The IMAGING RESOURCE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY
NEWSLETTER

Copyright 2000, The Imaging Resource. All rights reserved.

Welcome to the 17th edition of the Imaging Resource Newsletter. And happy Cinco de Mayo.

TOPICS

• Feature: Picture of the Year
• Feature: A 'Universal' Inkjet Paper?
• Beginners Flash: Title Shots
• Advanced Mode: Let There Be Light
• Just for Fun: How to Write a Caption
• Dave's Deals
• We Have Mail
• Editor's Notes
• Signoff

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Feature: Picture of the Year

The (much) larger issues aside, we find it noteworthy that the signature image of the conflict over Elian Gonzales was a still photograph by Alan Diaz of the Associated Press.

The photo showed an armed federal agent on the left and Elian in the grasp of the man who had rescued him at sea. Immediately after it was published, the Pulitzer Prize was conceded -- or so it seemed.

But this image is no flag being raised over Iwo Jima (a picture that did win the Pulitzer).

It's hard to say what's really going on in the picture and each side in the conflict has, not surprisingly, used it to raise their own flag.

CNN cropped out fisherman Donato Dalrymple so it seemed the agent's gun was aimed at Elian. Attorney General Janet Reno said the gun was not pointed at the child and the agent's finger was not on the trigger. Dalrymple said he had not been hiding in the closet but standing in front of an open closet door.

What was really going on?

At first glance, the image does indeed suggest a holdup. But take a moment to study the image and it begins to reveal its secrets.

What, for example, do the shadows cast by Diaz's flash tell us about what is going on?

His flash was apparently mounted above the lens. The shadows it cast are not to either side of the subjects and elongate directly below their arms. They're sharp shadows, too, not softened by a bounce, which makes them a bit easier to read. From a press photographer's point of view, that makes a lot of sense; direct flash minizes recycle time so the flash can keep up with the motor drive.

Was the gun "aimed" at either Dalrymple or the boy?

The shadow from the agent's gun falls evenly across the agent's body and elongates on the closet door behind him. The evenness of shadow across the agent's body suggests the gun was held parallel to his body. But is his body perpendicular to Elian or Dalyrmple? We have to admit we can't tell. In this case, the shadow is not much of a clue.

But the flash shadow on Dalrymple does show him to be inside the right wall of the closet. A narrow shadow down the length of his body was cast by the closet molding and an elongated sharp shadow was cast across the clothes beyond his left arm. He may not have been "hiding" there but he was certainly inside the closet, not standing in front of it.

The flash shadows help interprete the image, but even more revealing is the sequence of images shot by Diaz. You can see a few of them (there were seven) at http://uk.fc.yahoo.com/photos/c/20000422/cuba.html although the third one (published in the New York Times on April 23), which we examined, isn't among them.

What does the sequence tell us about the gun?

The sequence shows the gun is, in fact, pointed down and moving just slightly (even inadvertently) downward -- from shot 3 to shot 4 at http://uk.fc.yahoo.com/000422/59/a4gvt.html to shot 7 http://uk.fc.yahoo.com/000422/59/a4gvr.html (but not much lower) -- as the agent grabs Elian.

Even more telling, shot 4 shows another agent in the hallway holding their gun in the same readied, but lowered, position.

This suggests the gun was not being aimed by the agent but simply carried one-handed as the agent's left arm stretched out to grab the boy. The agent's finger is indeed, as Reno said, off the trigger.

And in shot 7 the nose of the gun is clearly seen outside Dalrymple's elbow as he comes out of the closet and the agent looks directly at Diaz.

The sequence of shots does show Dalrymple exiting of the closet. The molding on the right side of the closet, cropped in some published prints, is easily visible in shot 7. Not a pole, not a piece of furniture, just molding on the wall. Which confirms Dalrymple was inside the closet, as our reading of the flash shadows suggested.

The sequence of images is so helpful in explaining the main shot that we wondered where the video crew was.

"We got Maced, we got kicked, we got roughed up," explained NBC cameraman Tony Zumbado who, with an NBC sound person, was assigned to provide pictures to all the networks. The two of them had raced toward the house with Diaz to beat the federal agents, he said. Zumbado said a family member pulled them into the house while an agent tried to pull them out. When he finally got inside, Zumbado said, he was kicked in the stomach and fell to the floor, recovering only after the three minute raid was over.

So it was Diaz who got the shot.

The photographer Todd Webb, who passed away at 94 last month, was fond of saying the secret to taking a good picture was simply knowing where to stand.

And if there's anything at all clear about the picture of the year, it's that Diaz knew where to stand.

Return to Topics.

Feature: A 'Universal' Inkjet Paper?

By DAVE ETCHELLS

(Excerpted from the full review posted at http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/IJPAPER/IJPAPER1.HTM on the Web site.)

Over the years, I've owned a succession of inkjet printers. In that time, I've tried literally a dozen or more different third-party papers for my printers. Some worked reasonably well with one manufacturer's printers, but horribly with another's. Some didn't seem to work well with any printer. Some worked OK, but not as well as that from the printer manufacturer.

As diligent as I was in trying different papers (an expensive and time-consuming process), the plain fact was that none of them seemed to be as good as the manufacturer's own product, so I've until now been a staunch believer in keeping printer, ink, and paper all with one company.

At Spring PMA 2000 though, I saw some black and white prints that absolutely amazed me with their depth of tone, razor-sharp detail, and beautiful finish. They were printed on an Epson Stylus 750 printer, but not on Epson's paper. Not only that, but the exhibitor claimed that the same paper would work equally well with any inkjet printer/ink combination out there. This was so contrary to all my prior experience that I decided to investigate more closely. I was surprised (and pleased) by what I found.

INKJET PAPER: WHAT CAN GO WRONG...

Before getting into the wonders of the new paper, it might be useful to look at the sorts of problems I've had with non-manufacturer papers in the past. Here's a brief list.

Ink Clumping

I'm sure there's an official industry-approved term for this, but "clumping" describes the effect pretty well. In areas of heavy ink coverage, the ink doesn't lie smoothly on some papers, but rather clumps up in globs, leaving white areas in between. The result is almost an orange-peel or "crackle" finish effect. Definitely not the desired effect for your precious memories!

This problem was probably one of the most persistent and objectionable I encountered with third-party papers. The cause is a poor chemical bond between the paper and ink: The ink doesn't wet well to the paper and clumps up due to surface tension.

Muddy Colors

Ink clumping is caused by the ink not soaking into the paper well enough. The opposite effect often happens too: The paper absorbs the ink too well, with the result that the dots of ink wick along the fibers of the paper and spread out into each other. When the colors of ink spread into each other this way, the resulting color is muddy and unattractive. Colors are less intense, and the overall image just isn't as bright and "clean" looking.

Poor Surface Texture

Manufacturers have tried a lot of different things to control how their papers absorb ink. Some papers have a grainy coating on the surface that helps the paper hold the ink without clumping. The result feels a little like sandpaper though.

Waterfastness

Normally, I wouldn't even include this in a list of paper properties. I mean, everyone knows inkjet prints will run at the least hint of moisture, right?

Well, some manufacturers are starting to improve this with different ink/paper formulations that chemically bond the ink to the paper. This depends on special inks though, matched with equally special papers.

But the paper I'm writing about today actually conveys a pretty significant degree of water resistance to any inkjet printer. It does this with a multi-layer structure that traps the ink in a layer under the surface film. When water splashes on the print, it mostly stays on the surface, and you can blot it away without disturbing the picture underneath.

CERAMIC PAPER?

Mystery revealed: The winner is ... Pictorico, er, Picto ... who? I hadn't heard of these folks before seeing them in the Olympus booth at PMA in February. Pictorico is actually a brand name of AGA Chemicals, who among other things are expert with unusual ceramic formulations. The reason I was so interested in their paper was not only because they claimed that their paper was universal (lots of companies claim that), but because they also claimed to have a unique technology for making inkjet paper.

The key to the Pictorico paper appears to be that it's coated with a special microscopic ceramic powder, held in place beneath an overlay coating. The ceramic particles absorb the ink quickly, holding it in place and preventing the dots from spreading out. Their shape and orientation tend to confine the ink into vertical channels in the paper, avoiding the wicking along paper fibers that plagues conventional paper, leading to fuzzy dots.

What's more, either because the particles do so well absorbing and holding the ink, or because the ink-holding particles are one layer below the surface, the resulting prints are very resistant to water damage: You can actually splash water all over the print and just wipe it away, without any ill effects.

I wanted to get more details on how this all works (being the inveterate techno-tweak that I am), but AGA Chemicals is understandably a little reticent with some of the finer details.

Of course, the bottom line is how it looks.

PAPER TYPES

Pictorico comes in Gloss Film and Pictorico Watercolor Card Stock paper. I've seen "watercolor" papers for inkjet printers before, but usually they've absorbed the ink so heavily that the resulting color was rather dull and unattractive. With the Pictorico "magic ceramics" though, the resulting print is clear, sharp and vivid.

The only noticeable effect is that the warm ivory color of the watercolor paper warms the colors of the photo, but that's to be expected, and in fact is probably desirable for achieving a warmer "mood" to the photo. The watercolor stock also produces a slightly softer look to the image.

We did most of our testing with the Pictorico "Gloss Film" material, which has a plastic base. Brilliant white, very tough, tremendous contrast and tonal range, but also relatively pricey. Pictorico also makes several other types of media, including a more conventional (and conventionally priced) gloss material with a paper backing, transparency film, even an adhesive-backed substrate.

Finally, Pictorico even has a fabric "paper" that you can run directly through your inkjet printer. Called "PolySilk," this is actual sheets of cloth, the fibers of which are coated with the special ceramic particles. The cloth is stuck onto a paper carrier sheet, to hold it flat while it's fed through your printer. Once the print is made, you peel away the backing paper to reveal a piece of cloth with your photo on it. The resulting print has a somewhat diaphanous look (the cloth is translucent), and I doubt it would stand up to washing, but it's still pretty unique. (Photo lampshades? Photo napkins?)

HOW UNIVERSAL?

OK, so at the outset, I said that Pictorico claims their papers are pretty much universal, capable of being used with many different printers and ink sets. Is that claim true?

Never one to take such things at face value, I imposed on Pictorico for a goodly quantity of paper (mostly their gloss film, but I did run quite a few pieces of watercolor paper through the printers as well, plus a few samples of their PolySilk) to use for testing. Just in case things had improved from the bad old days, I also visited the local CompUSA, and bought a pile of inkjet paper by a variety of manufacturers.

From there, we did two things: We ran samples of all the paper through our own printers, an Epson 750, Epson 850, and HP Photosmart printer, making multiple prints on each. We also made up kits of paper with one sheet of each type in them, and visited a local Best Buy store that had an unusually well-maintained printer department. (That is, all the printers were plugged in, were charged with ink, and had "press for a sample print" gadgets attached to them.) There, we ran the paper samples through a wide variety of printers, from Canon, Epson, HP and Lexmark.

The result? The manufacturers' own papers seemed to work well in their own printers. (No surprise there.) They also worked with varying degrees of success in the other manufacturers' printers. The third-party papers were very much a mixed bag. Some did poorly in most of the printers we tried them on, while most were hit-or-miss, working fairly well in one printer but not another.

The clear "winner" was Pictorico, which performed brilliantly in every printer we tried!

We did note that a couple of printers had a slight yellowish cast on the Pictorico film. Since the paper itself is a very bright white, we attribute this to the fact that the lower dot gain (spreading) of the ink resulted in more of the yellow ink being visible than as if the darker colors had spread over it. A minor tweak on the printer's driver software, dropping the yellow intensity seemed to correct for this. Overall color was excellent though, and the prints had a great tonal range, with blacks reproducing as the jet black that so caught our eye at PMA.

Now, this really can't be taken as any sort of absolutely conclusive test of the Pictorico paper, since we only tried it in about a dozen different printers. Still, there seems little reason to doubt the claim that it truly is a "universal" inkjet paper, given how well it did in all the printers we did try. Not only that, but in many cases, the gloss film actually outperformed the printer manufacturer's own paper, in terms of color and tonal range.

WHERE TO GET IT

Needless to say, we were pretty impressed by the Pictorico paper: As far as we could tell, it really does work well in any inkjet printer. It's pretty new on the US market though, so it might take a little while to find it in your local retail outlet or mail order catalog. As of this writing, AGA Chemicals had struck a deal with Olympus to distribute the paper in the US, so any dealer who carries Olympus products should at least be able to order it for you. There's also an online store at www.pictorico.com worth a visit.

Return to Topics.

Beginners Flash: Title Shots

You don't have to be Rocky Balboa to get a shot at a title. All you need is your digicam.

Of course, the kind of title we're talking about can't buckle your belt -- but it's a lot more useful.

We're talking about title shots for your photo excursions, whether they're a birthday party or a museum or a vacation trip. Your digicam is a lot more capable of taking legible closeups than your film camera, we'll bet. And with no extra charge for extra shots, using the camera to document what you're photographing is a real bonus.

Take, for example, a wild, unescorted, roller-coaster ride through your local museum.

Check first, but most public museums permit photography of their permanent collections (they ones owned by the public). You may be restricted to shooting without tripod and without flash (which can, cumulatively, be damaging to the art). But otherwise it's generally not forbidden (although you may have a hard time convincing the guards you're not taking forbidden video).

As you stroll through the rooms, you may happen to fall in love with one or another painting or sculpture and decide to take the shot. But by the time you leave the museum, you'll be hard pressed to remember who painted the thing, when they did it or what they called it.

Unless, you stepped up to the little placard alongside it and snapped a shot.

Shooting the description before you shoot the thing described is a little more useful than shooting the description after. AS you view it in a slide show, it reminds you what's coming up and lets you view it with a little more appreciation when it does. That's why it's called a title.

If the descriptive shot follows the image, it functions more like a note. A footnote, which may intrigue you enough to flip back to the image. Which can be annoying. So it's a good habit to shoot the description first.

Although there's nothing wrong with using your digicam to take notes. Particularly if you're taking apart some gadget with wires running all over the place and you'd like to reassemble it without any evidence of tampering.

This technique works well for monuments, historical markers, restaurants (both menus and buildings), zoos and other places relatives gather. You can even shoot maps with it, marking your progress on that cross country drive or European junket. All the names will be spelled correctly, nothing is omitted, and it takes just a fraction of a second. Literally.

Return to Topics.

Advanced Mode: Let There Be Light

We know the guy who calibrates just exactly when your automatic flash pops into action. He lives in a very bright part of the country where he's blinded whenever he walks indoors. To him, a day without flash is a day without sunshine.

Sunshine works just fine indoors without flash, though. It's called available light. And you can get some stunning pictures with it just by turning off your automatic flash.

Odds are, it was the light that attracted you to the picture to begin with. Streaming in from a curtained window as Aunt Earhart made airplane noises while tossing Baby Huey into the air. Falling like a whisper on a vase of just-cut roses from the garden. Knifing through the kitchen to fall on a solitary place setting. Dancing on the surface of the pool late in the afternoon.

Then the flash guy ruins it. "Not enough light, Jack. Flash it!"

And the scene ends up evenly illuminated but nothing like what you thought you saw.

The problem is that your meter is averaging the light in the whole scene. And if the level calls for the flash, and it's not manually turned off, you get flashed. But often there's more than enough light for your subject if not for the scene. A face, for example. That rose. The plate on the table. The highlights in the pool.

You can find out by switching to spot metering and reading just those values, but don't shoot from them. Metering a highlight will just muddy the shot. Best to let the automatic camera think there just isn't enough light, hold steady, and shoot.

And if you've got full manual control of the aperture and shutter settings, you can have even more fun. But you can do this with an automatic-only camera, too. Just change your EV settings to fool the meter into properly exposing the subject.

Then we can send the flash guy to some place where the sun only rises an hour a day and he can trade his sunburn in for some red-eye.

Return to Topics.

Just for Fun: How to Write a Caption

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a caption must come to the point. With prizes at stake (see below), it wouldn't hurt if it were a sharp, penetrating point that tickles, either.

As someone who has used an electron microscope to read the 'Hello!' badges on conventioneer lapels to identify people for photo captions, I'm happy to reveal some professional tricks of the trade.

Rent, don't buy, electron microscopes, for example.

Identify suspicious parties from left to right. And don't skip anybody (they can all write letters to the editor).

Avoid the obvious as in "At top: sky." But do point out the subtle detail: "Morning dissolves in light mist."

Briefly. Caption writers aren't paid by the word.

It's tougher than it seems. An art, really, like poetry. To warm up to the task try matching any old picture at all with a song title.

Say, for example, [huge hint follows] you happen to have an image of a rodent that has been flattened in the middle of the road with a double yellow line painted over it.

What song comes to mind? "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"? "Can't Take You Nowhere"?

Not musically inclined (like me)? Try movie titles. "I Dreamed of Africa"? "Viva Rock Vegas"? "It's a Wonderful Life"?

Don't actually use any of these or you could end up writing clues for crossword puzzles. Instead, use them as a springboard for more original descriptions. Examples escape us at the moment.

The great thing about captions is even the bad ones are short. So you're done before you know it. Like the rodent that didn't make it across the road (which you can actually caption for yourself in PCPhotoREVIEW's new caption contest at http://www.pcphotoreview.com/contests/caption/).

Return to Topics.

Dave's Deals

Trial downloads of the (excellent) PhotoGenetics imaging program are still available. If you decide to purchase PhotoGenetics, be sure to come back through this URL (http://www.q-res.com/php3/downloads.php3?refid=imgresource) to receive the special $5-off deal for Imaging Resource readers!

Whiteboard Photo, available directly from the Pixid Web site at http://www.pixid.com, is available for Imaging Resource readers at $20 off the usual $99.95 list price, for a net of only $79.95 at https://secure.teleport.com/~peterwh/pixid/order_ir.html only. See our review at http://www.imaging-resource.com/SOFT/WBS/WBSA.HTM on the Web site.

Return to Topics.

We Have Mail

You can email us at [email protected].

RE: More Vacation Tips

While planning our first trip abroad with a digital camera and wondering what we would do when our two cartridges were filled, we hit upon a simple, inexpensive solution. We bought a USB SanDisk card reader (about $35), took it and a pre-formatted 100 MB Zip cartridge w/SanDisk driver software on it, and dropped in at a friendly neighborhood cyber-cafe in Paris. It cost about $6 to use one of their systems for a half hour. During that time we checked our email, downloaded 150+ images from the card reader to the Zip and had a beer.

The safest way to do this would be to take a PC-formatted Zip with both Mac & PC versions of the driver so you could go either way. We had looked for cyber-cafes on the Web and emailed ahead to check on their hours, location, equipment, etc.

-- John Nichols

(I believed you until you said you had a beer. I can't believe you weren't sipping a sparkling glass of Italian wine. After all, it was Paris! The only explanation I can think of is that the USB connection was so easy to make you just didn't know what to do with yourself while the waiter was looking for a corkscrew. Yes, the USB connection explains everything. -- Editor)

RE: Picture Window

Just reviewed your information on the Casio QV3000. FYI, the program Picture Window 2.5 will open and process the 6 MB TIF file produced by the QV3000 that you could not find a processor for. See http://www.dl-c.com for info.

-- Claude Head

(There's a remarkable variation in standards like TIFF, and we're happy to learn about any software that can adroitly handle them. Thanks for the tip, Claude. -- Editor)

RE: Coming Up for Oxygen

Just so you guys know, the rule of thirds in SCUBA diving is really only used by cave divers. Since they can't just go up if they get into trouble, the rule is: one third in, one third out, and a third in reserve. Ordinary SCUBA divers simply go up when they run low.

And our tanks are not oxygen tanks ... they're full of AIR, which is only about 21 percent oxygen, (not even a third).

-- William Monteleone

(Thanks for the clarification, Bill. We should probably come up for air more often, ourselves. <g> -- Editor)

RE: Buddy, Can You Spare a Sigh

As a photo novice I enjoyed and learned from the basics of the "Rule of Thirds" for photo composition. I do wish however to add to the aside remarks regarding the practice of the "Rule of Thirds" in SCUBA Diving. The practice of starting one's return at 1/3 tank consumption is generally flexible when engaged in shallow, (non-decompression), open-water dives where the surface is but a long breath away. Where the rule of thirds is mandatory is in cave diving! One third is budgeted for entry, one third for return, and one third for "buddy breathing" (sharing) on the return in case your dive buddy experiences an air failure.

-- Noel Armstrong

(We're going to avoid controversial subjects like this in the future. From now on we'll just speculate on the motivations of federal agents. -- Editor)

RE: Accessories

I enjoy the newsletter very much, and appreciate the format also.

I am curious about a couple of things though. This is, for reference, about the Nikon 990 (which I am nearly sold on). I would like to see some tests and photos taken with the accessories. For the Olympus 3030 also. I will be (probably) abandoning my N90s w/ 24-120 & 80-210 f2.8 APO Sigma to go 100 percent digital. I really hate giving up the 24mm end and am very interested in the wide lens accessory -- and of course the modest tele also.

True angle of view (one I saw said the accessory only reached 27mm on the 950), distortion, and contrast are of great interest.

I am also very interested in comments on the use of this (& 950) with a spotting scope. I plan on using it with my Leica Televid w/ 20-60x zoom eyepiece. I believe it is feasible because of the small actual diameter of the lens on the 990, and the optics of the Leica. The circle of coverage should make this a real possibility. I do believe the 3030 would be a bit of a problem.

-- Barry A. Kintner

(Nikon sells fish-eye, wide angle and telephoto lenses for their 9xx series cameras which screw onto the normal zoom lens. I've relied on the wide angle to do close-up shots and have been very pleased with the results. No complaints about image quality. But the lenses are pricey. For just $60 Tiffen sells attachments for several digicams that provide wide angle, telephoto and macro capabilities. And you can see sample images on the Tiffen Web site at http://www.tiffen.com. -- Editor)

RE: Unsolicited Testimonial

I have just recently been given this link (highly praised ... and I can see why). It is only recently that I have purchased a digital camera and I am only sorry that I did not get to this site earlier as it would have made my choice a lot easier, and much better informed. A very informative and well planned site, especially for people like myself who are not professionals, but enjoy photography without understanding all the ins and outs.

Thank you for a great site to visit.

-- Carlo Giusti

(Prego, Carlo. And don't worry about the ins and outs. There are none. You can even forget to put film in these cameras and everything will still work out. -- Editor)

Return to Topics.

Editor's Notes

Zing World is spotlighting American photographer Ralph Gibson at http://www.zing.com/magazine/gibson.html (which may not be up yet) with an interview and gallery of images. Born in 1939, Gibson has began his career in the mid-1950s where he learned his craft at the Naval School of Photography in Pensacola, Fla. After attending the San Francisco Art Institute, he worked with Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank. His photographs grace the collections of the International Center of Photography in New York, The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Visit http://www.ralphgibson.com/ to learn more about Gibson.

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PhotoHighway.com is providing a chance to chat with some photo industry pros in their online educational forums. Just enter the chat auditorium at http://chat.photohighway.com on the following dates:

On May 10 at 8:00 p.m. ET (5:00 p.m. PT) Michael Rubin, Digital Products Manager for Nikon, will discuss the state of the art in consumer digital cameras and how to choose one that's right for you.�Rubin will answer your questions about digital photography, digital cameras and especial about the new Nikon Coolpix 990 and 800 cameras.

On May 18 at 7:00 p.m. ET (4:00 p.m. PT) chat with freelance photographer William Folsom. Spring has sprung, and Folsom will help you capture the beauty of nature. He'll also reveal his secrets for photographing one of nature's most elusive subjects: butterflies!

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The June launch issue of Imagine Media's digitalFOTO magazine has been mailed to subscribers and will be available on the newsstand May 9, the publisher said. Its online counterpart, www.digitalfoto.com, is launching at the same time.

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ScanSoft at www.scansoft.com has announced the release of PaperPort Deluxe 7.0, its paper management software for home and business, integrating paper management, photo editing, forms fill-in and OCR. Among the features are PaperPort application links to new and updated versions of popular programs (like AOL 5.0, Microsoft Word 2000, Excel 2000, Outlook 2000, Intuit Quicken 2000), access to favorite Web sites from any PC with BookmarkExpress, and Windows 2000 compatibility.

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Sixty-four percent of amateur photographers who do not already own a digital camera intend to buy one within the next six months, according to The Emerging Digital Photographer, a new report from Lyra Research, Inc., that contains the results of a survey of more than 6,693 amateur photographers. For more information visit www.lyra.com.

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A new study from InfoTrends Research Group reveals that revenue from digital camera sales in North America will reach $1.9 billion this year, exceeding revenue generated from film camera sales by almost 10 percent. Digital camera unit sales will exceed film cameras by 2002, growing from 6.7 million in 2000 to 42 million in 2005, according to the study. The digital camera market includes toy digital cameras, digital camera attachments, entry-level, point and shoot and digital SLR cameras. The largest segment in both units and revenues is the digital point and shoot category, which is expected to reach 3.1 million units this year. But film cameras still vastly outnumber digital cameras with film cameras in over 90 percent of U.S. households, while digital cameras are in less than 10 percent. Further, single-use film cameras, which are not included in these figures, are a popular camera solution that will continue to drive film usage. Most of today's digital camera sales are supplementary to film cameras, but there is growing evidence that the replacement market is beginning. By 2005, film camera sales are expected to be in gradual decline, excluding single-use cameras, the study predicted.

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d-store.com at www.d-store.com has announced its Wonders of Spring Photo Contest. Open to everyone, the theme is based on what spring means to the individual as depicted in a photo. Winners will receive prizes ranging from a digital camera to card readers and gift certificates.

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Kodak has a new way to turn less than ideal snapshots into picture-perfect keepsakes. With the new issue of Kodak Picture CD, pictures that have been over or under exposed can be easily fixed, Kodak said. By using simple photo-editing features, people can dramatically improve their pictures with a click of the mouse. Created and co-marketed with Intel Corp., Kodak Picture CD, is an auto-running CD-ROM, with a software interface and photo-editing functions developed by Adobe. Kodak Picture CD can be ordered when getting film developed simply by checking a box on the processing envelope provided by a retailer or photofinisher.

Return to Topics.

Signoff

That's it for now, but look for our next issue in about two weeks. Meanwhile, visit our site for the latest news, reviews, or to have your questions answered in our free discussion forum. Here are the links to our most popular pages:

Daily News:	http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS.HTM
New on Site:	http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEW1.HTM
Digicam index:	http://www.imaging-resource.com/DIGCAM01.HTM
Q&A Forum:	http://www.imaging-resource.com/FORUM.HTM
Newsletter Forum:	http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a.tcl?topic=irnews
Tips:	http://www.imaging-resource.com/TIPS.HTM

Happy snapping!

Mike Pasini, Editor [email protected]

Dave Etchells, Publisher [email protected]