Photokina news
I'm hard pressed to find any coverage of photokina that isnt exclusively digital, so this makes me rather curious too...It's like an E3 show where they only cover the Playstation (no other gamers among us? damn...)
I'm a bit tired as I write this, so it won't be long ..
I returned from Photokina to Paris on Sunday night and wrote a quite long report for the benefit of APUG forum readers yesterday (Monday) ... I posted the the thread under "Announcements". Upon clicking the "submit" icon I saw "must be reviewed by moderator" or something .. It's still not posted, which miffs me a bit, as I wrote some scoopy info, but that's spilt milk, I guess ... So, here goes again .. but shorter. .
Rollei not to be confused with Franke & Heidecke laid off a lot of workers
This news, heard Saturday last, is unconfirmed.
Franke & Heidecke showed their new Tele-Rollei with a 135mm f4 Tele-Xenar with a fantastic close-focus of 1.5 meters (the 1960s model was 2.6m !) and parallax correction via a sliding ground-glass. The company seems to be healthy, but I'm wishful and a fan!
Ilford is coming out with a "world's first" : an FB paper especially designed for digital printers. Also, a new selenium toner. Simon Galley was great.
Linhof has a new, modified Master 3000 whose bed drops down lower allowing the use of lenses as wide as 38mm without vignetting. Also, there's a new dial-knob in the bed to let you focus a lens when it's deep in the housing. Lastly, you can now remove the accessory shoe to mount the camera upside-down on a tripod and therefore have no bed at the bottom of the lens (so no lower vignetting).
For Linhof's panoramic Technorama, there's the 617s III with shift. The new shift adapter offering a pretty wide shift range of 28mm. The shift adater can be used with all existing Technoramas which accept interchangable lenses.
Also for the 617 there's a new Super-Symmar XL 110mm f5.6 (75° a.o.v.),
and a cleverly designed "lighthood" which, with an adapter, holds a Schneider 3x loupe against the ground glass and allows you to slide it along the whole width for focusing.
The Linhof M679, among several other things, has a new recessed lensboard which can take a 35mm f5.6 in a Copal and a new groundglass "s" which givves a full view of the 6x9 format and can be used with Linhof's repro system.
Kienzle Phototechnik (founded in 1879) has a neat, new print washer which has an option of introducing bubbles into the wash-stream. Reminder that they make arguably some of the best enlargers in the world and offer accessories for Focomat and Varioskop enlargers. The Focomat, if I have the story straight, was co-invented by Klatt and Kienzle . . .
Jürgen Heiland was showing his new VC head. Didn't have a chance to speak very long to him because there was a small crowd gathered around him, but the product looks quite nice and high quality, as do his densitometers and other products. I did notice a tray agitator that'll go onto my Christmas list. It looked to be an adaptation of the Heiland film-tank agitator. Great, time-saving product .. instead of leaning over the tray for two minutes, I could be exposing another print (after covering the developing tray, of course!).
Camera Bellows showed their extremely well-designed 4x5 DIY kit camera, the Bulldog. Is it well-made, too? You'll have to tell
us after
YOU assemble one!
Fotoman is coming out with their 612 D-Max, a multi-(medium)format camera allowing 6x4.5 up to 6x12, and right/left shift up to 25mm in each direction.
They also showed a new, cheaper helicoid focus mount and a much improved viewer.
Bergger has two new films (size 120, ISO 15 and ISO 100); an ecological paper developer called ECL; and BERFIX, a brand-new, unique and a
bit expensive fixer which Bergger chief, Guy Gerard, told me is "pH neutral, easier to wash out and, therefore safer" (in archival terms). Ironically, it's "specially designed" for PMK.
FotoImpex was there in full force with their large array of black & white products, including their popular Adox line. Even before the digital wave, they'd done alot to keep b&w products alive and in the mainstream. They've taken hard knocks from competitors and suppliers, so from the customer side of things I'd like to openly and unabashedly give them a plug: I hope you'll support this tiny company. They've supported us.
There. Hope this one gets posted before it becomes old news (unless it already is.. if so, sorry)
Cheers,
Christopher
.
