Our History
Since June 1966, after its founder Pietro Del Maschio had attended a practical and behavioral photography course at the Radio Elettra School, Photo Know-How deals nationally with industrial photographic solutions and supplies and as an assistance service for related companies to the world of industrial advertising.
Taking innovation and research his reason for living and economic engine. Always identified as industry benchmark in 1992 thanks to our familiarity with the issues related to the shooting, we were approached by the direction of the play park "Gardaland" to solve the issue in an innovative "Photo Colorado".
We were the first in the world to devise an electronic solution for photography in amusement parks, an excellent operation given the direct and indirect results, also obtained thanks to calculated emotional processes and practically winning results.
Specifically, we were asked to propose a photographic system capable of generating a new business. For this client we designed and built an electronic shooting system, thanks to which a single frame generated by a Sony camera was printed, which recorded the descent of the Colorado trunk.
The cleverness did not consist in the innovative electronic shooting mechanism, but in the fact that travel times did not allow the customer to see his own image in the monitors, but only that of others.
His own was already available bagged and ready for the price of 5,000 italian "lire": thus exploiting the emotions and a dash of opportunism, we realized then the most effective of the entire business of entertainment structure.
Also in this case the real economic value lay in the emotional factor, in the diffusion of the concept “Gardaland = pleasure”, a value contaminated by the diffusion of an immense quantity of images that communicate this experience.
Over the years, the "Color Crisp Imacon" brand today known as "Hasselblad" has been the engine of interest in the digital sector, and has created a strong brand.
Since 1994, the advent of the digital camera system has seen Photo Know-How seriously committed to this new theme, training staff with internships in the United States (California), Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Shanghai. Wherever knowledge could be gained Photo Know-How was present.
In 1998, Photo Know-How has changed location, moving from 250 square meters of the office of Mestre to a new building of 2,400 square meters property in Mogliano Veneto, just behind the Venice-Treviso bypass and of Trieste-Padua motorway.
In this new commercial environment, in addition to Photo Know-How, "PK Service Industria" also operated, a company dedicated to technical assistance on all products sold and updating the use of the various software used by photographers and graphics, in a classroom equipped with 10 Mac workstations. The investments supported by Photo Know-How have benefited only from the grants coming from the participants, as all the bodies in charge contacted have politely denied, absolutely, any help. Therefore, at its own expense Photo Know-How, it has invested and still invests in innovation: a subject so loved by our politicians.
We have created, again for photo and video shooting, numerous devices such as the HCAM-B1, an original and exclusive device intended for ultra-wide angle shooting with Hasselblad multishot digital backs.
The original project is started from the consideration that modern digital backs have a more that abundant capacity reading, not sufficiently matched by the capacityof the optics.
The circle of confusion, generally considered as a function of the shooting format, in this case is been altered in reverse, using special optics, intended for the format 24 x 36 in a double format, exactly 36x56mm. The quality obtained in this way is astonishing and obviously only for particular lenses.
We have also built compact HMI Daylight 575 lighting systems, used by other research laboratories such as Mermec ex Tecnogamma and the Leica Camera AG laboratory.
We have a workshop equipped for the assistance of digital backs, scanners, flash generators, and all the equipment used in professional photographic studios, our core business. Our supply and service activity for professionals has also been enriched over time, with ideas ingenious such as the creation of large backcloth with refined technologies.
It might seem out of place in the digital age to pause to describe the construction of a continuous background, as modern image processing techniques allow surprising situations to be solved such as the contouring of difficult subjects and their shadows, thus allowing them to be placed in a different location in a likely way and all at very low cost.
The continuous background, or limbo, remains in any case an indispensable tool in the reproduction of medium-sized subjects where the importance of reflections or the rotation of the shadow is fundamental in the context of the image.
Its purpose is to isolate the subject by making it stand out. Any imperfection, line of horizon or cracks in the top disturbs the concept of the subject's isolation
Photo Know-How is able to design and build continuous funds for every need, with its own organizational skills that include space management, electrical power management and the care of ergonomic solutions for a modern studio stage.
Our company has specialized over time in the reproduction of textures. We have a planetary scanner "Cruse Repro Decor", a powerful device equipped with a 120cm x 250cm suction plate used in many museums around the world and Hasselblad multishot digital backs, for many years we have been collaborating with some of the most famous companies in Fiorano Modenese operating in the ceramics sector, to which we provide these solutions for reading textures.
For this sector, we have designed and built by our research laboratory a lighting and polarization device of the light source called "Ordinatore di luce", which highlights the roughness of the paper or any texture.
The exclusive device, composed of a single lateral light point, through the action of slats positioned so that the light bands can pass at 45 °, cancels the natural decay of light with respect to the distance ensuring constant grazing lighting and enhancing even the minimal conformations and smoothing and reducing the contrast in the reproduction of delicate textures such as marble.
Today Photoknowhow operates with 6000 companies, exclusively in the photographic and video industry. In the analogical period, the collaboration with Kodak, Fujifilm, Ilford, Agfa and Polaroid, referring to the sale of professional photographic films, was discreet and marked by the utmost financial rigor.
In addition to the supply of equipment, we are able to train the personnel destined for the organization of the online market, actively contributing to the safeguarding of the workplace, educating technicians, trained in the management of the new planetary showcase. We are currently studying an experimental device for reading the differences on artifacts with surfaces in sintered stone using our "Ordinatore di luce", commissioned by an important Venetian company in the Treviso area. It should be noted that all the creations are conceived, designed and built within our structure.
These same systems, when used in the reproduction of artworks, have generated so much curiosity and interest, so much so that the direction of the Basilica of San Marco has commissioned us to reproduce the "Nativity of Tiepolo" (the hyperrealistic copy of this artwork, actually replaces the original in the Basilica of San Marco). Subsequently, the reproduction of all the works of the publisher Ferdinando Ongania.
The woth of such reproduction technique is in the exaltation of the physical detail of the surface thanks to the micro-shadow that enhances the outline, providing a hyper-realistic perception
Starting from "Polifemo", an instrument made up of various elements that allow easy reproduction of copies of artworks, we presented the project "St. Mark's Basilica in the world" to the managers of the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, with which in addition to the possibility of marketing copies of paintings for the benefit of the curia, provides for the sale of bronze copies of the famous bronze statues of the four horses in full size.
Access to the comments of the works through "Augmented Reality" could represent, in addition to an implicit business, also an infinite opportunity for young people, for the territory that hosts these works and for the restoration laboratories interested in maintaining this heritage.
This numerically significant operation could represent a political operation to be proposed at the national level.
Today we are also working on two more projects, always related to the cataloging of artworks. The first concerns the full 3D stereo shooting of objects. In the technological evolution, shortly, we will have the possibility to view, in the new devices, stereo images without the aid of special glasses. Therefore, being technologically ready allows us to play a prominent role in the market.
The second one involves the dimensional cataloging of the works. Through an XY Imager device we could measure the dimensions of the subjects using a laser scanner in programmed steps and in a repeatable way.
The relative mathematics will constitute an archive which, if necessary, will make the work reproducible through the action of 3D printers.
Many other ideas in context, and outside our areas of expertise, therefore, dot our professional experience. Photo Know-How has never stopped his growth, understood as knowledge putted at the service of all interlocutors, even those who, after receiving an appropriate operational indication, turned elsewhere for economic factors, deemed advantageous
Despite these contingency, we can safely say that "knowledge pays".
Unlike other companies, we are increasingly targeting selective markets.