Photokina 2006 has come and gone with a yawn. Just a few years ago, we would
have watched the new equipment announcements with tremendous excitement. What has
changed? Digital cameras.
In 2000, a typical digital camera took 5-8 seconds to start up, froze up for
3-5 seconds between pictures, recorded images at two or three megapixels, and
lacked an orientation sensor so that half the images came up sideways on the
computer. You probably missed most of the photographic situations you'd tried to
capture. If you did capture something that you wanted, the image quality wasn't
high enough to support an 8x10 enlargement.
Today, anyone with a credit card can go out and get a digital camera that
offers ample resolution up to 16x20 prints, turns on instantly, orients the RAWs
or JPEGs properly, and is reasonably responsive. You might not like the price of
a
Canon 5D or
Nikon D200, but the machines function about as well
as any 35mm camera ever did.
That said, what caught my eye among the Photokina 2006 announcements? Stuff
that a lot of folks can use right now:
- 16 GB flash cards from Sandisk and Pretec (available in December).
-
Zeiss prime lenses for Nikon; the big camera companies realized a long time
ago that most consumers couldn't understand the point of buying anything other
than a 28-300 zoom, so they stopped investing in prime (fixed focal length) lens
design.
Fun stuff:
-
Seitz
6x17 scanning 160 megapixel digital camera, not quite as useful as a
20-year-old Fuji 6x17, which is a great point-and-shoot street photography camera
when loaded with Ilford 3200 film.
-
Hasselblad
H3D; why use a puny Canon EOS 24x36mm digital sensor when all the real
photographers have moved up to 48x36mm? Image quality should be
spectacular at 39 megapixels. I'll wait for a 48x48mm version before plunking
down $40,000+. What's the point of using a Hasselblad if you're going to get
boring rectangular pictures like you'd get from a Nikon or Canon? (I wrote about
the joys of 6x6 in
"Choosing a Medium Format
Camera".)
Interesting and fun, certainly, but nothing that will make or break a
photographic project. Digital cameras have advanced to the point that we can
ignore them and go back to the elements that make a great photograph: time,
patience, composition, lighting.
New photo.net staff
photo.net was a successful hobby/personal site from 1993-2000. It was an
unsuccessful business from 2000 to mid-2006. We have a mostly new staff that is
in its first months of attempting to make the site more successful as a learning
environment, better editorially, and profitable. We've made a few minor changes
so far, most of which you can see by visiting the home page and the
rewritten Terms of Use.
We're working on a big push to upgrade the software behind the site to a newer
version of the ArsDigita Community System (3.4), which we have to complete in
November. After that, we will be improving sections of the site much more
rapidly.
Please bear with us through what are probably going to be some rocky days and
nights as we get the software right. It took six years for the site to drift from
its moorings; we think we might be able to get it back to where we want it in 6-9
months.
Forthcoming Camera and Lens Reviews
We're about one month away from an editorial production system that will
enable us to take in articles and reviews from a lot more contributors.
As a Canon EOS user, I'm personally going to be playing around with the 30D,
the 17-55/2.8 small-sensor lens, the 24-105/4 IS lens (mostly from a helicopter
where the IS gets a workout), the 24-70/2.8L lens, and the new Digital Rebel
XTi.
What I'm working on
I'm working on a couple of projects. One is a boring article on aerial
photography with some examples from the Boston area. I'm especially interested in
ugly suburban housing developments, McMansions, and other realistic depictions of
21st Century American built environments (my theory is that our suburban sprawl
explains much of why Mexicans are happier than we are, despite a much lower
material standard of living). The second project is going to be a collaborative
one with photo.net readers. I want to produce a Web site for young people who are
trying to choose a career. Each page will be a portrait of a 35, 40, or
45-year-old plus some photos of this person at work and some information about
the career in question. Most young people choose careers based on what they've
read in newspapers, heard from parents and peers, and seen in Hollywood movies
(where even lawyers are fun, happy fulfilled people!).
Text and photos
Copyright 2006 Philip Greenspun.
