We recently had the pleasure of meeting and photographing Mariana Garcia in her Downtown Eastside Studio for the cover of the British Columbia Edition of Canadian Immigrant Magazine April 2010 Issue. Mariana runs an arts studio where Women Artists in the Downtown Eastside can create their work and provides a venue to display and sell their artworks. Read the full article here.
I’m a photographer who does editorial and advertising work, as well as personal portraiture. I’m also a 3D or CG (Computer Generated) artist and Instructor. I was among the first to lead the charge from shooting film (using a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II) to digital (using a Kodak DCS-760) in editorial and advertising shoots as early as 2001, and remember (sometimes not so fondly) the challenge of managing 36mb 16-bit Tiff files when 256mb Compact Flash Cards were considered a reasonable size, when my single-core (multi-core was but a twinkle in many a geek’s eyes at the time) on-location Apple iBook had a total of 10gb Hard Drive space with 768mb of RAM, RAW work flow and Digital Asset Management were considered arcane arts, and having to tediously burn, back-up, and hand deliver sets of CDs to my clients after a shoot. Using Photoshelter’s Archive storage management and gallery/image delivery systems changes all that – not only making it easier to manage and secure thousands of image files online, but also providing a means to present and deliver work to clients professionally and conveniently.
This is a series of vignettes on how I use my Photoshelter Personal Archive today.
A Tale of Two Cities
Whenever I upload photos from a shoot with Canadian Immigrant magazine, the decisions on which images to use are made by editorial teams based both in Vancouver and Toronto. Using Photoshelter’s invite-only gallery feature, I can give private access to the images from the shoot, which not only facilitates the final shot selection by Editors across two cities, but also gives them instant access to the full resolution images that can be downloaded directly into lay-out.
Momoko’s sister and grandmother visited from Japan. On the last day of their visit, her sister surprised with a very special Kimono, for the purpose of shooting her Seijin-shiki (成人式) ceremony photos. They booked us for a shoot on a morning ferry from Victoria to Vancouver and we did the shoot on that very same afternoon. Since her sister and grandmother were to go home to Japan on the very next day, they were worried that they would not be able to see all the images from our photo session. We promised that we would show them all the images through an on-line gallery. We uploading the images and sent invites for the gallery shortly after, and the decisions on which prints to order where made both by family members in Japan and Vancouver.
I’m also a 3D Artist and Instructor, specializing in texturing, lighting, and rendering. At times, I get asked to make a presentation on various aspects of 3D production, and the classes that I teach. Sometimes, the presentations can be impromptu and the workstation that happens to be hooked up to the projector may not have the right software installed, or I may not have my flash drive with presentation data on hand. By keeping many of my rendered images in my Photoshelter Archive, I can quickly pull the images into a Gallery, and using the built-in gallery tools to sequence the slides, turn it into a professional presentation – with just about any workstation that has an internet connection and a Flash enabled browser.
…a mix of local and international talent that gives this city it’s unique flavor, and I want to play a part in promoting it. Because of the way Photoshelter’s core Archive to Gallery system is built, I can easily create mini-portfolios like the one I created for Make-up Artist Ayumi Komiyama, without having to create folders with duplicated data (which would be the case when creating web galleries from a program like Lightroom or Photoshop). Because the galleries can be e-mailed and embedded into blogs and web sites (by clicking on the e-mail or embed code links on the bottom of the navigation bar) – they can be like mini, self-contained portfolios that can be sent to whoever wants to see them. The Photoshelter – Graph Paper Press integration makes it efficient for me to publish artist profiles and interviews such as this one.
On one of the rare occasions that I could actually follow the updates on my Twitter stream in real-time, I read that one of the people I’m following, an Editor in a major Canadian Fashion magazine, wanted to have some sushi in Vancouver. The time it took me to pull some recent shots of Sushi (from one of my favorite Vancouver Restaurants) from my archive, organize them into a gallery, post it on my Photoshelter – Wordpress integrated blog, and send her the link on Twitter? Around 3 minutes (and a lot of that was due to my Internet connection bandwidth more than anything else). She said the food shots made her drool. I’d say that’s a good thing.
One of the things we’re proud of, is helping fellow immigrants coming into Vancouver find jobs through our photography. Working with Canadian Immigrant Magazine’s “Will you hire me?” section, we have had the pleasure of meeting and photographing highly qualified and talented people such as Cornelia Jansen from Germany and Roberto Fajardo from Spain, and sincerely hope they are doing well in their professional endeavors.
We are committed to providing the very best images to represent Immigrants and their businesses in the most professional manner possible.
Cornelia Jansen from Germany
Read Connie’s story in the full issue of Canadian Immigrant Vancouver Edition (November 2009) issue here.
Roberto Carlos Garcia Fajardo from Spain
Read Roberto’s story in the full issue of Canadian Immigrant Vancouver Edition (December 2009) issue here.
This is the Sashimi Tower, Crab Salad, Sashimi Salad, and Tiger Mayo, available at Kamei Royale on Burrard St.. One of the perks of being a food photographer is that you often get to eat what you shoot. I can sum up the experience in one word: Yummy.
Make-up and Hair by Ayumi Komiyama
Model Yuka Saito
Ayumi Komiyama is a Make-up & Hair Stylist whose work has been published in the covers of the Vancouver Sun Style Section, Reach Magazine, and Klip magazine. I asked her a few questions about her work, inspirations, and aspirations.
Q: What inspires you as a make-up and hair artist? Ayumi: I gain my inspirations from my 5 senses, which are what I see, smell, taste, hear and feel.
Q: What do you think about when doing make-up and hair? Ayumi: I think about what is the best for the client and strive to bring out the unique qualities of that person. Ultimately, I like to create something that is best for my clients. Also, I like to have different stories attached to different styles that I create.
Q: Please tell us your approach and experience in make-up and hair styling? Ayumi: I always have the fundamental ideas and basic skills in mind. I also like to keep in mind that nothing can be done without a practical approach and I like to utilize my observational skills to replicate work that has been done by others. From the replicated works, I like to add my own ideas, which may not have any significant relationship to the art itself, to make a whole new piece of art.
I obtained skills in the areas of hairstyling, makeup, nails and kitsuke at the hair dresser school in Tokyo. Then I worked at a hair salon and learned the basics in working in a professional environment. I also obtained socials skills, which I require to interact with my clients. I often seek for advice from my fellow staff members and my customers regarding any potential improvements I could make in any areas of my specialty. I am a person who values individual differences, and after working for a while, I was at a position to teach others. I always only teach the basic skills necessary to the new staff members and let them improve from there using their own unique techniques, since it’s no fun having the exact same stylist.
Q: What do you think is important for the Art of make-up and hair in the future? Ayumi: Currently, CG (Computer Graphics) is becoming big and I would like to work with this wonderful technology, however, I would also like to preserve the beauty of the Art itself in that I want everyone to appreciate the natural beauty of the art (No CG or other editing).
Photography by Tommy Zablan
Assisted by Eri Tashiro
Shot on location at Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver
It was an honor to photograph Sensei Alexei Goudkov for the Canadian Immigrant Magazine. The full article in the Canadian Immigrant magazine can be read here. You can also download the PDF Version of this issue here.
Sensei Alexei teaches the Kyokushin Kaikan (極真会館) style of Karate that means the ‘Society Of Ultimate Truth’, due to a heavier emphasis on full-contact sparring. I am familiar with this style, having studied Shotokan Karate in elementary school and immersed myself in the various differences and philosophies of the various fighting systems, and remember the stories about how the founder of the style, Mas Oyama, perfected his techniques by taking down charging bulls with various striking techniques.
I have to admit that I have a deep love for the Martial Arts, possibly even surpassing that which I feel for photography. Case in point is that Sensei Alexei is a Fourth Dan black belt (my sincerest apologies as I previously wrote Third Dan) in the Kyokushin Kaikan style, yet during the shoot, possessed that mixture of quiet confidence, courtesy, and humility that mark a martial arts practitioner. I’m sure it stems from a mixture of individual self-confidence, discipline, and possibly something a lot more practical;
A kick, like a photograph, is a singular, fluid expression that can contain so much technique, subtlety, and nuances, for something that looks relatively simple. It has emotional content. It has to connect. Unlike Photography though, you can’t talk, network, tweet, SEO, or otherwise irresponsibly enable someone into being a good Martial Artist. It takes practice, discipline, and eventually having to get into the ring to prove it. As for us, we like to get our kicks from being happy with our work…and aiming high.
From 5pm to 2am, I hear the screams of Olympic fans from outside from my window, along with what sounds like two or three different bands performing at street level. The sounds echo as they bounce from one building to another, creating a surreal blend of screams, fireworks explosions, cheers, horns, African drums, whistles, rave music, police sirens, the loud but unintelligible voice of an MC shouting emphatically, and many other unidentified sources, as the ebb and flow of echoes reach the upper floors of the surrounding buildings. It’s the Olympics here in Vancouver – and this is what it looks like.
On occasion, I just like to take a walk around the Downtown Vancouver area and shoot. The distance between Sunset Beach (the images in color), and Canada Place (the images in black-and-white) is about 2.5 km. It’s a nice and laid back walk – slowly reading the light, liking the smell of the sea, thinking about nothing and everything at the same time, setting up, and then taking the shot.
Hannibal Chew: I just do eyes. Just eyes…just genetic design…just eyes. You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy Batty: Chew, if only you could see what I’ve seen with your eyes!
- from the move Bladerunner (1982)
Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Bladerunner has been a favorite of mine for the longest time (along with Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell Series). Apparently, someone at Google feels the same way – the rogue Replicants in Bladerunner were Nexus Six models (Google’s phone is called Nexus One), and the femme fatale in the movie played by Sean Young is named Rachael, which is the same name of the Nexus UI used in the Sony Xperia X10. The operating system is called Android.
Having worked on creating virtual worlds and CG characters for the last 3 years, and appreciating just how fast technology moves forward – sometimes I wonder just how long it will take…
the advance group in any field, esp. in the visual, literary, or musical arts, whose works are characterized chiefly by unorthodox and experimental methods.
–adjective
2.
of or pertaining to the experimental treatment of artistic, musical, or literary material.
3.
belonging to the avant-garde: an avant-garde composer.
4.
unorthodox or daring; radical.
Camilla Vanegas exhibited her designs at the Avante-Garde Design Contest of Vancouver Fashion Week ( Winter 2009).
Last September, I had the good fortune of photographing Mr. Forte Gerardo for the cover of The Canadian Immigrant, Toronto Edition, October issue. For those that don’t know him, Mr. Forte Gerardo is a master ‘Trade Maker’, having been the former trade commissioner and head of post for the Philippines to Toronto and Central Canada, and entrepreneur running an established trading company. The full issue can be read here.
As for my trade, I create images. Having done primarily fashion and celebrity portraiture for most of my professional life, I’m used to having a full crew – complete with make-up and hair artists, wardrobe stylists, and models and am extremely proficient with all the editing, retouching, and post-processing that goes hand-in-hand with what’s considered a ‘modern photographic production’ (including some of the most intricate Adobe Photoshop techniques that involve layer masking, creative use of blending modes, warps and transformations, up to full 3D reconstruction and CG replacement – I’m also a 3D and Visual Effects artist, and teach Photoshop techniques). Sometimes though, I just love to do it old-school – just classical and honest portraiture, completely focusing on, and capturing the character of the person in front of the lens with no distractions. I find working this way extremely satisfying. These are some of the most honest photographs I have made – it’s all the-subject-as-they-are, light, and lens – nothing’s contrived. With the exception of the cover tear sheet above, the images you see below in this blog post, are literally straight out of my camera. Post processing zero – this is as honest as it gets.
Not that Mr. Forte Gerardo and his lovely wife, Salvacion, need any image editing help. They are genuinely wonderful people with characters that just exude positivity and an appreciation for knowledge and life. It was such an honor to be able to photograph them.
A lot can happen in a flash. In early 2009, through Vancouver Fashion Week, we were fortunate to meet and work with Vancouver fashion designer Porscia Yeganeh. This is the cover of the style section of Vancouver Sun for the Vancouver Fashion Week press release during March 2009. The next is the cover of Reach Magazine Special Edition.
This is our image of model Alicia Crudo wearing a Porcia design in The Vancouver Sun.
This is the portrait we took of Porscia Yeganeh on the cover of Reach Magazine.
Here is the gallery of Porcia’s designs earlier this year.
Immigrants are strong people. Last August, I was honored to meet and photograph human-rights activist Bushra Jamil for the cover of Canadian Immigrant Magazine. You can find the whole issue here.
Being an immigrant myself, I love this publication because it fearlessly talks about many of the issues that many immigrants have to face everyday. I am proud to be doing work for them.
Photography by Tommy Zablan
Styling Millet Arzaga
Model Roisin
Shot on Assignment for PULP Magazine in a spread entitled “Pulp Skin” sponsored by Jag Jeans
Much has already been written about this camera – including in-depth reviews by Dpreview, Imaging Resource, Camera Labs, not to mention a long list of compiled resources that can be found at Planet 5D. These reviewers have access to sophisticated testing software such as Imatest, DXOmark data, and (have the enormous patience to) shoot real-life test subjects and resolution test charts in controlled and consistent conditions. If you’re looking for raw resolution, dynamic range, and high ISO noise data, or head-to-head comparisons on how this camera performs against it’s competitors, I would strongly recommend these reviews. This review (my notes) is from the point of view of a working photographer (creating still photographs in the more ‘traditional’ sense) , CG and VFX artist (I need to shoot HDR images), and cinematographer (I need to shoot RAW footage).
STILL CAMERA
As a still camera, it seems Canon made it specifically for my style of shooting – I’d still be shooting my work using my medium format Mamiya RZ-67 Pro II, if the editorial and commercial photography industry hadn’t gone digital. Being used to manually controlling virtually every aspect of the camera I’m using, how many shots a camera can take in one second isn’t much of an issue for me (it’s 3.9 fps is significantly slower than the Nikon D700s 5 fps or 8fps with battery grip), neither is cutting edge auto-focus performance (it’s 9 point AF array is at least a generation behind Nikon’s current 51 point AF system, albeit I find those 9 points perfectly adequate for my needs).
What makes the Canon 5D Mark II groundbreaking, is it’s sensor. It’s full frame (24×36mm) sensor with 21.1 effective mega-pixels delivers among the highest levels of image quality and resolution possible. Shooting at ISO 100, the resulting images have a level of detail, smoothness of tonality, and lack of noise at low ISO that makes the resulting images have that ‘creamy’, high-level of detail, lack-of-grain look normally associated with medium format (6×7 in particular). Technical image quality is, after all, the reason photographers go through the trouble of shooting medium format in the first place. However, there are a few things I’d suggest to Canon to improve it (hopefully through a firmware update when possible);
5 or 7 shot auto-bracketing while expanding the range to _+3 . A 3 shot bracket over the range of 5 stops is a bit limited when creating HDR (High Dynamic Range) images. Of course, it is possible to bracket manually, but since ideally the camera has zero movement between exposures, the more times I need to handle the camera to change settings, the greater the chance of movement. Which brings me to the next feature I would like to see.
With one press of a button, I need to activate the 2 second self timer, lock-up the mirror, and take 7 bracketed exposures (with the 7 exposures taken while the mirror is up).
* Note: HDR (High Dynamic Range) images are essential and functional elements in the visual effects and CG world, and they have been around long before they became popular with the tone-mapped and highly saturated images now associated with HDR.
Add a Luminosity Meter – A feature I miss from the Kodak Professional digital capture devices was called the ‘Luminometer’ – essentially it allows you to move a cursor around while reviewing the shot and the camera displays the specific RGB pixel values of the area under the cursor and where it falls in the histogram – essentially a super precise spot meter.
Eyepiece shutter – since most landscape and HDR photographers will have this camera on a tripod and trigger it remotely, or use the aforementioned 2 second-timer plus mirror lock-up method (which necessitates having the camera away from the body), it would make sense to have a convenient eyepiece shutter that can be flicked open and closed, as opposed to having to remove the rubber eyepiece and using the plastic eyepiece ‘blocker’ on the strap. This really isn’t a big deal and I’m probably just accustomed to the Nikon F5 eyepiece shutter on my Kodak DCS 760.
MOVIE CAMERA
Working on VFX projects, I’ve used Panasonic’s classic AG-DVX100B, as well as the most controllable moving camera systems that exist – the virtual cameras built into Softimage XSI and Autodesk Maya. Because the Canon 5D Mark II captures video on its full frame 24×36mm sensor, as well as allow the use of a wide range of EOS mount lenses, in some ways, it comes closer the expensive full frame film movie cameras than even some of the most advanced and recent video systems that a film maker on a budget would consider – such as the Panasonic HVX200 or Canon’s own XL-H1 (which don’t have ‘full frame’ 24×36mm sensors). Currently however, the Canon 5D Mark II’s video implementation is rudimentary and has a lot of room for improvement.
There are reasons why even relatively small film or video crews are necessarily larger than a photography crew – and becoming the next Akira Kurosawa or Vittorio Storaro will require much, much more than simply a still camera with a ‘movie’ mode. Even at it’s most basic, focusing and zooming while trying to dolly and pan/tilt the camera gracefully (which is an art in itself) is not easy. That being said, I can see the possible directions the next generations of the cameras are heading, and it can get really interesting for indie film (or small scale) makers. Hopefully Canon’s engineers and product development team realize what a wonderful opportunity it would be to completely think out of the box of traditional solutions – and think in terms of the budgetary and crew constraints future budding cinematographers will face – when developing future features for video in EOS DSLRs. A cinematographer has to…
Expose Properly
This camera needs the option for independent movie and still exposures. While shooting a movie, and a still shot is taken, the ’still’ shot should respect the manual exposure settings (this can be built into a custom function).
Of course, full and independent manual exposure control of video (in either dark or bright situations) and stills would be ideal. One approach could be an internal variable Neutral density filter that can be used to reduce light from 0 to 5 stops while shooting video mode. Either that or have an ‘outdoor’ video me that is effectively ISO 12 or 6. (Update: With Canon’s release of firmware 1.1.0, manual exposure control for video is now possible. What I would like to see next is the ability to set video and still exposures independently, such as having the video in Aperture Priority AE for video using ambient light, and shifting to the manually set exposure settings for stills using strobes.)
Pull Focus
Programmable focus with EOS utility, lock focus at 2 or more distances and allow racking the focus from one position to another over a set period of time (ideally with an ease-in and ease-out curve). This may not replace a skilled manual focus puller, but it can add a level of automation and consistency in small photography/cinematography productions.
Zoom In and Out
Power zoom in and out – controllable remotely. This is probably beyond the capability of the current EOS mount (or at least the current lenses). There is a possibility that Canon might be able to create lenses that can electronically zoom in and out (as they do with the ultra-sonic motor driven AF) in the future and incorporate that functionality within the current EOS mount hardware.
Change Frame Rates
24p video mode. While I don’t consider it to be absolutely critical, it would be nice to have. Also, allow 120 fps video capture (show us how efficient the .H264 codec is and what the DIGIC processor is capable of) for dramatic slow motion.
Control The Camera And View Footage Remotely
Allow all of the above to be controlled wirelessly from a workstation with the video being written via WIFI on the workstation’s hard drive and in-camera CF card simultaneously. This way the shot can be reviewed and reprogrammed from the workstation while the camera itself is on a dolly or crane.
This is an excerpt from my Digital Workflow course material;
The goal of an effective digital photography workflow is to be able to organize, secure, display, and deliver work to a client (or prospective clients). Ideally, it should be an extension of your mind and the way you work – facilitating a smooth and efficient flow of ideas from capture to output. Particularly in this multiple publishing platform, multimedia digital age, an essential component of managing image libraries today is associating them with the right keywords and captions so that they can be found both on- and off-line.
The beauty of doing this with a program such as Adobe Lightroom 2 is that an entire batch of images can be associated with keywords and other appropriate information while the images are being imported from the memory card into a hard drive in one step. I also set it up so that the images, along with all the keywords and other metadata, is imported into one external drive, and backed up into a separate second external drive at the same time, while Lightroom simultaneously builds up a database containing the keywords associated with each image as well as the location where each image is stored. This insures, that even after several busy months of shooting, I can easily find images that were done several months (or even years) before by doing a keyword search.
Once all the images have been associated with the right keywords, titles, and captions off-line, these images (and all associated metadata) can be uploaded to my Photoshelter Archive, which can read and retain all the data associated with the images. Among other things. Photoshelter’s service also includes many features that would appeal to professionals, such as built-in e-commerce tools, rights-managed licensing models based on fotoquote (a standardized software for calculating usage rates in North America), the ability to store and deliver high-resolution output files (as well as RAW files), automatically putting a watermark on displayed images (while being able to deliver un-watermarked high-resolution originals to clients), and being able to embed images and flash galleries into a blog or web page link point directly to the originals. This makes for very efficient digital asset management since all the keywords and captions only have to be done once and the images that are displayed on-line flow from one source.
Think of an Archive like a reservoir, which you can stream out into various media. Once in my Archive, if I wanted an image on my blog, such as the illustration you see above, I don’t have to create or upload a duplicate copy of it, since what you see is an embedded image that references directly to the original in my archive. As an exercise, try;
Clicking on the illustration above, in which case it will take you to the original image in my Archive.
Go to the Search Images box at the bottom of this page and type ‘Workflow’, which is on of the keywords I associated with the above illustration.
Click on the white triangle at the bottom right of the above illustration, copy the embed code, and embed the same illustration into your blog. This is exactly the same way the image was embedded into this post (or the same method used in embedding Youtube videos into blogs and webpages).
Images can be presented or delivered to the clients in the same way, or ’streamed out’ into my Blog/Website, Facebook account, or any of the other on-line publishing and networking tool.
Cedalion standing on the shoulders of Orion from Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun by Nicolas Poussin, 1658, Oil on canvas
Introduction
The challenge of teaching the History of Photography is that there is an incredibly broad spectrum of material to go through, so many different kinds of photography that are practically worlds onto themselves, that I can easily spend an entire semester teaching the history of any one them, which is much more than the two 3 hour sessions I have allocated. The last session was a 16,000 year walk back in time from looking at cave paintings to the contemporary issues facing image makers today. This session is the second class of History of Photography, dealing with The Digital Revolution – and I find it only fitting that I deliver the course material, in part, through my blog. (I briefly considered Live Tweeting it on my Twitter account, but then that would compromise the value of your education (-;
Review Of Part I
There is a Latin saying: nanos gigantum humeris insidentes. It means “Though we may be dwarves compared to giants that preceded us, if we stand on their shoulders, maybe we can see a little further.” There can be no doubt that advances in technology have allowed us to see much further, much clearer, and much faster than possible in any other time in history – and this is all the more true with advances in digital technology. There is no ther time in history where we can alter the look of an image so easily with just a few clicks of a mouse. The real question is, “So what?”. The highest resolution sensors, the sharpest lenses, the most advanced image editing operations really don’t amount to much unless the resulting image itself has something to say. So in the last class, we looked at the history and motivations for image making, photographers whose images changed perceptions on both the medium of photography and their subjects, how the technology evolved, as well as touched upon contemporary issues that makes us ask the questions ‘Why?’ and ‘What’s the point?’, and hopefully help us ask our questions into finding meaning in our own photography and the images that we see. For a brief recap of the last class;
And finally finding a conceptual framework from which to find meaning from looking at images, either our own or those made by other artists, by looking at the point of view of the creator/artist, the viewer, and the technology used to create it.
Digital Technology Timeline
Even just 60 years ago, the world was a drastically different place. The next section is a time line which shows the evolution of digital technology that has radically reshaped the contexts in which we conceptualize, create, and view images today.
1947
The Transistor is developed by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Industries, winning them a Nobel Prize and initiates a revolution in the Electronics Insdustry
1951
The VTR (Video Tape Recorder) is developed at Bing Crosby Laboratories. It uses electrical impulses to record images on magnetic tape.
1956
Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories experiment with the creation of ‘Silicon Crystals, giving rise to ‘Silicon Valley’
1957
Russel A Kirsch at the National Bureau Of Standards creates the first scanned photo (one of his son) with an early mechanical drum scanner.
1959
The Integrated Circuit is invented by Fairchild Semiconductor manager Bob Noyce, who later co-founds Intel corporation.
1964
Tha Mariner spacecraft transmits electronic images of Mars back to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
1969
Wilard Boyle and George Smith at Bell Laboratories design the charged-coupled Device (CCD), which until today is used in digital cameras to record images electronically.
1972
First patent for Filmless Electronic Camera filed by Texas Instruments
1980
Sony Corporation is the first to commercially market color video cameras with a solid state image sensor, the CCD.
1981
Sony released the first Sony Mavica electronic still camera, the camera which was the first commercial electronic camera. Images were recorded onto a mini disc and then put into a video reader that was connected to a television monitor or color printer. Not really considered to be a true still camera, it was a video camera that took video freeze-frames. Instructor’s Note: With the introduction of the Nikon D90 and Canon 5D Mark II in 2008, with the ‘ground-breaking feature’ being the ability to shoot video, most would be surprised that the first digital camera was a video camera adapted to shoot stills.
1984
Canon conducted a trial of a professional color still video camera (the RC-701) and an analog transmitter at the Los Angeles Olympics. The images were transmitted back to Japan via phone lines in less than 30 minutes and were then printed in the Yomiuri Shimbun. The color electronic still video camera with a 400K pixel CCD used in the tests was the first practical application for public use.
1984
Apple Macintosh personal computer with a speedy graphical interface and a mouse
1986
Canon was the first to market a still video camera, the professional model RC-701. The RC-701 was aimed mainly at the press market. It had four dedicated interchangeable lenses and also offered an adapter for 35mm lenses. Price of the RC (RC stood for Realtime Camera) with an 11-66mm f/1.2 lens was about $3,000. The complete RC-701 system consisting of the camera, a player/recorder, a printer, a laminator, and a unit for phone transmission cost about $27,000. The CCD was 6.6mm x 8.8mm with 780 pixels horizontally. This was equal to about 300 horizontal and 320 vertical lines on a TV monitor.
1986
NIKON SVC (Still Video Camera) PROTOTYPE – This camera was built around a 2/3-inch CCD of 300 000 pixels (.3 Megapixel Camera). It allowed the analog recording of 25 or 50 images on a small floppy disk of two inches, the same one as used by the Canon Ion to be marketed in 1988. The body of the SVC was designed similar to that of the Nikon F801 film camera which was marketed two years later, Two lenses were intended for the SVC, a 6mm f/1.6 and a 10 to 40mm f/1.4. The Nikon SVC was shown at Photokina ‘85.
1988
Joint Photographic Experts Group develops and implements standards for an image compression format (JPEG)
1990
Photoshop 1.0 (Mac Version) (Instructor’s Note: which is why, along with an integrated monitor that had better QA and more consistent output, the Mac became the standard tool for desktop publishing)
Kodak Photo CD
1991
Kodak DCS 100 (1.3 megapixel $20,000)
1992
Kodak DCS 200 (includes a hard drive)
1993
Adobe Photoshop for Windows
1994
Compact Flash is introduced by Sandisk
1996
The Vancouver Sun and British Columbia Province become the first major newspapers in North America to convert from film to all digital photo capture, using Nikon N90 based 1.3 megapixel NC 2000 cameras developed by Kodak and the Associated Press.
1999
Nikon D1 – first digital camera to be designed and manufactured by a single camera company (2.7 megapixel)
2001-2003
The world transitions into digital image capture. I sell my Mamiya RZ-67 Pro II camera and purchase a Kodak DCS-760, the first true 6 megapixel camera that could be bought for less than $10,000 USD. It was this generation of camera, along with Nikon’s D1X that really drove the transition to digital capture in mainstream editorial and advertising applications. Prior to this time, asides from press images transmitted by wire, most editorial and advertising photography was photographed with either medium-format or large-format film. By first-hand experience, what really drove the sales and R&D of early digital cameras was the Advertising Industry, where advertising photographers could justify purchasing $25,000 digital backs that, at the time, had a maximum resolution of 6 or 12 megapixels.
The Curious Case Of Moving Pyramids (And Other Photoshop Disasters)
While as far back as in 1858, with Oscar Rejlander’s ‘The Two Ways Of Life’, along with the Pictorialist movement, it was shown that photographs could clearly be manipulated. However, this took a lot of work (or at least a dedicated darkroom). For the average person, and for most of the 19th century, photography was considered to be ‘an accurate depiction of truth’. The widespread use of digital cameras and image manipulation software changed this. Here are some points for discussion;
Even more recent is the yet unresolved case where an Italian photographer claims Annie Leibovitz used his images as backgrounds for a high-profile calendar project. The issue here, of course, is not one of manipulation (it’s obvious), but rather one that is arguably as compelling – copyright.
