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I’m a Nikon photographer. I wasn’t always, I first started with a Canon AE-1. Unfortunately, that camera was stolen with my car and I had to decide what to replace it with. For me, the Nikon’s selling point was the interchangability of its lenses and cameras. I knew that my new camera could work with a 30 year old lens. This modularity was quite the selling point.

Over the years I’ve purchased several Nikon cameras and lenses and have been quite happy. I even purchased the digital D70, but returned it. I’m a film person at this point. I won’t buy a digital SLR until Nikon releases an affordable digital SLR with a sensor the same size as 35mm film. Lens’ characteristics are directly proportional to the size of the film plane. That is why your wide angle lens no longer seems like a wide angle when you put it on your new Digital SLR.

But the world of photography is changing. People are shooting less film and opting for their digital cameras more often. Pretty soon, film camera photographers will be scouting film and relishing their uniqueness like a vinyl-lovin music collector brags about the latest indie 10″.

Nikon calling it quits

Not completely. Nikon has announced they will discontinue all but their top and bottom of line film cameras and all but their most classic film camera based lenses. Digital cameras are now 95% of their business and they don’t need these other things in the way.

As the film camera market shrinks and the popularity of compact digital cameras increases, demand for products that offer advanced features and extra value is continuing to grow. High performance digital SLR cameras are performing well as users shift from film-based SLR cameras or upgrade from compact digital cameras to digital SLR cameras.

As a result of the new strategy Nikon will discontinue production of all lenses for large format cameras and enlarging lenses with sales of these products ceasing as soon as they run out of stock. This also applies to most of our film camera bodies, interchangeable manual focus lenses and related accessories. Although Nikon anticipates that the products will still be in retail distribution up to Summer 2006.

Nikon press release

If you are in the market for a film camera, buy it now. They promise tehir service will continue . This makes me want to treat my cameras with kid gloves now that they are no longer a permanent fixture.

Konica-Minolta has also announced they are quitting the entire photography world and selling their remaining digital goodies to Sony.  Fuji says they are continuing to make film.  Long live Velvia!

Microsoft has just announced IE7 will handle the select input as a modern browser should. It will now allow developers to use z-index to avoid overlapping and perhaps more artistic forms. Søren Madsen put together the utopia of form design, something every designer should look at and dream of possibilities.

SELECT element in IE7 – An Overview

In IE6, the HTML SELECT element was implemented through the Windows Shell ListBox and Combobox controls. Some key features were missing in the old version of the SELECT element, such as proper support for z-index, TITLE support, and zoom. Web developers had to write complex CSS and scripts to workaround these issues.

In IE7 however, we re-implemented the SELECT element to make IE7 more standards-compliant. This new version does not use any Shell controls any more. In fact, it is implemented totally through the MSHTML framework, including styling, UI interaction, and rendering. Thus the SELECT element in IE7 is more of an HTML element than the former legacy control.

IEBlog

Form design is frustrating.

Form elements are up to the browser for final presentation unless you get into some tricky CSS and JS solutions and those are not necessarily cross-browser solutions. One particular problem I’ve experienced was with the nicetitles javascript that creates a nice popup box with the text of a title attribute on hover. I tried to use this on an insurance quote form to give the visitor better feedback on what was needed. IE6 would place the inputs on top of the popup window. I then tried moving the popup farther to the side to avoid this and that just looked hokey. So, I gave up on the idea. It would be interesting to test this now with IE7.

I’m also intrigued by the ability to use the title attribute on the select object. Normally, I would place the title on the label. However there may be times when the visual design requires hiding the label. Placing a title on the select would be a great way of letting people know the page may refresh or whatever action the select box leads to.

With rumors floating of an IE7 Beta2 developer release within a few weeks, we should begin looking for pages to test these new attributes on.

I’m a sucker for good modern design. This knock-off has me drooling for a bit of fun in the kitchen. It’s made with tootsie-roll pops, a salt container, and a clock mechanism. I wonder if I could build a nice Barcelona chair with little debbie brownies and a few spatulas?

I went to school with a great photographer, Satoru Yoshioka. During his shoots, he would open his polaroid film, look at it under the light to see how the shot looked and then set it on the counter for later. Afterwards, we’d sit around and look at his images and try to figure out how he got such unique images.

We (other Palomar students) finally figured out the light was solarizing his negatives (re-exposing the semi-processed negative or print transforms shadows to highlights and other unpredictable effects). So, naturally, we began doing more and more of this. I got to the point where I process the negative for about 30-45 seconds, pull it apart, and hold it under a very bright light until it begins smoking. Then I close up the halves and let it dry. The negative will be solarized and the chemistry will dry and leave a texture to the film.

I’ve begun adding my photographs to Flickr and my Polaroid images are drawing the most attention. It’s gratifying to know the area of your art that you most enjoy is the part that others most enjoy. It reminds me Bjork’s best of compilation. She let her fans choose which songs to include and she was pleased to see it wasn’t necessarily her top 10 songs but her more artistic that made the cut.

One image, Tim Box, has been getting some great comments over the past week. Tim was a great artist that I met while volunteering for AIDS Art Alive in San Diego. There is an honesty to this image as Tim stares directly at the viewer.