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Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape fame has just posted an article, no doubt inspired partly by his recent trip to China, about Getting Digital Files Home Safely. It contains some food for thought for digital shooters – how do you protect your files from accidental loss, theft, erasure, and equipment failure in the field?

Professional photographers know that clients accept no excuses. If you don’t deliver, you don’t get paid, and if you screw up badly enough, your future career can be in jeopardy.

While we’re on the subject of protecting your digital assets (and thus covering your real life asset!), The Tao of Backup is essential reading when planning your backup strategy. Don’t leave the safety of your data to chance – take control and make sure have a solid and reliable backup system.

Filed under: Asset Management,Business,Software
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DP Review is reporting that AgfaPhoto is likely to be closed down by the end of the year. Buy-out talks with UK company Photo-Me International fell through.

Filed under: Business
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Kodak ProPass is an online magazine for advanced amateur and professional photographers.

No matter what your passion, inspiration, or subject is, ProPass magazine will continue to deliver the content that will help you reach your artistic and your business goals. For the former, learn from the best via interviews with today’s hottest photographers spanning the spectrum from both the commercial and portrait/wedding fields. And when you’re in the market for new equipment and innovative solutions, our product reviews and announcements can help steer you in the right direction.

What’s in it for me?

Discounts and promotions. Access to our publication. Access to all areas of the ProPass website.The ability to learn from your peers through articles, case studies, and shared stories. Connection to photographers just like you through chat rooms, bulletin boards, and by attending seminars, trade shows, and members-only events. Unlimited access to our customer service area through a members-only online link.

Subscription is free, so sign up now and you’ll be notified of future updates.

Filed under: Business,Kodak,Photographers,Technique,Workflow
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While Mike Johnston’s article The K-1000 Of Digital SLRs discusses the Pentax *ist DS (quite possibly the dumbest-named camera ever), it’s not so much a technical review as an experiential review. He reminisces about many older Pentax products, and has some interesting points to make about Pentax’s unusual strategies through the years.

Well worth a read.

Filed under: Business,Pentax
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Pi Media is one of the biggest US commercial studios. They shoot the whole Sears catalog, among other clients.

The Pi Media Networks Tour article from The Luminous Landscape is a brief look around the Pi Media studio, and how the photographers go about their work. Interestingly, the studio has been all digital since way back in 1998.

The studio is massive – over 200,000 square feet of studio and post-production space. They employ 400 people, including 40 photographers and all the various tradespeople and professionals required to build sets, prepare models, design page layouts and prepare work for printing.

I particularly envy the standard setup that each photographer uses – a Hasselblad H1 with Phase One digital back, tethered to a cart carrying an Apple G5, Lacie monitor and Capture One software, all connected back to the servers via gigabit ethernet. That’s probably a years’ salary for most people!

Filed under: Business,Equipment,Technique,Workflow
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Konica Minolta and Sony have announced an agreement to jointly develop digital Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras. I can’t really tell from the press release whether they’re each developing their own line of bodies that share the Konica Minolta lens mount, or if they’re working together on a single line of DSLR body – it just says they “will begin joint development of advanced and feature-rich digital SLR cameras”.

You can read the press release at DPReview.

Filed under: Business,Konica Minolta,Sony
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Dan Heller has started shipping the first of his two books on running a photography business today, Profitable Photography in the Digital Age. This looks like a great book for professional photographers, ‘weekend warriors’, and those who’d just like to make a little scratch from their photography to help pay for all those lenses and gadgets.

Dan’s second book, How to Make Money with Digital Photography, will be released in September 2005. This one is more of a coffee table book, with lots of full-color images and a bit lighter content.

These are not how-to books on setting up and running a photo business of any one specific kind, or even an internet-based one. Instead, they help you understand how things work, so you can decide on which of various business approaches are right for you.

The two books together will set you back USD$39.90 (plus $10 shipping within the USA, $20 outside the USA) if you pre-order now. And if you pre-order, Dan will even autograph them for you.

Filed under: Books,Business
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Ending a century-old tradition, Eastman Kodak Co. will soon stop making black-and-white photographic paper, a niche product for fine-art photographers and hobbyists that is rapidly being supplanted by digital-imaging systems.

Source.

Kodak is really throwing its hat into the digital ring, trying to reverse its recent poor fortunes. This is probably a good move by them, allowing them to pursue newer technologies and not have to worry about fighting the inevitable downslide their B&W photographic paper business would have faced.

More and more people are now printing monochrome prints on inkjet printers. The quality and archivability of prints coming out of the latest generation of Epsons (such as the Epson Stylus Pro 4800) rivals high-end darkroom prints, with much less hassle, lower per-print cost, faster reproduction speed, and near-perfect repeatability.

Just as there are still people shooting and selling tintype photographs, there will always be people shooting and developing film and printing in their darkroom. It will become a niche artform, though, with mainstream photographers embracing the newer digital technologies.

Filed under: Business,Printers
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Kodak has confirmed that the DCS Pro SLR/n (Nikon mount) and DCS Pro SLR/c (Canon mount) digital SLRs have been discontinued. Apparently they’ll continue to provide support and firmware/software upgrades until 2008.

More details over at DPReview.

Filed under: Business
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It doesn’t look good for AgfaPhoto. After years of struggle, they’ve filed for insolvency. The AgfaPhoto group is a private group of companies owned by management, NannO Beteiligungsholding and a small number of financial investors.

Visit DPReview to read the AgfaPhoto press release.

Filed under: Business
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