also reflect light the same way in all parts of the visible spectrum. Because of this unique feature, the squares will match the colors of natural objects under any illumination and with any color reproduction process.”

When you’ve got a cool digital camera and a big memory card to fill up (how about a 2GB??) you might as well go out and take tons of photos (after all, you can throw away the ones that suck before anyone sees them). And what’s the best way to get out and take photos? Personally, I find going for a long walk, taking a hike or going on a bike ride to be the best ways to find interesting things to take pictures of. When you’re walking, hiking and biking, you’re outside, seeing new things and you’re moving. You’re moving at a slower pace so you’re more likely to see things than when you’re in a car. Who can see interesting things by the side of the road when you’re flying by at 55 miles per hour? Forget it. Go for a walk and take your camera with you. I find when I take my camera on a walk, I rarely think about how far I’ve walked or how much time it’s taken; I get into the zone that we call flow. “

A California fashion photographer has mixed robotics, laser scanners and digital photography to produce a new class of fashion images; something he calls “deep photography”. Greg Passmore, a somewhat eccentric photographer specializing in alternative fashion became frustrated with the limitations of post processing and the 2D world.

He teamed up with hardware and software specialists to create a system that looks more like a scifi contraption than something you would expect to see in a photo studio. A spinning laser sweeps out a finely detailed and intricate geometry map, while multiple cameras controlled by robotic servos capture the interaction of light. The resulting data set is complex and full of information. One data array is the time it took the laser light to travel to the subject, and back. Another device measures the amount of reflected infrared light, while cameras capture the visual scene as well as additional depth cues for calibration. This whole library of sensor sources is combined, stitched and normalized to reproduce the entire stage as a navigable and 3D world.

The key advantage of such a representation is the ability to more finely control the details of compositing, post shoot lighting, and subject positioning.”A normal photo shoot produces a number of challenges once the art director gets involved in post. The director may feel the model is in the wrong place, the background needs to be replaced, the light is too hot, the hair too frizzy. Unfortunately, most of the valuable information from the shoot is gone by the time post is underway; such as the 3D relationships between objects, control of the light positions and distance from the camera to accurately determine mattes. This technology solves those problems by retaining this information. The art director gets what he wants without having to break the budget by re-shooting”.

Next on Passmore’s list is the integrated control of light positions and color during the shoot. Servos whirring lights into place while a computer scans the stage might sound odd, but Passmore insists that it frees time for art and design, rather than fighting the limitations of a flat photograph.

HP designed its Vivera inks from the ground up with unique, vivid dyes that provide vibrant color as well as excellent fade resistance. The new blue HP Vivera ink is designed to peak in chroma (colorfulness) at a lightness higher than the lightness of the blue made in other printers by combining cyan and magenta inks. This allows the printer gamut to more closely match the sRGB color space. Also, the new blue ink is brighter than the blue made by blending cyan and magenta inks. Nine-ink printing with the HP 101 Blue Photo Inkjet print cartridge provides up to 25% more blue chroma than eight-ink printing3. The improvement is obvious in any photo print with intense blues. Outdoor photography enthusiasts will be especially impressed by the vivid blues in their landscapes, seascapes, and sports photos.

My take on this: still using dyes not pigments like Epson. Also sRGB space is optimized for monitors, not printing. The better, larger colorspace is Adobe 98. If HP is going after advanced amateur/professional photographers they are missing this critical point. Why boast that your printer is better at meeting color space that fine art printers have long since abandoned for the newer Adobe 98 space? Every photographer who uses RAW output immediately after bringing into Photoshop converts to Adobe 98 working color space. After final manipulation image is then saved at printer’s color profile, not sRGB.

I quess the point is that this HP printer is able to produce a larger gamut. And that is a worthy accomplishment.

Just like blogging can bypass traditional publishing to find an audience, so will the Digital Railroad service give more photographers a money making venue.

May the best talent find its market.

Press Release: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHERS COLLABORATE ON PHOTO BOOK FOR TSUNAMI RELIEF

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced availability of an updated Adobe Camera Raw plug-in that adds compatibility for six new camera models, bringing the total number of raw camera formats supported within Adobe Photoshop CS and Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 to more than 70. In addition, Adobe announced expanded capabilities for the DNG Converter, which translates disparate raw photo formats into a single universal format, or digital negative, for long-term archiving.

With the new plug-in Adobe now provides raw file support for camera models from 14 top manufacturers including Canon, Contax, Kodak, Konica Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and Sigma. The raw file allows photographers to manipulate the original data captured by the camera sensor before a final JPEG or TIFF has been generated. These raw files give photographers much greater control in applying corrections and adjustments without compromising image quality.

Adobe Photoshop – Digital camera raw file support: “To learn more about Camera Raw, read these primers: ‘Understanding Digital Raw Capture’ (PDF: 1000k) and ‘Linear Gamma’ (PDF: 235k).” Both of these are must reads and very well written.

rawformat: camera raw and raw format resources

A blog for in depth discussion of RAW and Digital Negative format