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There are few truly magical names in camera design but Carl Zeiss is certainly one of them. The brand conjures up an image of optical perfection and cameras built to a standard, not a price point. Back in the 1950s, when I was dancing on TV's Buddy Deane Show and dreaming of making photographs with a camera that was more precise, more German, than my Argus C3, Zeiss Ikon...

An educator since the early 1960s, Jerry Uelsmann began assembling his photographs from multiple negatives decades before digital tools like Photoshop were available. Using as many as seven enlargers to expose a single print, his darkroom skills allowed him to create evocative images that combined the realism of photography and the fluidity of our dreams.

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It's not the tools that capture the images; it's the photographer's vision that does the job. Nonetheless, here I am at the annual hardware orgy that is PMA, where smiling PR people try to put the best possible spin on the organized chaos that is the photo industry. Everyone has realized that digital imaging is not just another version of the widely...

Aimed squarely at the first-time D-SLR user, and especially at those family and social photographers who have been frustrated by their digicam's bothersome shutter lag, the Nikon D40 is a compact camera that still holds enough features to satisfy budding photographers. At a mere 1 lb, 1 oz and 5x2.5x3.7" in size, the camera will feel small to those who have worked with...

The moment you take the eagerly anticipated Leica M8 in your hands you know that the design engineers at Leica have gone to great lengths to preserve the look and feel of perhaps the greatest 35mm rangefinder camera of all time, the legendary M-series Leica that debuted in 1954 as the original M3 and continues as the classic retro MP and autoexposure M7. The M8 retains the classic...

The first Panasonic D-SLR, the Lumix DMC-L1 is a product of an alliance with Olympus, since it employs, according to the company, some "jointly developed technologies and components." In fact, this camera shares many attributes with the Olympus EVOLT E-330, including the lens mount, Supersonic Wave sensor dust removal system, and Panasonic's Four Thirds format...

This would appear to be a new golden age for rangefinder users. There are now three major systems (Leica, Voigtländer, and Zeiss) and two minor (Epson and Rollei). All use the same cross-compatible lens mount, for which an extensive and excellent range of lenses is available, and all compete with one another, albeit at different price points. Who could have imagined this...