Fotoviva Art Prints

Ten of the pioneering photos of snowflake crystals that American farmer Wilson Bentley began taking more than a century ago are to be sold in New York.

Wilson A Bentley (1865-1931) is thought to be the first photographer to capture images of single snowflakes on camera. He made thousands of the jewel-like prints, and came to the conclusion that no two snowflakes were the same. This concept caught the public imagination and he published other articles in magazines, including National Geographic, Nature (Journal), Popular Science and the Scientific American. His photographs have been requested by academic institutions worldwide. Bentley poetically described snowflakes as “tiny miracles of beauty” and snow crystals as “ice flowers.”

His photomicrography technique involved a microscope and a bellows camera. Snowflake expert Kenneth Libbrecht said the photos did not meet modern standards because of the “crude equipment” Bentley used.

“But he did it so well that hardly anybody bothered to photograph snowflakes for almost 100 years,” Mr Libbrecht added. He perfected a process of catching flakes on black velvet in such a way that their images could be captured before they melted.

Ironically, Bentley caught pneumonia in a blizzard and died just weeks after the publication of his book Snow Crystals.

Chicago art gallery owner Carl Hammer is selling them along with 16 of Bentley’s winter scenes at an antiques show at New York’s American Folk Art Museum.

“They’re remarkably beautiful,” said Mr Hammer.

“There are imperfections on the outer edges of the image itself and on the paper, but the images themselves are quite spectacular.”

Bentley, who was known as The Snowflake Man, wrote in 1925: “Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others.

“Every crystal was a masterpiece of design, and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost.”

Bentley also photographed all forms of ice and natural water formations including clouds and fog. He was the first American to record raindrop sizes and was one of the first cloud physicists.

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Fujifilm has announced the release of Wunderbars, billed as “a revolutionary framing system for canvas prints”. Wunderbars offers a new way to create canvas prints – quickly, easily and without the need for specialist tools, Fujifilm says. Each frame has a sprung pin mechanism which automatically stretches the canvas and ensures it remains under constant tension.

Wunderbars’ constant tension stretcher bars are even easier to construct than normal stretched canvas prints. Wunderbars are precision machined so there is no need to measure the frame to get it square or  hit the frame with a mallet to keep it square during stretching, it will always remain square.

The Wunderbars system is touted as a natural progression from traditional stretcher bars and has been developed for photographers and framers from the hobbyist right up to the production canvas framer.

The wood used for Wunderbars is Tulip wood which, unlike pine, is a hard wood with a top quality look and feel. It’s a heavyweight timber with very little knotting. It helps give the completed frame a top quality professional feel. Wunderbars ticks all the environmental boxes too – the wood comes from sustainable sources and it is possible to reset and reuse a frame. FSC wood does cost a little bit more but not so much as to affect a purchasing decision. FSC wood comes from sustainable forests which help protect wildlife and the environment.

Wunderbars canvas frames come in packs of four in a range of sizes from 8inch to 48inch which will limit the canvas print sizes you can offer, but for most people this will be a good starter. It will be interesting to see if photographers try this system or continue to use established canvas printers such as ourselves. Obviously you still need a large canvas printer in the first place to print onto the canvas material. You then have the packaging costs to factor in, not to mention your time taken creating the canvas.

Full marks to Fujifilm though for trying something new. What do you think about the Wunderbars? Will you use them yourself or would you rather not get involved in the canvas printing side of things?

Toshiba, one of the leading innovators in NAND flash memory technologies has announced the launch of the world’s first 64GB SDXC Memory Card.

The new card is compliant with the new SD Memory Standard, Ver. 3.00. Toshiba also extended its industry leadership in memory card solutions by unveiling 32GB and 16GB SDHC Memory Cards compliant with the world’s fastest data transfer rate.

The new SDXC and SDHC Memory Cards are the world’s first compliant with the SD Memory Card Standard Version 3.00, UHS104, which brings a new level of ultra-fast read and write speeds to NAND flash based memory cards: a maximum write speed of 35MB per second, and a read speed of 60MB per second.

The combination of large storage capacities and increased data transfer rates will meet the needs of a wide range of consumer electronics applications such as digital still cameras and digital camcorders that require high bandwidth data communication. For us photographers this means digital SLR cameras will be able to shoot longer continuous bursts in the highest quality RAW format. Similarly, with these cards, it will be possible to download a 2.4GB video in only 70 seconds.

The SDXC card is the next-generation standard defined by the SD Association in January 2009. The new standard applies to cards with capacities over 32GB and up to 2TB, compared to the SDHC standard, which applies to cards with capacities over 2GB and up to 32GB.

The high level specifications and wide range of memory cards announced by Toshiba will further open the way for developers to bring applications to future generations of consumer products. By further enhancing its SD Memory Card lineups with larger capacity and a higher data transfer rate, Toshiba will continue to meet market demand and to lead the NAND flash memory market.