New York Instagram Photos

I recently went to New York City on business and here are a few images I took with my phone. Looking at these made me realize how far cameras and cell phones have come.

The John Dory Oyster Bar

Pendleton Collection

The Flatiron Building

Library Lion

New York Public Library

Grand Central Terminal

New York Night

Shocker! Sigma Announces f/1.8 Zoom!

Sigma surprised pretty much everyone by announcing a new zoom lens for APS-C digital cameras, the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM lens. This represents a new milestone in zoom lenses, as no one has ever made a constant aperture f/1.8 zoom lens for this format before now. Professional-class zoom lenses have topped out at f/2.8 for most manufacturers until this introduction, although Olympus made some high quality zoom lenses for the standard 4/3s format with an aperture of f/2. With the new Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8, the range is somewhat limited (in 35mm equivalent terms, this is a 27-52.5mm lens), but this lens will reach new heights in limited depth of field for a zoom lens and could conceivably replace several lens in a photographer's bag. This is also part of Sigma's "A" series lenses, which stands for "Art," so we can expect smooth bokeh and high resolution. The lens features 17 elements in 12 groups, a fairly complicated design, with 4 glass-molded aspherical elements and 5 Special Low Dispersion (SLD) elements. Lately, Sigma has been on a roll and this is a lens to look forward to. Kudos to Sigma! Makes you wonder what else they have up their sleeves.

Last of its Kind Print Sale at the Online Photographer!

"Ctein"

[Update: The dye transfer sale sold out after a few hours. And that, as they say, is that!]

The blog known as The Online Photographer will be hosting another print sale and this time, it will be something different and special. Photographer and writer Ctein will be selling off the last of his dye transfer prints and The Online Photographer is hosting this event. Ctein (pronounced "kuh-tine") is a prolific writer, having written more than 2000 articles on photography over the years for magazines like Darkroom Techniques and two books, Post Exposure and Digital Photo Restoration, and he is one of the last and best photographers and printmakers to work in the demanding and now mostly lost art of the dye transfer print.

A dye transfer print was made by taking a transparency or color negative and creating three negatives that separated out the colors into cyan, magenta, and yellow for printing, and then soaking each of the negatives in dye (cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes) and separately pressing each of the dye-soaked negatives onto the print in perfect register to make a full color print. Done right, a dye transfer print is one of the best looking color prints that have ever been made. I own one of Ctein's original dye transfers and it is indeed one of my favorites in my collection. However, Kodak stopped making the supplies for this process many years ago in 1993, but Ctein mortgaged his house to buy what he thought was a lifetime supply of the dyes, matirix films, and print paper. And now, he is at the end of those supplies.

So Ctein and Mike Johnston will sell off the remaining prints that Ctein can make, which is around 160 16x20-inch prints. After these are made and sold, Ctein will be out of supplies for good and will close down his wet darkroom. Of course, he will continue to work in digital and with ink jet printers. These dye transfer prints will sell for $575 each, which is about 1/3 of his regular price. You'll be able to see what images he will offer for this last printing today at The Online Photographer. The sale will last for 5 days or until the 160 prints are sold. If you can spare the cash, this is an opportunity that you will not get a second chance to buy.

That Old Blackmagic Does It Again!

Blackmagic Designs from Australia  have announced a new Micro 4/3s based point-and-shoot camera designed for movie making, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. The specs are impressive: Super 16 sensor size, dynamic range of 13 stops, SD card recording, choice of ProRez 422 or lossless CinemaDNG recording formats, uses the Micro 4/3s lens mount, and records in 1080HD resolution at either 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97 or 30 fps. This pocket-sized movie camera is designed to go where a full-sized camera cannot fit and promises to deliver nearly the same image quality. And the price will be around $995 for the body! Not bad at all.

They've also announced an updated version of their regular cinema camera, to be called the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K, that will have full 4K resolution, has a Canon EF compatible lens mount, and will sell for $3,995 (body alone). Considering the cost of a RED camera, that's pretty good.

Misc. News with Update!

UPDATE: The US designation for the new Rebel is the SL1, and another feature it has is a touch sensitive rear LCD screen. Canon is also introducing the Rebel T5i. The Rebel SL1 will sell for $649.99 for the body or $799.99 for the SL1 kit with the new EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens. The T5i will sell for $749.99 as body only and for $899.99 in a kit. Below is an interesting size comparison between the new SL1, the Rebel T4i, and the EOS M, courtesy of Photo Rumors. As you can see, the SL1 is definitely smaller.

A couple of items have come to my attention. First up is a new camera from Canon, the EOS Kiss X7 (Kiss is the European version/designation of the American Rebel camera line), which is intended to compete against some of the Micro 4/3 cameras, in terms of size and portability. And it does seem small. Look at the diameter of the lens mount compared to the body. However, putting regular Canon lenses on it will negate much of its size advantage, compared to the rather petite M 4/3 lenses. And since Canon has their own M 4/3-like camera, the EOS M, you have to wonder about their reasoning. Well, whatever.

But the specs look good: 18 MP sensor, full HD video, pivoting LCD screen, and DIGIC5 processing chip. With the new camera is a new kit lens, the EF-S 18-55mm IS STM, which is optimized for video. And when it comes to the US, the camera will have a different name, of course. If nothing else, it should make a great back-up camera.

 

The Brown Sisters, photograph by Nicholas Nixon 

Then, Ahorn magazine has published an interview with Nicholas Nixon, a documentary photographer whose main camera is an 8x10 view camera. Even though he works with such a large, cumbersome camera, he manages to routinely get intimate people pictures with a lot of heart and presence. Nixon is a fabulous photographer, who frankly isn't as well known as he ought to be and you can read what he has to say about his art here.

New Stuff!

Fotodiox has announced the availability of an interesting alternative for photographers looking to create high resolution, 645 medium format, digital images without spending $30,000 and up. The RhinoCam is made for Sony NEX cameras and uses those cameras as a digital back that is moved into predetermined positions letting the photographer take several images that can be combined or stitched together into one 140+ MP photograph in a program like Photoshop . It uses medium format lenses from Hasselblad V, Pentax, and Mamiya, and has a sliding focusing screen for focusing and composing the image. The RhinoCam sells for $500. This could be a good option for some people. Landscape and architectural photography would work nicely with a system like this.

Also, Sigma has released the prices of a few of their new lenses. Both the new 19mm f/2.8 and 30mm f/2.8 for M4/3 and Sony E-mount will sell for $199 each, and the APS-C digital lens, the 30mm f/1.4 in Sigma, Canon, and Nikon mounts will sell for $499.

David Burnett's Olympic Photographs

 Photograph by David Burnett.

Photojournalist David Burnett has put online a selection of his large format black-and-white photographs taken at last year's London Olympics. He used a vintage 1940s Speed Graphic 4x5 camera for these images, along with a fair amount of swings and tilts to control plane and depth of focus. In many of the shots, Burnett was not trying to maximize the focus, but minimize it. Sometimes the results look like some of the toy settings on camera phones, with only a small portion of the image in focus.

Photograph by David Burnett.

Burnett was part of a team covering the Games for the International Olympic Museum and he exposed around 350 images during the competitions. He also used a Canon 5D Mark III and a Leica M9 for the Olympics. Burnett has been using a Speed Graphic in his photojournalistic work since 2004, primarily to achieve a unique look that sets his images apart from other photographers and in which he surely succeeds. Thanks to PetaPixel for the head's up on this. You can see David Burnett's Olympic portfolio here and you can check out his other work there as well.

David Burnett and his Speed Graphic by Mike King.