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 for consolidation in the digital medium-format photography market. The company announced its plan to acquire technology and hire employees from Kodak's Leaf medium-format brand just months after taking control of Japanese medium-format camera maker Mamiya.
Leaf sells medium-format cameras, digital-sensor camera backs, and Leaf Capture photography software. The latter two products, but not necessarily the first, will live on under Phase One management.
(Credit: Leaf)The vast majority of cameras sold today are either all-in-one compact models or higher-end single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras with interchangeable lenses and larger, better image sensor chips. Medium-format cameras are another step up the ladder, costing tens of thousands of dollars for digital models, employing even larger sensors with more megapixels, catering to professionals almost exclusively, and offering not just interchangeable lenses but also sometimes interchangeable viewfinders and "backs," too, where image sensors or film packs are mounted.
Once the Leaf deal closes in about two weeks, Phase One Chief Executive Henrik O. Hakonsson said in an interview, Phase One will continue to develop and sell Leaf's digital backs and photography software through a new Israel-based company, Leaf Imaging. The new company will sell products that use Phase One's image sensor chip technology but that maintain Leaf's user interface approach, he said.
"We do not believe you can box everything together and serve all the pro photographers' needs," Hakonsson said. "One main thing we can get from Leaf is the ability to serve this market through a broader range of solutions than our own current design and engineering is able to offer. Another is, we need to be able to have more critical mass" in designing and manufacturing high-end image sensors.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
The changes illustrate just how complicated the digital transformation is for the high-end photography market, populated by the likes of high-priced photographers who shoot Vogue fashion ads and close-ups of jewelry and watches.
Back in the film era, it wasn't much more expensive to produce larger frames of film for these more demanding photographers than the 35mm film size used by mainstream folks. But in the digital era, with the constraints of processor manufacturing, it's vastly more expensive to produce larger image sensors than small ones. Phase One's top-end camera, the 60-megapixel P65+, costs about $40,000.
That economic reality is behind much of the medium-format market turmoil. Phase One, though, has grown each of the last seven years. "I don't think there's a simple recipe. I think it's equal parts hard work, good thinking, and a little bit of luck," Hakonsson said.
Phase One faces plenty of challenges, though--notably Canon's 21-megapixel, $7,000 1Ds Mark III and Nikon's newer $8,000 D3X. These models benefit from those companies' deep engineering, manufacturing, and marketing experience and from their broad customer bases. Both those companies are aiming their cameras at studio photographers with medium-format expertise.
Will Leaf's camera survive?
Leaf offers both Aptus-branded digital backs and AFi-branded digital cameras. While Phase One has rights to sell both those lines, it has committed so far only to sell the digital backs, Hakonsson said.
That means that Phase One's move will likely reassure Leaf digital-back customers, but those using the AFi camera still face an uncertain future. The Leaf AFi was developed in partnership with two other medium-format brands, Franke and Heidecke's Rollei and Jenoptik's Sinar, which sell their own versions of the camera, but Phase One declined to join that partnership earlier.
That camera partnership's future already is under a dark cloud. Franke and Heidecke, which manufactures the camera system for the trio, filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year.
Phase One will conduct a "thorough investigation of the product concept," Hakonsson said, "but there is no guarantee that Leaf or Phase One will support the system. We do have product rights to it and are able to do it, but it has to come down to a business decision whether it makes sense to revive the system."
The allies behind the system have made some progress since its inception, but Phase One remains concerned about issues with optics, durability, and service, Hakonsson said.
Digital-back business
Digital backs, on the other hand, are a better business for the company. They can be used with a range of medium-format cameras and with other more exotic models, such as large-format cameras and view cameras--the kind with the collapsing bellows most people associate with 19th-century photography but that still are in use.
In this segment of the market, where photographers are more set in their ways, older camera designs can last a long time. Just selling backs means the image sensor component of the camera can be changed relatively often to keep up with technology, but the rest of the system, which changes more slowly, can be used for longer.
"Six years ago, Contax discontinued production, but we've never sold as many Contax digital backs as we do today," Hakonsson said.
The other major power in the medium-format realm is Hasselblad, whose recent designs such as the H3D-II have favored integrated camera designs rather than interchangeable backs. That integration move deprived Phase One of a lot of potential digital back business and provided motivation for the Mamiya and Leaf deals.
Phase One has about 100 employees of its own and another 150 through Mamiya. The Leaf group is in the process of hiring about 25 employees who lost their Kodak jobs, he said.
Phase One has primarily used Kodak's image sensors, but its more recent models, including the high-scoring P65+, are built by Canadian manufacturer Dalsa. "For maybe the last 18 months, Dalsa has been ahead," he said.
Updated 5:01 p.m. PDT with further details on Phase One competition.
Medium-format digital cameras, which have larger sensors and higher price tags than even high-end SLRs, didn't fare so well in earlier tests of sensor quality by measurement firm DxO Labs, but Phase One's newly tested top-end technology has risen to the top of the DxOMark Sensor test.
Phase One now rules the DxOMark Sensor roost.
(Credit: DxO Labs)Phase One's 60-megapixel P65+ camera scored 89.1 on the test, edging out the Nikon D3X, which scored 88, according to data released Thursday. In addition, the 51.7-megapixel Hasselblad H3DII 50, an older model than Phase One's, scored 78.2. Click here to compare the two models and Nikon's D3X.
The DxOMark sensor test measures a camera sensor's dynamic range, color depth, and low-light performance. DxO Labs cautions that differences of less than 5 points aren't really distinguishable, and of course many other factors including price, lens quality, autofocus, and resolution factor into overall camera quality.
The P65+ features the best color performance yet, but DxO Labs said its comparatively good performance in low-light conditions helped it carry the day.
... Read MorePhase One, a Copenhagen-based maker of professional-grade digital camera technology, has invested in and assumed some control over Japanese camera maker Mamiya.
(Credit:
Phase One)
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. "To ensure clarity of brand positioning and minimize product overlap, in close cooperation with Mamiya top management, Phase One will take on strategic leadership for the companies' research and development, marketing, and distribution management."
Medium-format cameras feature a sensor that's much larger and therefore more expensive to manufacture than those even in high-end $8,000 SLRs from Canon and Nikon, but that offer more megapixels for large, high-quality printing demands.
Toshio Midorikawa, president of Mamiya Digital Imaging, argued that the companies bring complementary abilities: "Together, Phase One and Mamiya Digital Imaging own all competencies required for developing superior, innovative medium-format camera systems. Our combined expertise comprises digitalization, camera fine mechanics, optics design and production, and broad ranges of software and firmware capabilities," he said. "And as a result of our close collaboration, new products are just around the corner. We plan to introduce both new leaf shutter lenses and even more super lightweight focal plane shutter lenses in 2009. We aim to offer the world's widest range of medium format lenses for Mamiya and Phase One camera platforms."
Medium-format cameras are used chiefly by professional studio photographers; Phase One's P65+ image sensor back offers 60 megapixel resolution on a sensor measuring 53.9mm by 40.4mm, much larger than the 36x24mm sensors in high-end conventional SLRs from Canon, Nikon, and Sony. Phase One and Mamiya competitors include Hasselblad, Sinar and Leaf.
DxO Labs added scores for three Sony SLRs to its site for image sensor tests. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: DxO Labs)Three midrange Sony SLRs now are included in DxO Labs' measurements of image sensor performance, and the Alpha A700 proves to be reasonably competitive.
Sony's A700, which costs about $1,100 with an 18-70mm lens, has a score of 66.3 on the test, which calculates how well the sensor handles color, a range brightness and darkness, and low-light shooting. That puts it behind the top-scoring camera with a comparably sized sensor, the Nikon D90, almost ties it with the Pentax K10D and Nikon D300, and gives it a a few points' lead over Canon's 40D and 50D.
Meanwhile, the A200 scores 62.9 and the A300 an even 64, according to the DxOMark Sensor test results that were updated Tuesday. A five-point difference makes a difference of about 1/3 stop in exposure, DxO says, meaning that a higher-scoring camera can attain the same raw image quality as a rival even though the higher-scoring camera is using a faster exposure or higher ISO.
DxO Labs, a French company, makes a business of measuring camera image quality, developing technology for image-processing hardware and software, and selling software to convert the raw files produced by higher-end cameras into less flexible but more convenient formats such as JPEG. The DxOMark score measures sensor performance based on the raw file, a foundation for overall image quality but only a facet of a camera's overall performance.
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A correction has been made to this story. See below for details.
LAS VEGAS--Olympus has declared an end to the megapixel race.
"Twelve megapixels is, I think, enough for covering most applications most customers need," said Akira Watanabe, manager of Olympus Imaging's SLR planning department, in an interview here at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA). "We have no intention to compete in the megapixel wars for E-System," Olympus' line of SLR cameras, he said.
Instead, Olympus will focus on other characteristics such as dynamic range, color reproduction, and a better ISO range for low-light shooting, he said.
Increasing the number of megapixels on cameras is an easy selling point for camera makers, in part because it's a simple concept for people to understand. Even though having more megapixels can enable larger prints and enlargement of subject matter through cropping, adding megapixels comes with some drawbacks.
For one thing, smaller pixels can mean more noisy speckles at the pixel level and can reduce the dynamic range, so brighter areas wash out and darker areas become swaths of black. For another, images take more room on memory cards, hard drives, and Web servers, and cameras need more powerful image processors to handle them. And yesteryear's cameras already had plenty of pixels for making 8x10-inch prints, a size few people exceed.
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The SensorKlear Loupe magnifies and illuminates a digital SLR's sensor, and a window on the side lets it be cleaned.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)LAS VEGAS--Camera cleaning accessory maker LensPen announced a new product to help remove dust, hairs, specks, and other detritus that sticks to digital SLR sensors.
The $59.95 SensorKlear Loupe, announced here at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show, is a magnifying glass that attaches to a camera's lens mount. Its four battery-powered LEDs illuminate the sensor, and unlike rival products such as VisibleDust's Sensor Loupe, a gap in the side allows you to clean off the sensor.
Unsurprisingly, the company recommends use of LensPen SensorKlear II to actually clean off the schmutz. The pen and loupe together cost $69.95.
Newer SLRs are equipped with a small motor that can shake the sensor or its cover to help rid it of debris, but sensors still have problems with dust flecks even when combined with new coatings not as prone to attracting flecks in the first place. Larger specks, especially when shooting with narrow apertures, can produce dark blemishes on photos.
It looks like Canon and Nikon weren't blowing smoke when they said their high-end SLRs cameras will compete with medium-format digital cameras used almost exclusively by professionals.
Given the image quality advantages that SLRs with larger "full-frame" sensors have over mainstream and much less expensive models with smaller processors, one might have expected another quantum leap from costly high-end medium-format digital cameras with sensors twice the area of top-end SLRs. Not so, according to new DxOMark Sensor test results set for release Tuesday by French test and measurement firm DxO Labs.
In the digital era, Canon's top-end SLRs give medium-format cameras a run for their money. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: DxO Labs)The company tested image sensors from several medium-format cameras--the Mamiya ZD Back, Leaf Aptus 75S, Hasselblad H3DII 39, and Phase One P45+. These are the sorts of cameras used by fashion photographers and others who need lush tones, fine detail, and lots of megapixels to handle big photos such as magazine spreads.
But none outperformed the Nikon D3X SLR, whose score of 88 gives it the current top rank on DxO's sensor tests.
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Panasonic's DMC-G1
(Credit: Panasonic)Panasonic's $670 G1 and Olympus' $540 E-520 and $450 E-410--that show both the advantages and disadvantages of the Four Thirds standards the companies use.
The Four Thirds system governs image sensor sizes and the mounting mechanism for interchangeable lenses on the companies' SLR cameras, and the companies announced a new variation called Micro Four Thirds for smaller cameras that have SLRs' interchangeable lenses but not SLRs' "reflex" mirror, which directs light through an optical viewfinder before a shot is taken.
Four Thirds SLRs have a smaller sensor than lower-end SLRs from market leaders Nikon and Canon, which poses image quality challenges because there's less surface area to gather light. However, the sensor size is the same for Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds, which means that cameras using the latter have a much larger sensor than typical compact cameras have.
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The top four SLRs in DxO Labs' current rankings.
(Credit: DxO Labs)It's not a surprise that the Nikon D3X, the company's brand-new $8,000, 24.5-megapixel SLR, tops DxO Labs' sensor performance test. What is a surprise is the margin by which it leads its rivals from Canon and Sony.
When the French firm unveiled its DxOMark Sensor benchmark test last year, Nikon's D3 was the top scorer at 80.6, a composite number that represents various performance features. Very close on its heels were Nikon's D700 at 80.5, Canon's EOS-1Ds Mark III 80.3, and later Canon's 5D Mark II at 79 and Sony's Alpha A900 at 78.9.
All those cameras were close, but the D3X stands apart with a score of 88. The result shows how much ground Nikon has made up on Canon, which has dominated high-end digital SLR technology.
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The Canon 5D Mark II is the new fourth-place member of DxO Labs' test of image sensor scores.
(Credit: DxO Labs)One verdict is in on Canon's EOS 5D Mark II: its sensor ranks very high on DxO Labs' test of sensor performance.
The black-spot issue notwithstanding, Canon's new full-frame SLR came in at fourth place with a score of 79.0, bumping Sony's 78.9-scoring Alpha A900 down a peg but still trailing Canon's top-end EOS-1Ds Mark III at 80.3. Nikon's D700, the closest rival to the 5D Mark II, is a notch ahead at 80.5.
More relevant for the potential upgrade market, new Canon SLR's score is significantly better from that of its predecessor, the 5D, whose score is 70.9. On a pixel-by-pixel basis, the 12.8-megapixel 5D's sensor actually has a lower signal-to-noise ratio, but when measured over an entire 8x10 print, the 5D Mark II's higher 21.1-megapixel resolution wins on that measurement.
The DxOMark Sensor test measures how well a camera's sensor fares when it comes to dynamic range, color depth, and low-light performance. The test doesn't measure any number of other camera issues such as autofocus, value, or image processing. But it's still useful given DxO Labs' engineering rigor and the central role a sensor plays in the abilities of a camera.
Pixel-peepers have been devouring DxO's new statistics; the curious can try this link to a comparison of the 5D Mark II, Nikon D700, and Sony A900. However, it should be noted, DxO Labs considers that scores must be at least of 5 points apart to be significant.
There's been much discussion about whether the $2,700 5D Mark II performs better than the $6,500 1Ds Mark III, which has the same resolution. The DxOMark tests give the edge to the top-end model based on its better color and dynamic range--the ability to capture both bright and dark regions--but the 5D Mark II wins out in low-light performance. Digging deeper into the charts, though, the 5D Mark II fares better in dynamic range at higher ISOs.
The sensor on Canon's 5D Mark II fares significantly better than that on the 5D. (Click to enlarge.)
(Credit: DxO Labs)All these cameras perform better than the common herd by virtue of full-frame sensors measuring 36x24mm, the size of a full frame of 35mm film. Most digital SLRs have a smaller sensor that can't capture as much information overall, but those models are vastly more affordable.
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