It's a boon that digital photos can incorporate textual information, leaving behind some film-era complications, such as having to separately record a photo's caption or copyright status.
But there are some problems handling this so-called metadata, and now Canon, Adobe Systems, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and Nokia have banded together to solve some of them.
The companies have formed the Metatdata Working Group and released a first set of guidelines that attempts to standardize some issues that can crop up as metadata travels from cameras to computers, software, and Web sites. On Wednesday, the group announced its work at the Photokina camera show in Germany.
"Whether you're a soccer mom uploading photos to a Kodak gallery, or a pro selling images on Getty, these are issues everybody deals with," said Josh Weisberg, Microsoft's director of digital imaging evangelism and the metadata group's chairman and founder.
For example, when moving a photo from one application to another, a vertically orientated photo can get rotated 90 degrees into a landscape orientation, or captions and descriptive keywords can get lost. Part of the problem is that there are multiple ways to record metadata, including EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format), IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council), and Adobe's XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform).
The working group has produced guidelines to try to bring common practices to metadata areas including keywords, description, creator, star rating, orientation, and location, Weisberg said. The group dealt with three file formats: TIFF, JPEG, and Adobe Photoshop's PSD.
The Metadata Working Group's guidelines are a free download from the Web site, and anyone is free to implement them without worrying about infringing any of the members' intellectual property, Weisberg said.
Being guidelines, others are free to handle metadata they way they want, but the collective clout of the working group members--the two major operating system makers, the top camera maker, and the top image-editing software maker--mean it's likely others will follow suit.
Up next: Handling raw images
There's more work to be done, though.
The working group got started on the current guidelines a year ago. Now, it's moving on to the next set of issues. "With the first version, we began with consumer scenarios. We're formulating a plan for a second version. It's our intent to address professional scenarios," Weisberg said.
One big issue is handling the profusion of raw file formats produced by higher-end cameras and commonly used by professionals and advanced amateurs. These formats are generally proprietary, so it's hard to handle their metadata. Windows does so by relying on software supplied by camera makers, but Adobe and Apple do their own reverse-engineering work to handle the metadata. So for example, unless a Windows Vista user has downloaded the appropriate support, the operating system's file browser software can't report when a raw photo was taken, even though that metadata is stored in the photo file.
"It is a goal to try to establish guidelines for where and how metadata is stored in raw formats," Weisberg said.
Another possible issue is handling metadata for photo licensing information, which could bring some rights management order to the today's image copying free-for-all, but that's tricky. "We're in the phase of capturing the problem," Weisberg said. "There are no standards in the industry for licensing images that are widely adhered to."
Phase One's upcoming 60-megapixel professional camera.
(Credit: Phase One)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 f4.5 zoom.
The professional camera, with a 60-megapixel sensor and a starting price of $41,990, is also due to ship by the end of the year. Coming in the first quarter of 2009 will be an 80mm leafshutter lens and a vertical grip.
The company also announced at the camera show an upgrade to the professional version of its its raw-image editing software.
Also new from the company is a 15-megapixel sensor mode for the 60-megapixel sensor. This mode combines four pixels into one that measures 12 microns square, extending the sensitivity range to ISO 1600.
The Lensbaby Composer has a traditional focusing ring.
(Credit: Lensbaby)Lensbaby's selective-focus lenses thus far have brought a seat-of-the-pants, analog feel to the electronic and digital world that photography has become. But a new model announced Tuesday has a more traditional interface for those who weren't happy with the company's earlier approach of squeezing and flexing the lens until the image looks about right.
For the uninitiated, the company's approach deserves a little explanation here. Lensbaby lenses let people focus tightly on a selected spot; the rest of the view quickly recedes into blurriness. It's a bit gimmicky, but it gives a different look than most lenses, it can be fun to play with, and if done well it can really focus attention well on the subject. The product works because its outer lens element can be bent so it's not parallel to the image sensor--in effect, it's a cheap tilt-shift lens.
The new model, the $270 Composer, forsakes the earlier flexible plastic bellows system for something resembling a ball-and-socket joint. Instead of squeezing to focus, the photographer twists a traditional focusing ring. The mechanism looks much cleaner and easier to use than the complicated struts-and-knobs approach of the earlier Lensbaby 3G, though I fear grit could work its way into the mechanism.
The 3G got a redesign, too. It's morphed into the $270 Control Freak. And the first-generation Lensbaby is similarly reworked into the Muse, which costs $100 to $150 depending on whether it uses plastic or glass lenses.
The major new feature of the updated models is what the company calls the Optic Swap System, which lets users change the lenses. The four options are a double glass element, a single glass element, a single plastic element, and a pinhole/zone plate.
The announcement came during the Photokina photography show in Germany.
Nikon's new f/1.4 lens should cost about $440 when it goes on sale in December.
(Credit: Nikon)Nikon announced an update to its 50mm f/1.4 lens on Monday, a relatively high-speed mainstay set to go on sale for $440 in December.
The new lens, called the AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G, has less chromatic aberration and internal flare than its predecessor, Nikon said. It's also got a silent wave motor for quiet, speedy autofocus, a close-focus distance of about 18 inches, and nine rounded aperture blades for a smoother look, called bokeh, in out-of-focus regions.
Lenses with a fixed 50mm focal length are very common, though not as much as during the era before zoom lenses became standard for entry-level SLR cameras. Nikon's current AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D costs about $300.
"Experienced photographers have always appreciated the incredible image fidelity and low-light ability that a precisely engineered 50mm lens can deliver," Edward Fasano, general manager for marketing for Nikon's SLR systems products, said in a statement. "In addition, seasoned shooters often prefer the photographic discipline imposed by the use of prime lenses."
The company, which has been gaining market share on market leader Canon, announced the new lens in conjunction with the Photokina show in Germany. Nikon also said it's produced 45 million SLR lenses over its history--notably, 5 million of them in the last year.
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