Very few labs in the US process any of these films. I still shoot a lot of Fuji Velvia for my nature impression photography along with some Agfa Scala. I get these processed at Duggals (New York City). They are one of the best & processes reversal films are a very reasonable price.

But for the most part chromes are coming to an end. The Kodak 400BWCN, though rated consumer grade, is quite good, but will never be able to replace the situations where the Tri-X have stood its ground.

The Kodak400BWCN has its own appeal – especially if you are shooting portraits, with a soft, misty texture & a sublime lighting, but I have never been able to reproduce any impressionistic image on this film.

The Agfa Scala is the hardest to process. At its prime in 2005 we had only 4 Agfa Scala processing labs in the US & now it is reduced to 2! Agfa has not announced its plans to either continue or discontinue the Agfa Scala, though there are rumors that it would disappear any day.

I still have over 5000 slide images, mostly impressions & nature pictures, yet to be scanned & digitized. And I still have a few dozen of Velvia’s in stock. It would not be for another few months that I will start worrying about where to look for film again!

The D700 was built on the success of the Nikon D3 professional D-SLR camera, the D700 offers pro-level performance and an extensive array of features and innovations.

A few of the newer improvements, mentioned in the press release, on the Nikon D700 includes:

• large pixel size of 8.45 µm allows for an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio
  wide dynamic exposure range
• 12-channel readout enables accelerated information transfer
• shoots 8fps at full image resolution
• ISO range from 200-6400 but can be expanded to range from ISO 100 (Lo-1) to 25,600 (Hi-2)
• Nikon’s first self-cleaning system designed for the FX-format sensor with 4 distinct vibration frequencies
• Nikon’s Scene Recognition System
• enhance their pictures during or after capture with the Picture Control System and Active D-Lighting
• 2 live view modes

The Nikon D700 is sold at for USD 2,999.

The rumors about Nikon D700 suddenly picked up a couple of weeks back with pictures & news running all over the internet. The stories mainly came in from Chinese websites. But UK was the first to make a sensible announcement with a date & a specs list. Although the prices have been taken down to avoid confusion, the news of Nikon D700 news is now holding back potential Nikon D300 buyers.

Here is a snapshot of the UK shop announcing the arrival of Nikon D700 for sale.

You can check the prices on Digital Depot website by the first week of July. The specs released by Nikon to another UK retailer mentions that the Nikon D700 is a hybrid of the Nikon D300 & the costlier Nikon D3. It also mentions that the new Nikon D700 is a 12.1 mega pixels full frame camera.

Here are the other features released to some of the reputed UK retailers:

• 36×23,9mm CMOS sensor FX format 12,1mp effective
• RGB Color filter array, build in low pass filter
• EXPEED processor, 14-bit
• NEF, NEF+jpeg, TIFF, Jpeg file formats
• Auto crop when using DX lenses. All other lenses usable.
• 51 point AF, 15 cross type sensors
• Live view mode
• 3D Colormatrix II metering modes
• ISO 100 – 25600
• CF card slot FAT32
• Accu and grip same as MB-D10 (from D300)

Nikon is yet to come out with a press release, but shops in UK believes that it will happen sometime on July 1 2008. And most of them have already started to stake in orders for the new Nikon D700. You can also order your Nikon D700 here at the danish dealer Photografica.

For a price list released by Photografica earlier & now removed, see post on Journal Image.