The markets for scanners and digital cameras are currently travelling in polar opposite directions. The use of scanners is abating, only finding popularity in only a few niche areas, whereas the digital camera has taken over many of the scanners’ functions and is increasingly being purchased for every kind of professional use.
Dina Goldwasser, product communications manager for scanners at Kodak’s Digital Capture Group, says: “In recent years, the pre-press market has become saturated, and we find that most of our scanner sales are replacing older high-performance professional drum scanners.”
Despite this, Goldwasser says, Kodak continues to develop its scanners to maintain the highest performance and quality, and has recently found a new market in museums, schools and libraries that are using scanners to digitalise and archive large amounts of data, while retaining colour and image quality.
Maximum resolution
According to Hasselblad marketing manager Ben Boswell, there was a huge leap last year in the maximum resolution for single shot digital capture. He explains: “The 39-mega-pixel products have left previous benchmark products in their wake.”
Hasselblad has increased its focus on integrated cameras, rather than digital backs, which allow the camera, back and lens all to communicate with software. “One of the benefits of this is that our new 28mm lens incorporates software corrections in its design, so that the lens produces distortion-free and crisper images from raw data,” Boswell says. Hasselblad claims that the image quality of the H3D is close to what was previously expected from a 10x8in camera.
Dov Kalinski, general manager of Leaf, a division of Kodak GCG, cites new workflow applications as the biggest development in the camera market. “With Apple and Adobe introducing new offerings, photographers now have more possibilities to process the raw files they work with,” he says.
Kalinski sees the future of digital photography moving forward in several ways. “Integrated solutions, where specially designed lenses are married with large-sensor digital camera backs, create the most advanced capture solution available,” he explains. Camera speeds and memory are improving, and larger display screens, such as the one on Apple’s iPhone, are becoming available and will soon filter through to cameras.
WHAT'S NEW IN... DIGITAL CAMERAS AND SCANNERS
• In January, Hasselblad launched the H3D-31 DSLR camera. The 31 mega-pixel version of the HD-39 features near full-frame capture and has a capture rate of 1.2 seconds per image in either its mobile or tethered mode. It can store files of up to 190mb and uses 7.2 micron pixels
• Lastra Imaging will soon be adding a new camera to its digital range. The Sinarback eVolution 75H is a tethered, actively cooled multi-shot camera. Developed by Sinar in partnership with JenOptik, the 33-million-pixel camera also has display controls and memory allowing high transfer rates, higher speeds and quality images
• During 2006, Leaf introduced a new line of digital camera backs; Leaf Aptus S-Series. This included the Leaf Aptus 75S (31 megapixels), the Leaf Aptus 65S (28 megapixels) and the Leaf Aputs 54s (22 megapixels)
• Last July, OTM launched a service that allows customers to create their own personalised photo albums. Print My Album utilises OTM’s iGen3 presses as well as web-based technology developed with Dutch firm My Photo Fun
