Squeezing the last life out of the Kodak Photo CD
September 30, 2009 by Juergen Specht · Leave a Comment
In 2000, almost one year after I completely switched to a 100% digital workflow I thought it makes sense to digitize the tens of thousands of slides I accumulated over the years.
The state of the art in 2000 was the Kodak Photo CD format, so I took roughly 1000 of my slides into a shop and asked them to scan them for me.
It took more than a week and as I got the results back, I was rather disappointed. The lab did an awful job, lots of dust on the slides (which I kept very clean), highlights very often so overexposed that the image could not be used and practically all of them were badly aligned. After this experience I gave up and just made sure my slides and negatives will be stored save and secure until I can make another try.
A few days ago I found these 9 year old Kodak Photo CDs again and tried to open them on my Mac, but it proved difficult. At first I tried it with Photoshop CS4, but this was not working anymore. Kodak’s web site was not very helpful, they only stated that the format is now obsolete and undocumented.
The best information I found came from Ted’s Unofficial Kodak Photo CD Homepage and after some more research I tried to open them with the GraphicConverter, but it crashed that often, I gave up. A command line utility called PCDtoJPEG was working better, but the quality of the conversion was rather bad, so I also gave up. I tried some other tools and was about to start using Windows for the conversion, then I realized that iPhoto – which I never used before – had no problems at all to import the CDs.
All I had to do was to insert a CD, open iPhoto and click “Import”.
It imported them flawlessly in the highest quality and with the correct colors…
…but I also found a cosmetical bug in iPhoto. After the import was done, I expected that the button says “Start Import” for the next import, however the text said “Stop Import”, even if I clicked it, it actually started the import.
After importing all files, I exported them to TIFF files to avoid JPG compression losses. Perfect, I am surprised that it was that easy. But I am sure a few years into the future, the Kodak Photo CD format will be totally forgotten and the Photo CDs will be nothing more than a piece of junk.
Chinese Photo Magazines are full of warnings
September 30, 2009 by Juergen Specht · Leave a Comment
Whenever I go to a different country, I try to buy a local photo magazine. Even usually I cannot read it, they are pretty interesting to look at. On my last trip to China, I bought a magazine which seem to be named “Photographer Companion“…
…the interesting part in this magazine was the fact that over several pages they warned of counterfeit products and how to make sure you buy a real product by the maker of your choice.
For example they explained that you should make a cross check between the cameras box, the guaranty card and the body of the camera to compare that the serial number matches…
…and – if you buy a Nikon camera – that your charger should say “Nikon” and not “Nakon”.
Interesting, only in China…
Photographers I like: Satoko Hashimoto
September 29, 2009 by Juergen Specht · 6 Comments
There are so many absolute fabulous photographers here in Japan which still have no web site, so they are practically unknown outside of Japan. I decided to start a series of introductions to some of these photographers and their projects.
Satoko Hashimoto is one of these photographers. She did such an impressive, unusual project which cumulated into one of the best exhibitions I ever saw. The project is called 蝸 (translated as “Snail Shell”) and shows the inside of the huts of homeless people living in Tokyo’s Ueno Park.
Satoko Hashimoto in her exhibition titled 蝸. Photo by Ako Specht.
But how she was able to get these pictures is even more impressive.
With meteors falling from the sky Skorj and I took cover under an abandoned boat.
September 29, 2009 by Juergen Specht · Leave a Comment
Skorj, probably one of the best photographers living in Japan today, left one of his polaroids in my car.
Looking at it after some days again, I’ve got a strange foreboding that meteors might be hitting Tokyo.
Girls Gone Wild at the Girls Ground Wrestling event
September 28, 2009 by Juergen Specht · 1 Comment
This innocent passport lead my cameras and me to a very entertaining and cute evening…
The last dance of the giant spider
September 27, 2009 by Juergen Specht · Leave a Comment
Today was the last day of the “La Machine” installation in Yokohama. The giant spider is a brainchild of the French performance group also called “La Machine” and was lent to Japan for their 150th anniversary of the 1859 opening of the Port of Yokohama.
A long time ago I worked with the Mutoid Waste Company as they branched out to Berlin, so I have a sweet spot for huge hydraulic machines, they are just so incredible. While La Machine and Mutoid Waste Company are not connected, they are brothers in mind. I wonder why I waited until the very last day to see this performance, but at least I made it and it was absolutely worth it.
Things I cannot explain…
September 27, 2009 by Juergen Specht · 4 Comments
Sometimes I shoot photos I simply cannot explain. This one must come straight from “The Exorcist” set…
Mini Article about my exhibition
September 25, 2009 by Juergen Specht · Leave a Comment
The magazine “PhotoStage” wrote a mini-review about my recent exhibition at Place M.
Its not really that interesting to translate, but he liked this series best, because he was so impressed that the entire set was made out of 600 balloons and 600 rubber gloves filled with styrofoam balls and took a week to make.
The magazine that wasn’t meant to be
September 25, 2009 by Juergen Specht · Leave a Comment
While looking through my stuff, I found the zero edition of a magazine named “Onnatachi“.
Onnatachi is Japanese and means “women”.
The magazine never saw the light of the day, but it was planned to be a portrait magazine about (but not only for) women. The concept was rather unusual, the magazine was planned to be kept in black & white and it contained very little text. Basically just a portrait magazine. The photo above shows the first printed mockup, which I got because their photo editor selected me to shoot portraits of (you can guess already) 3 women for the first real magazine.
Armed with this mockup and model releases, I selected 3 interesting women and shot nice portraits of them. The editor liked my photos and then nothing happened. After some months I asked them again about the magazine and they decided to change the title. Then nothing happened. The next information I got was that they now want to print the magazine in color, which made my black & white portraits rather obsolete. Then nothing happened for a while until I heard that the magazine got postponed.
And this was basically at the end of 2007…so I guess its save to say that this magazine never will be published. Sad! I liked the concept!
Haikyo: exploring abandoned Japan | Japan Pulse
September 24, 2009 by Juergen Specht · Leave a Comment
The new blog “Japan Pulse” just published the article Haikyo: exploring abandoned Japan and show (with permission) one of my pictures of my trip to Gunkanjima back in 2004.
Random Images
