Underexposed

• Megapixel race inanity continues: Sony's 13.6-megapixel W300 - Sigh. Good thing it comes with adjustable nose reduction, because I bet noise is a problem. "Sony bumps up its point-and-shoot cameras to a new height of resolution with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W300, the company's first 13.6-megapixel snapshot camera."
• Panasonic UK Offers 16GB Memory Card Free With L10 Purchase - Digital Camera Info - "Panasonic UK has announced customers purchasing its L10 DSLR through the end of April will receive a free 16GB SDHC memory card."
• Lens Test: Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S - PopPhotoFebruary 2008 - "This pro-level, superfast, full-frame Nikon zoom for the D3 is practically in a class by itself."
• To DNG, or not to DNG ... - Inside Lightroom - Some discussion and tips on using DNG and Adobe's DNG conversion software. "Not only is this a great format for archiving, its perfectly suited for your workflow within in Adobe Bridge, Photoshop, and Lightroom."
• Lens Test: Olympus Zuiko Digital 12-60mm f/2.8-4 SWD AF - PopPhotoJanuary 2008 - "Overall, this is among the sharpest and least distorting wide-angle zooms in recent memory."
• Apple's list of SLRs compatible with Aperture 2 tethering - Rob Galbraith - Links to Apple resources for tethered shooting using Aperture 2.0. "Notably absent are the latest Canon models, including the EOS-1D Mark III, EOS-1Ds Mark III and EOS 40D, among others."
• Adobe AIR on Linux: Pre-Beta Testers Needed - James Ward - "As of today there have only been releases of Adobe AIR for Windows and Mac but Adobe is committed to also delivering a version for Linux." Interested testers may apply by email at helptesterairlinux at adobe dot com.
• OpenSolaris governance board gloom - Glynn Foster - "OGB made some good positive progress in some areas, it also feels like we lost the ability to talk with our community and proactively work on a plan for growth and prosperity for our community. It would be so, so easy to walk away after a year."
• The Pulse of Open Source - "This is the stream of collective consciousness from the open source community on Twitter." The 451 Group analyst Raven Zachary has set up a feed from various open-sourcers.
• Sun Microsystems to Provide Update on MySQL Acquisition - "Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) will host a conference call on Tuesday, February 26 to provide an update on the acquisition of MySQL. The definitive agreement to acquire MySQL was announced on January 16."
• terrific photo gallery: 34 views of total lunar eclipse 2008 - Some great shots taken all over the world of the Eclipse of February 20, 2008.
• Imagekind | Buy and Sell Art Online - Checking this out: "Imagekind is about three things: * Creating art from digital files; * Providing an online marketplace for selling art without any actual inventory; * Providing the world's largest online venue for shopping for unique fine art prints."
• Matusow's Blog : Microsoft Takes Next Step In Delivering Interoperability - Jason Matusow on Microsoft open-source interoperability announcement.
• Fairies should come out of the sky...a hilarious talkback post from a News.com cynic - "fairies should come out of the sky and make discs out of magical dust which is bonded together by love and happiness..." This in reference to a call for open-standard work with Blu-ray and other technology.
• World's tallest man saves dolphin - BBC - "The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards."

Phase One's Capture One 4 software devotes as much screen real estate as possible to photos.

(Credit: Phase One)

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 and 10.5. Capture One 4 is available now via download at http://www.phaseone.com/4

Although Phase One's chief business is selling its own camera "backs," the image sensors and related electronics that mount onto high-end medium-format camera bodies, the Danish company also sells the Capture One software with support for raw-image files from many manufacturers' cameras.

All digital SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras and some higher-end compact models can produce raw images, the sensor data before it's been processed by the camera into a JPEG. Raw images can provide higher quality, but they also require time and effort to edit manually into more convenient formats. Capture One competes with software such as Apple Aperture, Bibble, and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for the raw-processing task.

Phase One signed a technology partnership with Microsoft in October that will give the company the ability to deal with programming challenges such as handling gargantuan image files. Also as part of the deal, Phase One will support Microsoft's HD Photo format, which Microsoft is standardizing at the Joint Photographic Experts Group under the name JPEG XR.

(Via Rob Galbraith)

PhaseOne Chief Executive Henrik Hakonsson is bridging a vast digital photography divide.

A medium-format camera with a Phase One digital back.

His company makes top-end image sensor housings called digital backs, each costing tens of thousands of dollars and attaching to high-end medium-format cameras with similarly high price tags. But he just signed a partnership with Microsoft, which gears its products for the broadest possible audience.

The Phase One product that brings these two worlds together is Capture One, software that helped pioneer the area of processing "raw" images taken directly from image sensors without any in-camera processing. The software exists chiefly for Phase One's high-end customers, but it also supports many mainstream cameras.

Through the partnership, terms of which were not disclosed, Microsoft will help Phase One tackle technical challenges of improving that software, Hakonsson said. And according to Josh Weisberg, Microsoft's director of digital imaging evangelism, Capture One will be able to handle files encoded with Microsoft's HD Photo format, which the company is advocating as a higher-quality replacement for the ubiquitous JPEG and is standardizing as JPEG XR.

Phase One, based in Copenhagen, was founded in 1993 and is owned by its 130 employees. On the hardware side, its top-end P45+ back uses a 39-megapixel sensor from Kodak. It sells two versions of Capture One, the $499 Pro and the $99 LE, but with the upcoming version 4, the LE version will simply be named Capture One 4.

I chatted with Hakonsson about his company's software, hardware, and Microsoft alliance earlier this month. Here's an edited transcript.

Phase One CEO Henrik Hakonsson

(Credit: Phase One)

Q: Most people haven't heard of Phase One. Can you give us a thumbnail sketch?
Hakonsson: Phase One is the world's leading digital camera back manufacturer. If you take a copy of Vogue magazine and look at the first 50 pages, approximately 80 percent of the images are shot with Phase One digital back and Capture One software. Our position in the market is the very top maybe 1 percent of the photo segment--shooters who work with the biggest clients and the most demanding photographic applications.

What's your sales volume for digital backs?
The global market will exceed 10,000. Phase 1 has more than 50 percent of the market. Some of our digital back competitors are working to make less costly solutions. We try to target the most demanding photographers.

What will result from the Microsoft partnership?
For Phase One, the main reason for doing this was the ability to get access to some tools which will help us provide better services for the kind of photographers we're working with. We're getting into file sizes that may be two to three times what we have today, and the speed of being able to handle these files requires other tools than what we have in our portfolio.

For me, performance is No. 1. The parameters on which we position our product are speed, image quality, and ease of use. On the performance side, we needed a partner.

How big are your image files?
Typically 150MB. We expect larger file sizes for the next two to three years. The ability to make sure that people can browse and process images is important going forward. Microsoft has a range of tools for assuring that we can serve our high-end customers, who are the ones we are predominantly concerned about.

Ricoh announced its GR Digital II this week, the second-generation digital model in an unusual camera family geared for landscape specialists and enthusiasts with similar photographic needs.

Ricoh's new GR Digital II will go on sale in November.

(Credit: Ricoh)

Unlike virtually all other compact cameras sold these days, the GR Digital II's lens has a fixed focal length, the equivalent of 28mm on a 35mm film camera. The new six-element lens emphasizes sharpness and contrast, and has a maximum aperture of f/2.4, the company said. Other differences from the 8-megapixel predecessor include the new GR Engine II image-processing chip, a resolution bump to 10 megapixels, and the ability to shoot with a square frame.

Like the Ricoh Caplio GX100, a zoom lens-enabled relative, the GR Digital supports raw files, the data taken directly from the image sensor without any in-camera processing into JPEG. Also like the GX100, the GR Digital's raw files are stored as Adobe Systems' Digital Negative (DNG) format, an attempt to standardize some of the profusion of proprietary raw formats that typically are unique to each camera.

Ricoh doesn't have a big retail presence in the United States, but the new model is available at Adorama and PopFlash.Photo. The camera will be available in November, both outlets said.

The GR Digital II costs $700, about $100 more than the earlier model.

Unlike the GX100, the GR Digital II doesn't have an electronic viewfinder option, but there are two $200 optical viewfinder add-ons: the GV-1 with a 21mm- or 28mm-equivalent field of view and the new $200 GV-2 with a 28mm field of view. Another option is a $150 40mm-equivalent lens adapter.

(Via The Online Photographer)

ACD Systems has released version 2.0 of its ACDSee Pro software, bringing support for Windows Vista and Adobe's Digital Negative (DNG) software to the software for importing, naming, viewing, editing, labeling, displaying and archiving image files.

The company released ACDSee Pro 2.0 Tuesday at a price of $130. The software runs only on Windows.

ACDSee Pro is geared for quick review and "development" of raw files, the higher-quality images taken directly from camera image sensors without in-camera processing. Raw processing features include recovery of details lost in underexposed or overexposed areas, conversion to black and white, and batch editing. After photographers have labeled images with metadata such as keywords and titles, that metadata can be saved either to XMP Sidecar files or embedded in DNG files.

The software supports a wide variety of raw formats from major camera makers.

Update 5:15 p.m. PDT Friday: Adobe requested minor adjustments to quotations, and I obliged.

Adobe Systems' Digital Negative (DNG) format isn't a competitor to JPEG XR, a format Microsoft created as a higher-end replacement for conventional JPEG, an Adobe executive has predicted.

"I wouldn't label the two formats as competitive," said Tom Hogarty, product manager for Photoshop Lightroom, in an e-mail interview. He believes that not only is the case now, but more significantly, will be the case in the future as well.

DNG is Adobe's attempt to standardize the profusion of proprietary "raw" formats that give owners of higher-end cameras the option to process image data on their own computers instead of leaving it to the camera, which throws away a lot of data in the conversion to JPEG. JPEG XR, formerly known as Windows Media Photo and HD Photo, is Microsoft's attempt to create a higher-quality sequel to JPEG; JPEG XR likely will be standardized by the same neutral group that did so with ordinary JPEG.

Although JPEG XR and DNG are largely in separate domains, statements from Adobe and Microsoft indicate some potential for some overlap in the future.

According to Robert Rossi, Microsoft's principal program manager for emerging image and video technology, with JPEG XR, "You're giving people much of the capability of raw in a convenient file format. On the ultra-high-end there might be still a preference to use raw."

But in an earlier interview with Dave Story, Adobe's vice president of digital-imaging product development, he said raw is headed to a broader market as customers demand more image quality. "For a consumer camera, megapixels are not the ultimate goal. You can get a 10-megapixel camera for $400... We're shifting now to 'How do I get an edge on quality?' That's why raw formats exist. It's starting at the top and working its way down," he said. DNG will help enable that future by helping to avoid the "Tower of Babel" of different raw formats, he argued.

Hogarty, though, doesn't see JPEG XR and DNG on a collision course. Rather, he envisions three levels of image quality coexisting.

"The proposed JPEG XR solution will certainly provide increased quality for consumers using the current JPEG 8-bit format. But for serious photographers I don't see a significant amount of overlap between the value and flexibility that DNG (or proprietary raw formats) currently offer and the proposed JPEG XR solution," Hogarty said.

JPEG XR, he said, improves on JPEG limitations such as its inability to record more than 8 bits of data per color, providing a relatively coarse 256 levels between complete darkness and complete brightness. But it's no raw replacement.

"I think it's more important to determine which format suits the customer needs," Hogarty said. "Based on what I understand about JPEG XR, it would appear to be targeting the replacement of low-bit-depth JPEG files rather than encroaching on raw file format usage."

Microsoft announced some significant progress Tuesday in getting its HD Photo technology standardized as JPEG XR, a significant development for photographers like me who don't like the idea that their camera is discarding data when it converts image sensor information into a JPEG.

But the arrival of a higher-quality alternative to conventional JPEG could mean a bit of a turf war between Microsoft and Adobe Systems, which is trying to popularize a file format called Digital Negative (DNG). DNG is, in part, an attempt to bring some order to the chaos of proprietary "raw" image formats that higher-end cameras produce, giving photographers access to sensor data that hasn't been boiled down into a JPEG.

(Credit: Adobe)

Microsoft positions JPEG XR chiefly as a higher-end replacement for JPEG, but in talking to Robert Rossi, Microsoft's principal program manager for emerging image and video technology, his opinions about JPEG XR's relation to raw and DNG jumped out at me.

Adobe's vision for DNG is that increasingly sophisticated software will take the hassle out of processing raw images, enabling DNG technology to spread more broadly. But Microsoft seems to believe JPEG XR will handle the needs of enthusiasts demanding more quality.

With JPEG XR, "You're giving people much of the capability of raw in a convenient file format. On the ultra-high-end there might be still a preference to use raw," Rossi said.

DNG has "a far more limited market or focus," Rossi added. "We are kind of approaching the raw/DNG functionality, but we would go much lower into the prosumer and consumer market, all the way down to cell phones."

Ed Lee, an analyst with InfoTrends, sees some competition between DNG and JPEG XR. "I think some of it comes around to who does the better job marketing the format and getting it adopted," he said.

Personally, I'd welcome a little competition among powerful companies trying to improve image quality, as long as the world isn't saddled with two competing standards that do the same thing. But although there's definitely some overlap, I suspect the two formats will remain more in separate domains--and not just because Adobe spoke positively about JPEG XR earlier this year, indicating it doesn't feel too threatened by JPEG XR.

If it fills Microsoft's expectations, JPEG XR will be used in a much larger, mainstream photography market. DNG and raw, in comparison, appeal chiefly to professionals and advanced amateurs today, and no matter how easy processing those images may become once downloaded from a camera, any amount of processing will rule out a large population.

JPEG XR does address one advantage of raw and DNG, the ability to preserve more of the original data from image sensors. JPEG retains 8 bits of data for the blue, red and green in each pixel, but cameras typically record 12 bits, with Canon's new 1D Mark III recording 14 bits and higher-end models 16 bits.

JPEG XR, though, has immense bit depth--with 16 or 32 bits of data recorded for each pixel's color, that means somewhere between 65,536 and 4,294,967,296 shades of tonal variation between black and white. Thus the "XR," or extended range, moniker. Regular 8-bit JPEG has 256 shades, which is plenty if they happen to be distributed perfectly, but not enough if you want to use photo-editing software to brighten up a face that's lost in shadow.

However, DNG and raw formats offer something JPEG XR can't: unprocessed data. Creating a JPEG XR image means the camera is making its best guess about color balance--compensating for the bluish hue of fluorescent lights or the orange cast of incandescent, for example--as well as reducing noise and sharpening edges. For those who want that level of control, stick with raw or DNG.