Let’s consider, to start, the humble camera strap. Several models of sling strap were shown, designed to carry the camera over your shoulder and under your arm or even on your hip.
There’s a new kid on the block when it comes to tripods, and they’re impressive, both in design and philosophy. Redged was founded in Holland by a nature photographer (Ed Dorrestein) and a sports and reportage photographer (Bart Bel) in order to get the kinds of tripods they personally wanted.
We weren’t the only ones who were impressed. This was...
The weirdest camera at the show, the GFAE, wasn’t even recognizable as a camera, not least because it was a view camera with the bellows left out in order to show its construction more clearly. We’ll come back to it later, but first, let’s look at some more conventional offerings.
Let’s be honest. One thing no one would have expected at photokina was a unique new black-and-white silver halide process. But that’s what we got. Well, not exactly brand new. It’s a revival of a technology that hasn’t been seen in decades, quite possibly not in the lifetime of many of our readers: direct reversal paper.
Understatement almost always speaks louder than overstatement; or if not louder, then generally with more authority. The four new Leica Summarits, for M-series Leicas, Zeiss Ikons, and Voigtländer Bessas, are about as far from ostentatious as you can get; they are merely first-class tools for the photographer who knows what he or she is doing.
Why do we need different contrast grades?
Because we don't all make perfect negatives. Paper grades allow us to compensate for negatives that are a bit too contrasty, or somewhat...
You can use Harman Direct Positive Paper (hereafter HDPP) in a whole spectrum of ways. At one end of the spectrum is the “Wow! Lookit!” of a school science project. At the other is a creative tool that will probably prove useful and profitable for some fine art photographers, and even some advertising photographers. We keep thinking of new ways to use it, but then again, you have to. It is a classic example of “creative limitation,”
The name may not be catchy, but it is a fine piece of truth in advertising. Kaiser's Studio Out of the Box comes in a box and it's a sort of mini-studio for making small product shots for catalogs, insurance purposes, documenting collections, posting on websites, and many other applications. It's usable even by non-photographers: all you need is a light or two...
Film photographers are a cantankerous and ungrateful crew, often greeting revised films with suspicion and resentment instead of hope and pleasure. To some extent this is understandable, because they usually have to establish new development times and possibly new exposure indices, too; but the manufacturers' claimed improvements are usually honest, and without them...