21 Chromogenic Black-and-White Films Ilford's XP1 400 and Agfa's Vario-XL started it, and today there are five chromogenic black-and-white films: Ilford's third-generation XP2 400, Kodak's Black & White + 400, Professional Portra 400BW and T-Max T400 CN, and Konica's Monochrome VX 400. These ISO 400 films utilize color-print-film technology, producing negatives consisting of dye rather than metallic silver, after processing in standard C-41 color-print-film chemicals. You get excellent B&W negatives with images exposed from EI 50-800 on the same roll, and can have your film processed in an hour by any color-print film lab. The negatives print easily with any type of enlarger, and scan much better than conventional black-and-white negatives.

22 Other Photo Software Besides image-editing programs, there are also programs that make it easy to keep track of your digital photos (such as ACDSee), programs that make it easy to design and implement your own Web pages, video-editing software that lets you turn out pro-quality videos, special-effects software than lets you do just about anything, 3-D software, panorama-stitching software, image-framing software, album software and much more. Today, such programs combine with the image-editing software to make your computer a vital tool in your photographic arsenal.

23 Red-Eye-Reducing Flash The only way to eliminate red-eye from flash pictures is to move the flash unit off-camera away from the lens axis. Obviously, you can't do this with built-in flash. So today, most compact and SLR cameras with built-in flash provide a red-eye-reduction mode. This emits a pre-exposure series of flashes (or a continuous low-level light) to "stop-down" subjects' eyes and thus minimize the red-eye effect.

24 Automatic Exposure Bracketing In tricky exposure situations, it's a good idea to bracket exposures—shoot one frame at the exposure you think is right, then shoot additional frames, giving more and less exposure. Automatic exposure bracketing does this for you automatically, at one touch of the shutter button.

25 Digital Camcorders When Photographic was born, most home movies were shot with 8mm film cameras. A 50-foot Super-8 film cartridge was good for just a few minutes of shooting. Then you had to wait to get your film back, pay for processing, and acquire and set up a projector and screen to show your movies. Today's digital camcorders—many far smaller than the Super-8 cameras—give you up to two hours of shooting on a single tape, no processing required, and provide simple playback on your TV or computer, or even on the camcorder's built-in monitor. And if you don't like what you see, you can reuse the tape. Today's digital camcorders offer an amazing array of features, including better-than-CD hi-fi stereo sound, 10:1 and greater zoom lenses, image stabilization on some models, and special-effects and easy editing capabilities that were beyond even professional moviemakers when Photographic was born.

26 Film ID Window This item is low on the technological-complexity scale, but high in convenience. Have you ever forgotten whether there was film in that camera you haven't used in a while? Or when shooting fast-breaking action, forget whether you just loaded ISO 100 or ISO 400 film? Today's AF 35mm SLR cameras have little film ID windows in the back that allow you to see whether there is film in the camera, and if so, what kind.

27 Second-Curtain Flash Sync In long-exposure flash shots of moving subjects, normal first-curtain flash sync fires the flash at the start of the exposure, and the "speed-streaks" produced by ambient light appear ahead of the moving subject in the resulting photo. With second-curtain (rear) sync, the flash fires at the end of the exposure, and the streaks appear behind the subject—a more natural-appearing effect.

28 Better Lenses for Less Computer-aided design and manufacture, new lens-element materials and aspheric elements have given us sharper, lighter, faster and less-costly lenses for our cameras. What a deal! Photo by Lynn Eodice

29 Environmentally friendly (or at least, not so hostile) chemicals The photo industry has made great strides toward protecting the environment with new processing chemicals, silver-recovery systems, recyclable single-use cameras and the like.

30 Resin-Coated Papers Purists love fiber-based photographic printing papers, because they produce better image quality—especially when compared to the first RC papers. But today's best RC papers are of exhibition quality, and offer the advantages of quick processing, washing and drying—the plastic-coated material doesn't absorb liquids as fiber-based papers do.