A digest of last week’s news is a selection of some of the news from week 49 related to the worlds of photography and video, covering multiple topics, always rounded up with a reading suggestion.
Phase One acquires Mamiya
The Danish company Phase One, announced that it has acquired the assets of Mamiya Digital Imaging Company, Ltd (MDI) and has appointed Makoto Honda as the new president of Phase One Japan. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
As a 45 percent shareholder in MDI since 2009, Phase One has developed detailed insight into the camera & lens design and production process and engineered important improvements through its close collaboration with the MDI team in Japan. With this transaction, Phase One now also takes total ownership for all aspects of design and development of medium format camera systems, central shutters & lenses.
“Phase One is now the only medium format camera company that has full internal control of all critical components in a world class imaging system,” says Niels V. Knudsen Phase One’s Image Professor. “This is the best news in many years for quality-focused photographers and imaging companies as Phase One works to consistently raise the bar in medium format photography.”
Capture One Pro 9 released
Phase One, creator of open-platform, high-end camera systems and professional imaging software, released Capture One Pro 9. Known for its outstanding tethered capture capability, high-quality raw conversion, and precision image editing tools, Capture One Pro is already considered by 100,000 of the world’s leading photographers to be the best image capture application.
Capture One Pro 9 introduces many new image quality precision tools, including a completely updated contrast engine. Capture One Pro 9 also brings powerful new asset management capabilities, including unprecedented sortable keywords capability. It has been designed to help speed the image-management process for volume keyword applications. Besides new physical workflow features, Capture One Pro 9 also gives customers three activations for each standard license to support on-location activation management, as requested by photographers.
Originally developed to render the exceptional image quality captured by medium format Phase One camera systems, today Capture One Pro supports more than 400 different camera models. Capture One Pro is designed with more than enough available “headroom” to satisfy requirements for the highest resolution now and in the future. Whether or not photographers own a Phase One camera, all photographers can benefit from Capture One Pro’s exceptional image quality and workflow advantages.
Pentax Full Frame in the Spring
With a tradition of building small SLR, as the LX model from 1980, designed to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Asahi Optical, Pentax, now owned by Ricoh, has always been a unique brand of camera. In 2003 they launched their first DSLR, the *ist D, unveiled as the smallest and lightest weight camera in the world. Now they move on to Full Frame.
To be launched next Spring, the Pentax full frame camera is the first with such a sensor size in the DSLR family of the company, and a model Pentax promises will follow their philosophy: pursuit of original value to create high-performance cameras used and loved by pros and amateur photographers alike.
Although a small name in the big race, Pentax continues to produce and launch their DSLRs, like the K100D or the K10D, which received three international prizes: TIPA, Camera Grand Prix 2007, EISA, and was the American Photo’s Editor’s Choice 2007. In the years that have followed, the maker has continued to release unique cameras, such as the digital SLR with the well-known medium-format 645 mount, “PENTAX 645D”.
WD launches Helium-filled 10TB HDD
Western Digital Corporation is now shipping the world’s first helium-filled 10TB PMR HDD to meet exponential growth in data.
“Netflix has built an industry-leading Content Delivery Network and these 10TB drives will allow us to quickly integrate, build more capacity and stream more movies to our consumers,” said David Fullagar, director of content delivery architecture, Netflix. “We’ve been using the HGST HelioSeal drives for a long time and not only do they give us more capacity, they have contributed to a lower overall power envelope and higher storage density, which has allowed us to maximize our data footprint and create a network that is optimized for TCO.”
Laying the foundation for a worry-free data center, HGST delivers the very best capacity hard drive in the industry – Ultrastar He10. The He10 uses PMR technology and is the industry’s first 10TB drive that is drop-in ready for any enterprise-capacity application or environment. Based on field proven, third-generation HelioSeal technology, it offers the lowest power profile in the industry to help data center architects meet eco-environmental goals and requirements.
The Indispensable Guide to Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is a popular powerful application for image organization, photo editing, and output. But with its hundreds of features and capabilities, learning Lightroom can be overwhelming for both beginner and veteran photographers. This eBook might help!
In The Indispensable Guide to Lightroom CC , Sean McCormack brings his expertise and experience as a professional photographer, Adobe Community Professional, and Lightroom Master to provide an accessible guide to learning Lightroom. In this book, Sean focuses on the fundamentals of Lightroom CC, using a hands-on learning style to carefully walk users through Lightroom’s features, including file management, image editing, slideshows, printing, sharing, and much more.
The eBook provides detailed, illustrated descriptions of the program’s most important features and capabilities to get new users up and running quickly, and it covers all the new features of Lightroom CC to keep advanced users ahead of the curve. The Indispensable Guide to Lightroom CC makes learning this extensive photo-editing program simple, fun, and fast.
The Indispensable Guide to Lightroom CC, with 496 pages of information is the eBook deal of the week from Rocky Nook, with a special price of $9.99 if you use the code GETLRCC. The offer ends 12/13/15.