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"Software Update doesn’t have any new software for your computer at this time.”

Okay, so as I write this there is no new Raw Support yet, for those of us waiting patiently or otherwise for an update to Leopard that lets us use Aperture with our new cameras or for an update to Aperture itself, which we all can sense is imminent.

So I thought I would take our minds off our workflow troubles and talk about some other exciting news in the world of things photographic.

Did you see the article in the New York Times by Randy Kennedy, about Robert Capa’s lost negatives? Apparently, they are found.

(Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)

“To the small group of photography experts aware of its existence, it was known simply as ‘the Mexican suitcase.’ And in the pantheon of lost modern cultural treasures, it was surrounded by the same mythical aura as Hemingway’s early manuscripts, which vanished from a train station in 1922.The suitcase — actually three flimsy cardboard valises — contained thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa, one of the pioneers of modern war photography, took during the Spanish Civil War before he fled Europe for America in 1939, leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom. Capa assumed that the work had been lost during the Nazi invasion, and he died in 1954 on assignment in Vietnam still thinking so.”

I’m currently on the faculty at ICP, the school Robert Capa’s younger brother and renowned photographer himself, Cornell Capa founded more than 50 years ago as an institution to keep the legacy of 'Concerned Photography' alive. There was quite a buzz about this amazing find. Among the nearly 4000 negatives, there are also negs belonging to Capa’s German-born partner and photographer, Gerda Taro, and David "Chim" Seymour, who later became a founding partner with Capa and others of the Magnum photo agency.

There has long been the controversy swirling around Capa's famous 1936 "falling man" picture showing a soldier at the apparent moment he was hit by a fatal bullet. Many thought this image was possibly faked, in an era when setting up and posing action photos was going on. ICP Curator Brian
Wallis and Capa’s late biographer Richard Whelan both agree that the picture is authentic; but if that negative is in this collection it may end the controversy by looking at the frames before and after that decisive moment. There is even some doubt whether Capa himself had made the frame.

Stay tuned. There’s a lot more work from Robert Capa to come.
Of course the question needs to be asked. How would your digital collection of RAW images hold up after being misplaced for 70 years? That’s a whole other blog post.

You can see and zoom in on the box of negs here, even read the notes handwritten by Capa’s darkroom manager Imre Weisz. Also, check out the slideshow.and article in Newsday.

Exciting Stuff

I’m not at PMA this year, but if I was I would probably be at the blackjack table gambling to win money to buy all the new great stuff that is being announced there.

The Sigma DP1
The little camera that could…deliver big quality?

The DP1 is the first truly compact camera to have a full size DSLR, a 14 megapixel Foveon Sensor inside it’s small body. Sigma has announced that this first of its kind camera will be out in the spring, but no pricing was released. I know I’m not the only shooter out there that has wondered why no one else has tried this before.

I suppose the market for the DP1 may not be big in comparison to the traditional digital market, but I often wondered why the big pro companies wouldn’t toss out something like this to keep it’s high end users an uncompromising alternative to stick in their pockets.

Big Chip

The other exciting announcement for me is the new Sony 24.81 Megapixel CMOS sensor, targeted for mass production in 2008. I’m hoping the rumored Nikon D3X may be the camera that will incorporate some incarnation of this new technology from Sony.

Not that I’m unhappy with my 12 megapixel D300 or D2X, they are beautiful cameras and take amazing photographs I have blown up big. But I’m working on a project better suited to a medium format sensor for really, really big prints.

I wonder what we will all be using in five short years from now, and how this technological revolution in digital photography will change the photography itself.