Dear List
There have been threads running on several other forums about clients becoming disillusioned about digital file quality. Whether this is a growing trend, as some suggest, I don't know. I do have a gut feeling that many photographers, who held off from buying digital cameras because their theoretical knowledge was lacking, have now taken the plunge without increasing their ability to handle digital files.
(At this point I will add that I was a digital capture skeptic until the Canon 1ds arrived. I am inclined to think that my theoretical knowledge is above average but I still budgeted �1,700 of time and tests towards the 'learning curve' for digital capture.)
A group of researchers, historians and archivists are appalled that almost all UK press photographers have no facility or knowledge to capture their digital images using the best quality their cameras are capable of. In many cases their sole consideration is shooting jpegs small enough to transmit to newspapers.
I have had several experiences of my stock pictures selling after other photographer's preferred images had been rejected for file quality reasons.
Two magazines refused to accept my 55Mb drum professionally scanned 645 film files because; "Photographer's digital files often let us down. We always make our own scans."
Although there was a lot of effort put into creating colour management standards we seem to be missing some of the rest of the message about digital file quality. One only has to look at some of the stockphoto forums to see that a persistent thread boils down to 'How do I cheat by uprezzing my files from my 2Mpx camera?' In many instances it means 'How do I enhance my 2Mpx files by using sharpening techniques which no one will spot and make it look like an unsharpened capture from a 22Mpx back?'
One of the major problems is that many of us on this list are very sloppy about the terms we use. One remark that crops up regularly is 'I use an xyz scanner and get great results'. No definition of 'great results' means we have no idea whether the respondent is talking about 5x7 photo prints or double page spreads in glossy magazines.
We also see questions posted here without any real detail to enable answers to be given. I am not sure how many newbies or beginners there are on this list or how the advice is received. Advice given on the assumption that the questioner's aims are an A4 Epson print produces different, and misleading, answers if the object is high quality litho repro.
Instead of list mums acting like victorian schoolteachers over the dreaded [at] symbol could we have them ask for a bit more precision? Could we ask for a few simple definitions in questions?
Print; Inkjet or offset litho? Digital capture; Jpeg or RAW? Flash Lighting; Studio or built-in camera?
Best Regards
Bob Croxford
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