formats

Mamiya Digital Imaging and Leaf Imaging, two Phase One-controlled brands in the medium-format photography market, have become one.

With the new Mamiya Leaf brand, the two camera specialists will join product development and support activities, the companies said today.

Medium-format photography has been reshaped dramatically through the transition from film to digital. Using larger frames of film let photographers capture higher-quality imagery, but correspondingly large image sensors come at a much higher price.

Medium-format cameras traditionally came with removable camera backs, and Copenhagen-based Phase One and Tel Aviv-based Leaf make digital versions that would attach to camera bodies. Tokyo-based Mamiya … Read more

LAS VEGAS--True Beliebers never travel without signage materials, but what to do with the photos you take with JB here at CES?

Invest in the new Epson Artisan 1430 wide-format photo printer and you can print a personalized poster to bring to the next sighting.

Amateur photo enthusiasts and image professionals will both find the Artisan 1430 easy to use now that the printer is compatible with Epson Connect, a mobile app that lets users print directly from a variety of compatible iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and tablet devices.… Read more

Anyone with a digital camera knows how quickly the sheer number of photos on your hard drive can become completely unmanageable. Photo View is a simple program that lets users easily preview images and their properties. It's a handy tool to have if you need some help managing your image files.

The program's interface is simple and easy to navigate. Down the left side a tree hierarchy lets users navigate to images wherever they're stored. Select a folder and a pane along the bottom of the interface displays thumbnails of all of the images within. Clicking on … Read more

When describing Phase One's IQ180-based camera system, there are plenty of superlatives you could pick.

High resolution is one choice: the sensor captures 80-megapixel photos measuring 10,328 by 7,760 pixels.

Expensive is another obvious candidate: the IQ180 image sensor costs $43,990. Adding in the 645DF camera body and Schneider-Kreuznach's 80mm LS lens bumps the price to $47,990.

But the one that intrigued me the most was outstanding color.

Over two weeks shooting with the IQ180 and 645DF medium-format camera body, I was consistently impressed with the depth and subtlety of its images' color. As often as not it was the color, not the high resolution, that made me want to dive into the photos (having a high-gamut display helps a lot) and print posters. Skin tones look more alive and natural, and I found myself shooting to capture color much more than I usually do. … Read more

Ancestral Quest is genealogical research freeware that can search over 1 billion entries freely at FamilySearch as well as 500 million names, though that feature requires a free log-in ID. You can also upgrade to the paid version for access to more search options. However, the free tool offers a lot.

Ancestral Quest's installer let us opt for free or paid searches, something that happened frequently while using the freeware version, though that's why it's free. The setup also gave us the option to search Ancestry.com (though a subscription may be required) and make other choices. … Read more

Google launched WebP to outdo JPEG. Now a new version is designed to take on another dominant graphics format on the Web, PNG.

WebP is based on the open-source compression technology used in Google's WebM video encoding technology, and with it, Google hopes to reduce Web page file sizes and thereby speed up the Net. There are plenty of challenges for the technology, but Google just made WebP a bit more competitive through the addition of two major features.

First is a "lossless" compression option that can image data without loss of fidelity. Second is support for … Read more

iFFmpeg is a free, easy-to-use front-end for the powerful--and also free--command line tool FFmpeg, which lets you easily convert media files between different formats. (Note that you must also download an FFmpeg binary to use iFFmpeg, but the developer's Web site has simple, drag-and-drop instructions for doing so.)

The iFFmpeg interface is straightforward enough for even beginners to use, with a sparse menu bar that lets you add a file to convert, or preview, start, or merge files. You can also look at FFmpeg binary information, choose a codec (from an almost overwhelming array, from basics like AVI, MOV, … Read more

The Firefox certificate manager displays data about your security certificates. Cert Viewer Plus is a free Firefox add-on that enhances the certificate manager with the ability to display PEM file data. It also adds a direct link to the certificate manager from the Tools menu as well as a keyboard shortcut.

Cert Viewer Plus installs normally. We opened the add-ons manager in Firefox, accessed Cert Viewer's page, and clicked Options. The add-on's options are minimal and involve configuring the PEM window view. The page also contained some useful information about the add-on, a Wen link, and a screenshot. … Read more

AkelPad is designed to be a fast, lightweight, open-source alternative to Notepad as the default text editor in Windows or as an integrated text editor in a third-party app like Total Commander. It's built specifically to correct some of Notepad's shortcomings when editing plain text files, especially code. It doesn't support other file types such as RTF files.

AkelPad's installer gave us three options: Standard installation, integration with Total Commander, and replacing WordPad. Since we'd planned to try AkelPad as our default text editor anyway, we chose the WordPad replacement, which automatically restores WordPad as … Read more