September 28, 1996

PHOTOKINA GOES DIGITAL

by John Henshall

Over 1600 exhibitors from 45 countries took part in Photokina '96, the 'World Fair for Imaging', in Cologne, Germany, 18-23 September 1996. Photokina is held every other year and, in 1994, attracted over 165,000 visitors from 132 countries, making it the photographic industry's major trade fair.

The show is an amalgam of consumer and professional photography and video, together with broadcasting, audio, lighting, studio, stage and audiovisual equipment. As the boundaries between media become less defined, Photokina's overall theme of 'communication' becomes increasingly relevant to publishing in all its forms.

Much of Photokina is traditionally concerned with 'wet' photographic methods. This year the new, compact, user-friendly Advanced Photo System (APS) film format gave hope to a photographic industry which has been in the doldrums for some time.

Digital cameras for the Web

At Photokina '94, digital photography was almost exclusively for high-end professional use. This year a huge wave of consumer and business-use digital cameras became available from almost every major manufacturer, including Agfa, Apple, Canon, Casio, Epson, Fuji, Kodak, Konica, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Ricoh and Sony. Some were offering more than one model. These cameras have resolutions of around 640x480 pixels, giving them potential as low-cost image acquisition devices for Web pages.

Broad-based shows such as Photokina inevitably inspire lateral thought. Digital camcorders may also be regarded as digital still cameras with a 25- or 30-frame-per-second motor wind and built-in 'tape streamer' (a 'Mini DV' Digital Video cassette), eminently suitable for capturing images for the Web. Even the previous generation of analog camcorder can be used, digitizing the image using Play Inc's $199 'Snappy' video grabber -- a European PAL format version of which was launched at Photokina.

Stars of the show

Digital stars of the show included Fuji's DS-7 pocket-size digital camera and Dicomed's 6x6 cm color Big Shot camera back.

The Fuji DS-7 has good colorimetry and sensitivity, three focus settings, 640x480 resolution, a 'live' color LCD viewfinder, and 30-shot capacity in standard JPEG format on removable 'SmartMedia' 2-MB flash storage cards only 37x45x0.75mm thick (1.75x1.56x0.03 inches). This camera was previewed at Seybold San Francisco in the 'Digital Photo - Creating Images for the Internet' session, before its launch at Photokina.

At the highest end of digital image capture, the Dicomed Big Shot 6x6cm back for Hasselblad -- now available in full color -- produced the highest resolution 'instant' digital images yet seen.

JOHN HENSHALL is president of Electronic Photo-Imaging -- the EPIcentre -- a British company providing independent consultancy and training in digital imaging and the Internet, for manufacturers and end-users. He has been involved with electronic photography all his working life, first at BBC Television and later as Director of Photography for major UK network productions and MTV Europe.

He writes a monthly column on digital imaging for the professional journal "The Photographer" and contributes to the European "MacUser" and the Royal Photographic Society's "Photographic Journal". He is editor designate of the new publication, "Digital Imaging Plus", appearing early in 1997.

Electronic Photo-Imaging
EPIcentre
68 High Street
Stanford in the Vale
Oxfordshire SN7 8NL UK

E-Mail: henshall@epicentre.co.uk
WWW: http://www.epicentre.co.uk
Phone: +44 136 710191
Fax: +44 1367 710192