Images from Shawn Barnett's review testing        

In the April 2005 issue of Professional Photographer, Shawn Barnett reviews the Olympus E-300 EVOLT digital SLR. While Barnett was impressed with the image quality from the EVOLT's 8-megapixel CCD sensor, he did note that the ESP and center-weighted metering modes left something to be desired.

Here you can download several of Barnett's full-resolution images from the Olympus E-300 EVOLT.

Download the Olympus E-300 EVOLT review from Professional Photographer.

Responsive Maxxum 7D exceeds expectations

By Ron Eggers

Once in a while, something lives up to the promotional hype and exceeds expectations. That's the case with the new Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D digital SLR.

The Maxxum 7D is the first digital SLR of the Konica Minolta brand, although there were two previous models from Minolta: the oversized, overweight 1-megapixel RD-175, released when 1 megapixel was still high resolution imaging; and the boxy, awkward 2.7-megapixel DiMAGE RD 3000.

The RD-175 used 35mm Minolta camera lenses; the RD 3000 took lenses designed for Minolta’s Vectis APS SLRs. I shot with both extensively. The image quality was good, particularly for the 3000. But lacking in ergonomics, these models didn't catch on with serious photographers, and Minolta pulled out of the digital SLR race. At that, some Minolta film camera users who were on the brink of going digital shelved the idea, and others switched their entire Minolta system for digital SLRs and lenses from another manufacturer.

Dreams really do come true

By Kevin Ames

When Wacom introduced the Intuos3 Professional Pen Tablet last September, I was truly impressed. I’m a longtime Wacom Intuos and Cintiq 18SX user. The Intuos3 had me drooling. I asked, “Wouldn’t it be cool—I mean really cool—to have an Intuos3 style Cintiq?”

The Wacom folks smiled, nodded their heads and agreed it would indeed be cool. I wrote a glowing review of the Intuos3 for Professional Photographer magazine while dreaming of a color calibrate-able LCD panel with Express Keys, Touch Strips and a bigger screen—at a lower price. (I was dreaming, remember?) I could see myself flying through Photoshop projects, pleasing clients in record time and making some serious coin. It was a very good dream.

Rarely does reality surpass dreams in pure enjoyment and satisfaction. When it does, though, it's stunning. And stunning is just one of a long list of adjectives that inadequately describe the Wacom Cintiq 21UX. It’s that close to being perfect. To fully appreciate this amazing tablet, you have to work with it yourself.

Performance Report: I want it
By Joan T. Sherwood
Ten days with a Nikon D2X is not enough. In fact, it's a cruel tease. I did not want to give my loaner back to Nikon. Ellis Vener, who files the complete Pro Review for the June issue of Professional Photographer, feels the same way.
Sometimes I describe software as deep, meaning there's a lot to discover and probably dozens of features you'll never get around to using. The Nikon D2X as a digital SLR is similarly deep. With all of its features, I didn't get close to exploring everything. But there were many aspects that truly impressed me, with either sheer technical improvement or plain practical sense.

Souders Studios is a commercial house of photography in Denver, Colo. Rick Souders' food and beverage imagery appears worldwide in advertising print campaigns, cookbooks, annual reports, and the Internet. His most recent book is "The Art and Attitude of Commercial Photography" (Amphoto Books). To see more of Souders' work, go to www.soudersstudios.com.

Download the original article from Professional Photographer.

April 25, 2005: OpenRAW Web site confronts issues crucial to quality digital photography and archiving of photographic images

The OpenRAW Working Group launched a website today at http://www.OpenRAW.org designed to solve issues crucial to the future of photography.

Digital technology is revolutionizing the photography industry, and an emerging part of that technology is the set of RAW camera file formats. Most professional photographers prefer using RAW image capture because it offers the highest quality and the greatest creative control.

The grass roots OpenRAW group arose out of photographers' frustration with camera manufacturers' refusal to openly document their proprietary RAW file formats. That lack of file format information inhibits innovation, limits image processing choices, and endangers the long-term accessibility of millions of photographs. The goal of the new website is to obtain complete documentation by manufacturers of their RAW file formats.

"Our primary strategy is to educate the public and the manufacturers," said Juergen Specht, the Japan-based German photographer who is spearheading the OpenRAW group. Specht also founded the highly regarded D1scussion mailing list for Nikon dSLR photographers, and hosts a similar 1Dscussion group for Canon photographers. Specht continued, "Once photographers understand what's at stake, and once digital camera manufacturers understand how their profitability will be enhanced by the release of the RAW file format specifications, our goals will be realized."