PHASE

Phase One to absorb high-end Kodak photo assets

A new tremor on Thursday traversed a photography world already shaken up by the arrival of digital technology as Phase One, a Copenhagen-based company that caters to professional photographers, announced a plan to acquire some high-end photography assets from Eastman Kodak.

To nobody's surprise, Kodak wound down its 35mm Kodachrome film product on Monday. In the rarefied realm of medium-format photography, where film sizes are much larger, and the demand for quality is much higher, the change to the digital era has been equally jarring.

Phase One, though, was digital from the outset, and it's become a force … Read more

Astrological destiny predictor

MB Feng Shui Ba Zi provides a program that sheds light on a user's destiny. However, without much direction, we predict users will need outside sources to translate their future.

Thankfully, this program could not have a much simpler interface. Users can enter their personal information in very plain boxes and pull-down menus for dates. From there, navigating the information is much easier than interpreting what it might mean. We were disappointed to find that the Help file did not give us much information beyond the program's core functions. The program asks users for their birthday, time of … Read more

Shady program

MB Moon Phase is a program that lets you calculate a moon's phase on a particular date, but that's its lone feature. According to the publisher's description, the program is free, but further inspection revealed a trial of 30 days and a donation once the trial expires.

When first installed, we were greeted with a ridiculously cluttered window full of donation requests. We had to root through the clutter to find the button that would let us continue with the program. From there, we were greeted with yet another cluttered interface. We entered a specific date and … Read more

Phase One takes driver's seat in Mamiya camera partnership

Phase One, a Copenhagen-based maker of professional-grade digital camera technology, has invested in and assumed some control over Japanese camera maker Mamiya.

Phase One and Mamiya already had a partnership for one medium-format camera through a partnership begun in 2006, but now the alliance is much tighter, with Phase One in the driver's seat for some key areas, Phase One said Wednesday.

"Phase One is making a significant financial investment in Mamiya Digital Imaging, thus becoming a major shareholder in the company behind the Mamiya brand of medium-format cameras and lenses," Phase One said in a statement. &… Read more

Sunfire TGR-401: Finally, a powerful AV receiver

Today's audiovisual receivers are jam-packed with features, but the rarest feature is real power.

Power in the range of 100-to-150 watts or so is all you get, even in the high-end models. Models with 200 watts are rare, so we were excited to hear about the TGR-401, Sunfire's latest 200-watt receiver. Sunfire's in-house genius Bob Carver has a knack for designing high power amplifiers. Carver, in fact, designed the world's first consumer high power amp, the legendary 350 watt by two channel Phase Linear 700 stereo amp in 1972.

Carver's latest, the TGR-401 ($4,000), is a 200 watt by seven channel AV receiver that sports three HDMI version 1.3a inputs.

Hidden behind a viscously damped, brushed aluminum door the front video connections may be assigned as Y/Pr/Pb/optical for HD gaming, or composite/S-Video/analog for camcorders with a simple press of a button.

The TGR-401's Auto EQ provides a simple, automatic process to equalize all seven channels plus the subwoofer. For the installing dealer, who would like to perform hands-on tweaking, there are detailed manual adjustments available for each channel pair.

Also onboard is Sunfire's remarkable Sonic Holography circuit. Invented by Bob Carver in the 1980s, Sonic Holography creates a wide and deep soundstage from stereo recordings. … Read more

Phase One announces lenses for its pro camera

Phase One is fleshing out its transformation from a maker of high-end image sensors for others' cameras into a maker of full-on cameras.

At the Photokina camera show in Germany, the company announced "successful alliances" with Leica Camera, Mamiya, and Hartblei to bring third-party lenses to its Phase One 645 camera system, and it said it will begin selling several lenses of its own by the end of the year. Those lens models are a 28mm f4.5, a 45mm f2.8, an 80mm f2.8, a 120mm f4.0, a 150mm f2.8, and a 75-150mm f4.… Read more

60MP is the new 50MP

Less than two weeks ago, Kodak announced its new 50MP medium-format sensor, and only a few days ago Hasselblad announced its H3DII-50 camera based on it. The Hasselblad H3DII-50 became the highest resolution digital camera back, but it didn't last long; it was a short stay at the top.

Phase One has now announced its P65+ digital back and P65+ camera system with a whopping 60MP sensor. It is the first full-frame 645 film-format-sized sensor, measuring 40.4mm by 53.9mm. The current crop of 39MP backs, and the new Hasselblad 50MP back, measure 36mm by 48mm. Having a … Read more

After 38 years, a new type of memory to hit market

It's been a long haul for phase change memory, but the goal is in sight.

Numonyx, the memory joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Intel, is already shipping samples of phase change memory (PCM) chips to customers and will start shipping PCM chips commercially later this year, CEO Brian Harrison said at a press conference Monday.

"We expect to bring it to market this year and generate some revenue," Harrison said. "It is one to two years before it becomes widely commercially available."

Hearing a CEO talk about existing samples and near-term commercial shipments is a … Read more

Intel doubles data density on possible flash successor

Intel and ST Microelectronics have come up with a way to put multiple bits of data in a single memory cell in phase change memory, a breakthrough that effectively doubles the technology's density.

Now if they could only get the stuff to market.

Phase change memory is a type of memory made out of materials similar to those used to make CDs and DVDs. A tiny laser rapidly heats up a small bit, and in the process transforms the structure of the bit from crystalline to amorphous. Reversing the process can change the bit from having an amorphous character … Read more

Capture One 4 raw-image software released

Phase One, a maker of high-end digital-camera components, has released the first major update to its raw-image conversion software in years.

Capture One 4 includes a new user interface with maximum screen real estate devoted to the picture itself, better abilities to edit images' shadows and highlights, support for reading and writing Adobe Systems' Digital Negative (DNG) format, and the dark background that's currently popular as a way to get photos to stand out better.

The software costs $129, but upgrades are free. It runs on Windows XP SP2 and Vista and on Mac OS X 10.4.11 … Read more