Fujifilm has announced the UK release of a new chemistry, EnviroNeg Developer 60 AC, specifically designed for labs who have seen levels of film processing drop. Normal developers need a high enough throughput of films to remain correctly balanced, with replenishment, over cycles of days or weeks between cleanout and refill operations. The fewer films a lab gets, the worse their development quality control is likely to become.
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In an interview with dPhotoexpert at photokina, Cologne, Hasselblad CEO Christian Poulsen revealed that the company is to cut the recommended prices of its H3DII digital medium-format SLR bodies by up to €10,000.

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August 26th, London, UK: report from Richard Kilpatrick

Today saw the launch of the newest member of Nikon’s growing range of successful DSLRs, with an ongoing increase in market share clearly resulting in growing confidence for the camera brand. Prefacing the D90′s announcement, Nikon revealed that 50% of professional photographers at the Olympics were using Nikon, and their market share reached 44% of the pro DSLR market in February (this is despite the range still having a 12Mp upper limit).

D90 at launch

Having introduced the D3, D300, D60 and D700 within the last 12 months, the D80 was really looking like the last man standing; today’s announcement shows that the mid-range “enthusiast” market is going to be exceptionally well catered for with a ground-breaking new model, and leaves me as a recent D3 adopter wondering if it’s possible to justify a spare F-mount body.

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MANY photographers habitually use layers from everything. I don’t! In fact, I try to minimise my time spent on post-processing shots for stock library sale, and work very quickly. If it needs complex setup or demands working using layers to be able to go back and change things, I’ve probably already wasted too much time.
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Portrait Professional, the downloadable software from Anthropics which resculpts face shapes while smoothing out skin imperfections and signs of ageing, has been updated to Version 8 and launched for Apple Mac as well as Windows PC. We tested it briefly as a first look in our magazine Master Photo>Digital.
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IKEA has a very low cost optical focusing theatre-style spotlight which can be used, or adapted, for studio work. It comes complete with an adjustable iris diaphragm unit, a four-blade square aperture adjustable unit, a gobo/filter holder, a set of stainless steel cut gobos and a set of coloured glass filters. The focusing lens is not sealed against light leaks but open to allow heat to dissipate, however if this unit was adapted to hold a flash light source in place of its halogen bulb, you could also make a tube to seal off the light leaks from the optical assembly.

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CANON may get some stick from their own users who reckon Live View is not much use, and Sony’s decision not to put it in the A700 may well be defended on the same basis. How wrong that is. Here’s one (plus another two) good reasons why Live View is your best friend in the studio. Read the rest of this entry »

David Kilpatrick explains why controlled conditions are important and shows an example of a ring-around chart – something to keep pinned on your darkroom wall, made from your own test negatives or slides. This article was first published in 1996, and the principles if not the identical corrections can be applied to making inkjet tests from digital images. It is still most relevant to darkroom colour printing, for those who want to keep this art alive.

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Dean Collins invented ‘cromazones’ – predictable, variable studio backdrop color from a gel-filtered background light. David Kilpatrick sets out to show how two low-cost strobes switchable down to quarter power give all the control you need. Read the rest of this entry »