Digital camera shift taps bigger market

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Professional photographers who have not yet moved to the digital system have been warned that they risk losing increasing market share.

Visiting digital photography expert Hans Koch, chairman of Swiss digital camera manufacturer Sinar, said more than 50 per cent of professional photographic images worldwide were now produced digitally, but they were taken by only 20 per cent of photographers.

Mr Koch said digital photographers were able to exploit this burgeoning demand because their productivity was higher.

"Not only can they deliver the finished transparency but they also deliver the input data for the printed page, which naturally has more value in it."

Sinar, which has produced large format cameras since 1948, now produces high-end digital camera backs and lenses. Its digital camera kits retail at between $44,000 and $90,000.

David Batchelor, managing director of Morningside-based Euroco Distributors, Sinar's New Zealand agent, said local professional photographers were aware of the digital opportunity.

High costs were a problem, he said, but they were falling.

Mr Batchelor said photographers were also coming under pressure from advertising agencies, which were increasingly demanding digital files.

Mr Koch said digital cameras had now surpassed conventional cameras for most applications.

"I think the technology today is at the stage where anyone who is looking at a camera for private or professional use, for fun or for serious purposes - the choice can only be digital."

He believed that the criteria used to judge a professional camera could equally well be applied to consumer models.

Sinar's cameras featured resolutions of between four and 19 megapixels, but resolution was only one aspect of about 10 on which a digital camera should be judged.

Mr Koch said a resolution of at least three megapixels was required for reasonable quality images, but other factors such as the choice of lens could be more important.

"Resolution is the aspect that everyone seizes on just like the engine capacity of a car, but just as important is contrast. We can capture the equivalent of 11 aperture stops, which is twice as much as chemical filters.

"The range of colours we can record on a digital are more faithful to nature than chemical processes."

Software that converted a Red/Green/Blue (RGB) camera image to the printing colours Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black (CMYK) was also critical.

"This software is rather like the chemical development of the film, except that it now takes place in the digital data."

Also worth considering were lens optics, general engineering and information technology as represented by the software provided.