Special Report:
PhotoPlus Expo East

by Keith Krebs
Editor, POV Image Service

OK, so the big gift-giving holidays are approaching like a runaway Santa float in the Macy's parade and you have a bad case of "digital addiction," or, maybe, you just have a digital iteration of that old "photo monkey" on your back? Perhaps you are even a professional making the transition to digital for producing the "eye-candy" you distribute... So, where to get a last minute "fix" of the latest and greatest in digital just before the incumbent beginning of the holiday season? You head to that same little ville that is home to the Macy's parade, New York City, for the annual Photo Plus Expo East! You join the throng of similar addicts (with 30,000 pre-registered) and try to satisfy that craving. With major new product pushes by vendors as diverse as Canon, Epson, Olympus, Foveon, Kodak, and accessory marketers like Hakuba, you should be able to momentarily satiate your hunger. Enough about the "where" and "why," I'm sure you, dear reader, are more interested in the "whats" of the show, the products these vendors brought to the big pre-holiday season photographic industry dog and pony show. Notice I said "new product pushes," and not "new product introductions".. That choice is purposeful. The actual spate of new product introductions was extremely small. For that purpose, PhotoKina, PMA, and ComDex generally are the "biggees" for digital imaging. I would put PhotoPlusExpo on the level of, say a step below PC Expo or, perhaps on a par with MacWorld Expo for level of product intros. As for attendance this year, the show was quieter than in the past and certainly much quieter than the other shows I just mentioned. In some sense, that may seem counter- intuitive - I mean, "why with all the change in the photo biz, with digital finally coming fully into its own, would the show be, of all things, quieter than in other times?" My answer is the following... Professional photographers are, by-and-large, a conservative bunch when it comes to making major business changes. I have repeatedly seen vicious tumult occasioned in professional fora by simply the mention of the validity of digital as a medium for "real photographic" work. The killer product, the equivalent of the introduction of 35mm cameras to the broader market during the early 60's, just isn't a reality yet. Until that happens, until such a product exists, the professionals are taking a "go slow" approach as the industry teeters like a car hanging on the edge of a cliff in a suspense thriller, we know the car has to go over the edge for the plot to develop, but when? One answer might be starting to emerge from Kodak in the form of a new 16 megapixel medium format back - the Kodak DCS Pro Back. They showed two 40" by 40" prints along with the non-working prototype at the show, one in a fashion style and in the second a family portrait style. The imagery of the former was at a larger than 1 to 1 final print ratio, i.e. the print was bigger than life size. Both prints blew me away in quality, while the Kodak red in the background of the "fashion shot" was a dead giveaway trademark. See what I mean about BIG PRINTS being all the rage? The back will be used on Hasselblad and Mamiya's digital bodies. Proving what I meant about how the industry hangs on the precipice, Kodak also presented its new KODAK PROFESSIONAL RFS 3600 film scanner with a styling that reminds one of something Gene Rodenberry would place on the bridge of some interstellar spacecraft. As noted elsewhere, the Kodak has separate feeds for slides/mounted negatives or filmstrips/negative strips. On the plus side, it has a 3600 dpi optical resolution, just short of that provided by Polaroid's and Microtek's 4000 dpi offerings, but with a greater dynamic range. This means that if you have negatives or slides that tend to be a bit denser, this scanner should do better with them. It also has built in ICC profiles, something the Polaroid conspicuously lacks, do you hear me Polaroid? This allows you to easily maintain color consistency throughout one's digital workflow. The scanner will batch scan 3-36 images from filmstrip, that's a nice thing, right? Toss in a whole roll of 35mm images and come back later. The problem I see is the implementation. Roll film has a tendency to curl up. The 3600 does not use a filmstrip/negative adapter. That may streamline working with it, but, it makes it more likely that the film will be scratched or damaged as it unrolls and/or drags across your workbench/desk. After many years of professional imaging, I well know that dust and scratches are a bane to be avoided at any cost. The design of the 3600 makes me nervous in that regard. The only answer for that the Kodak reps on hand had was to maintain a "clean" workspace.. With this design, I might recommend scanning in the clean room of your preferred integrated circuit manufacturer. If I end up drive testing one of these babies for an extended review, and they prove me wrong, I will update you appropriately. Next into the high-end of the digital maelstrom is Foveon, these guys are always introducing new chips. Their new Foveon II digital studio camera is another nice medium-format equivalent digital offering. It is less permanently mated to the accompanying laptop then earlier offerings from them but it is still only a studio solution. They also showed an 8 foot high B&W image produced with their own 16 megapixel array. It looked great, but the Foveon reps said we shouldn't expect a product based upon it for 12-18 months. They indicated we should see scanner implementations of the chip first. Reality is, at the consumer level, we aren't going to see much of this chip for a long time. It seems big images were all the rage at this show. Not to be outdone, Nikon, displayed a 65 foot by 43 foot image of a Tyrannosauraus Rex taken at Universal Studio's Jurassic Park with a CoolPix 990. They hung the print from the side of Manhattan's Crowne Plaza Hotel, looking down onto Times Square.. Nikon calls it the "World's Largest Single Image Taken With a Digital Camera." I would call it the biggest print made from a digital camera original. We all know it isn't the largest in terms of original pixels. And frankly, much as I enjoy a T-Rex image as much as the next five year old, I fail to see the print actually proving much except that one can make a 65 foot print and hang it from the side of a skyscraper, which, when viewed from many stories below, looks good to the observer. Heck, I can make a quick 44" print that looks great at 6 feet away. It's just a street level demonstration of basic optics, nothing too exciting in that. I should note that I, myself am I confirmed Nikophile, using all Nikon 35mm gear in my own professional work (excluding some Tamron, Tokina, and Sigma lenses) - I would shudder to hear the reviews my Canon addict friends might produce.Nikon had a sample camera up and producing 8 x 10 prints of attendees with an US Olympic Greco-Roman medalist from Sydney. Let's say that didn't prove anything to me. Let's be honest, if you can't get a good eye quality 8 x 10 from a 2.7 Megapixel sensor, it's time to hang up the spurs.. Speaking of producing prints, EPSON USA had nothing really new. Sure, they showed gorgeous color prints from the 2000P. But they still didn't have a real solution for the "orange shift" issue in the x7x printers. Even discussing the issue created a chill reminiscent of those Mafia movies where some guy hangs from a meat hook in a freezer. If you are in the market for a large format archival quality printer in the multi-thousand dollar range, the 9500 is a beautiful printer and really, for once, gives the feel of a truly solid product. I would recommend giving it a serious look. Also speaking of printing, I finally got a chance to look at some of the Luminos digital printing media up close and personal. They had some truly gorgeous prints produced on a variety of material, my personal favorites being the Charcoal R, Flaxen Weave, and Canvas Cloth. The latter is an actual treated Canvas Cloth that one can print upon. I have used a similar product from them designed for traditional B&W photographic printing to produce some of my most beautiful hand colored imagery. However, I was dismayed at the lack of market savvy demonstrated by their senior on- site executive. Luminos has always produced some beautiful niche market photo products and I always wondered why their penetration into the US marketplace was so poor. At this show, I finally got part of the answer -- while the display was beautiful and the staff knew their stuff, they seemed wholly disinterested in promoting or explaining their product line. They were quite interested in speaking and selling directly to retailers who already carried their product line, but if you weren't in that category forget about any individualized attention. And I was there with a large "PRESS" credential affixed prominently to my show badge. Their total lack of awareness was disheartening, I patiently waited as products were described to a retailer by Robert, the Luminos senior on-site executive, only to find that when I approached Robert with some questions following his business with the retailer, that I was passed off as if I wasn't worth his valuable time. If he doesn't understand the value of good press, I feel sorry for him. If he didn't note that I was "PRESS," perhaps a large neon sign affixed to my hat might help next time. Suffice it to say, I won't be using any Luminos products in the near term. Not when I can't even get info on them at a trade show. And before Luminos responds, I should note, that this was midday and the area around their booth was NOT crowded, there was no real excuse for the inattention. Well, I mentioned Nikon. Now, I will speak about their main competitor in the 35mm market, Canon. I will say the Canon D30 is impressive and blows away the Nikon D1. I won't go into the specs on the D30 here, suffice it to say it is the first reasonably priced (for a pro) digital body that I would recommend if an individual shooter needs to consider the transition to shooting digital now. It can be used, in many circumstances, to wholly bypass film. That doesn't mean it will do everything, but for day-to-day work, it comes pretty close to fulfilling most of the pre-requisites of a pro imaging solution. The only comparable offerings for Nikon mount lenses are the significantly more expensive, and less impressive, Kodak DCS 620 and DCS 620x bodies. Unfortunately, to truly test out a D30 would require time and a requisite bevy of Canon mount lenses, something I don't have. The potential for putting together an extended review, by working with a local distributor is being looked at though.. For those, like I, wedded to their Nikon F-mount lenses, Horseman has an interesting option called the DigiFlex body. . The Digiflex is a body in the strictest sense, no back and no lenses. Why is that interesting at all? Here's why - it takes traditional Nikon F-Mount lenses (albeit one must focus manually) and one can use a choice of many digital medium format backs, upgrading those as technology changes. For a studio or even landscape photog making the transition to digital, who has a host of Nikon lenses, this could be THE "bridge" product. The most interesting product offerings were from Olympus America. The new Camedia E-10, a profesional quality 4-megapixel SLR is finally shipping. Check out Steve's E-10 review that was just posted. To me, as a sports shooter, even more interesting than the E-10 is the forthcoming E-100RS which I will be doing an extensive review of for this site. In the interim, until we get hold of a production model, here's the straight scoop based on the pre-production model I played with. Although the camera only captures images in the 1.5+ megapixel range, it does so at an amazing rate. It will shoot at up to 15 fps and give you ten of those images at Super High Quality, or 20 at High Quality before the buffer fills. It has built in Image Stabilization and allows you to average up to 8 individual spot readings to set the exposure value. Ansel Adams would be proud! You can also shoot QuickTime imagery in full VGA 640x480 format with the E100RS , reduce image size if you only need B&W by shooting in B&W mode, and download imagery via a USB 1.2 interface directly to your PC or Mac by treating the camera as a standard storage device, just like a disk! If that is not enough, it has a 35-380mm f2.8-3.5 equivalent optical zoom lens and can pre-capture imagery as you depress the shutter. "Pre-capture," huh? What happens is the camera shoots a user pre-set number of images BEFORE the shutter is fully depressed. In general shooting this may seem superfluous but in sports photography it has huge potential. I cannot tell you how many times I have missed the perfect shot of a slam dunk in basketball, either catching the image too early or too late. Similarly, one could use much the same capability if one is shooting a batter in a baseball game. How better to get that perfect shot of the ball leaving the bat? The big question for sports shooting is how well the autofocus performs in the real world, for that look for my future review. Lastly as regards these two cameras, Olympus makes significant noise about the fact that their optics are designed for digital from the ground up, unlike the installed base of APO lenses one might find with Canons, Nikons, etc. That means their optics are designed to focus the light rays exiting the lens so they are parallel as they travel to the sensors, as opposed to simply converging at the film plane. Supposedly, given the physical depth of sensor wells, this results in more accurate sensing. However, the proof is in the real world performance of these products, so I would wait to see my in-depth review before you make a decision. I will say one thing though: the ergonomics of both the E10 and the E100RS are among the best I have seen on ANY camera digital or traditional. The other Olympus products worthy of note are their still new P400 8x10 dye sublimation printer and their new C-211 Zoom Digital Printing Camera. Although one is limited to glossy dye-sub output with the P400, at $900 street, and producing imagery just under 8x10 in under two minutes this is a great digital output option. As for the C-211, it outputs prints on Polaroid instant print film. This camera, in addition to its obvious documentary use, is THE new tool for anyone interested in Polaroid instant print manipulations. Finally, as any attendee of trade shows knows, how one carries all the goodies away is an important consideration. Similarly, us photogs need to know how to cart all our accessories around. Hakuba, a maker of tripods, carrying bags, cases, and other accessories is making a huge transition. Traditionally, these products were only offered in dour colors, matte silver, black, brown, grey, etc. But the coming of digital and the popularity of the iMac styling forms has brought a new sensitivity to color and trend to these products. Where the traditional photographer has wanted to blend into the woodwork, "generation Y" is about being seen and showing who you are. Accordingly, Hakuba is introducing a slew of new products in the near term in bold new color combinations and with feature sets specifically targeting the digital market segment. Overall, if this show was any indication, I would say the industry as a whole is waiting with bated breath, as are individual photographers, to see when and how this whole transition to digital shakes out. So, what should one do? I will be attending more trade shows and reviewing new products apace to give my own take on the answers. Beyond that, I would suggest going to trade shows yourself, visiting your local dealers, and above all, keeping up with the news here at Steve's DigiCams to know the latest and greatest from digital-land, while being certain of tough, even-handed, honest, and complete reviews! -Keith

Also check out

Imaging-Resource's
PhotoPlus Expo 2000 Report

Go to
Main Menu

Content copyright © 2000 Steve's Digicam Online, Inc.